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This is not really aimed at the OP of this thread in particular since this is far from the only thread abusing this idea.
From a tiering philosophy perspective:
There is no such thing as a 'generational core mechanic' in the context of needing a special tiering philosophy any more than new legendary pokemon need special tiering treatment. That's it, that's the post. I beg people to stop using the term, stop treating it separately like it has any reason to be a privileged category when considering the most competitive possible metagame. If you wanna take tiering action on something and it has popular support, DO IT. The hesitancy about modifying a supposed 'generational mechanic' is 'built in' to the playerbase, i.e, this concern is already reflected in the feedback they give you in surveys. It doesn't need to be given 'double weight' or extra consideration in the tiering process. This isn't an old gen where you know maybe it is rly necessary to have lots of compelling evidence for say a BW OU volcarona ban/suspect. There is plenty of time for gen9 to undergo significant changes yet, and a metastasizing 'generational core mechanic' precedent has never before been invoked in other gens' OU tiering while they were the current gen afaik. I don't care what happens w tera, but I do care about the precedent. This is a bad concept that is not obviously related to competitiveness and so we should avoid centering it in our discussions. Smogon is all abt competitive pokemon, what could kill smogon is if we give into the impulse to maximize todays youtube views over tomorrow's competitiveness reputation.
If this post seems like it has any invective, I literally have no dog in this fight other than to say 'actually, you do have options' you don't have to commit to a supposed 'generational core mechanic' picked out two weeks after the release (generous) and let that dictate gen 9 tiering. There is no prior tiering philosophy that says you do, all to the contrary.
Reading CBB's post really helped me understand the pro-tera sentiment and how it can reward dedicated players and bring never-before-seen extra layers of strategy to the game.
While I still don't consider it totally healthy due to its non-slot cost and freedom to use it at any time with an insanely low cost/high reward.
Mischaracterizing the mechanics under restrictions that are merely a gentlemen's agreement may ease some aspects, but it won't solve the problems; How Tera Preview can primarily reduce the guesswork but turn open scope issues into closed scope issues and increase the 50/50 but I still find it the only viable way to test something now, despite the PSTD Baton Pass in past generations.
Not going to lie, my IRL time has slowed down lately and I've become more of a casual ladder player and occasional tournament spectator than ever. So consider this when the data collector does his job reading this post.
However Tera can simply wall off good Pokémon to the point of breaking them, and filling gaps in coverage or defensive synergy with Tera can either be seen as creative or lazy depending on the player's point of view.
Changing the type can give not only 1, but 2 turns with almost 0 cost to the health of the Pokémon that terialized, this potentiated with screens can throw many things against the wall. We see a lot of Red Card and Pokémon being removed from the tier in a scenario where even Ditto can't be an auto-responder as it doesn't copy the Tera type, which could be a good thing in the end. Ditto was a bellwether in previous generations of when the metagame was heading in a direction of unhealthy dominance of some playstyle, reversing sweeps against HO or draining PP against stall.
On the premise of changing the status quo, it really seems like a bad time, due to the polarization of opinions, but public suspects, being Tera and all future ones, a simple majority 50% + 1 should be enough. You have a scenario where 59% of dedicated players that collected the applications to have their decision contradicted is frustrating and verges on the undemocratic.
Perhaps a ladder period, or tournament with Tera Preview could be taken to enrich the players' experience and perspective.
Tera is the face of Gen 9, even though the game was originally designed for doubles. I have no perspective of picking up requirements for future suspects, but here's my two cents on what I think, maybe I brought up more questions than resolutions, but I still have an anti-tera sentiment.
Thanks for reading.
I originally wanted to make a different post but CBB pretty much nailed what I wanted to say much more eloquently than I would've managed. I want to talk about some case studies that I think reflect the overall point of "the more in-tune you are with the metagame, the more you will succeed" very well. That statement might even seem like a given to some, but it does directly clash with the old "mons is mons" adage; for the uninformed it just means that you can win consistently in any tier just by being good at Pokemon rather than actually understanding the tier's intricacies. Quick disclaimer that I don't intend to insult anyone here - I'm just gonna be mentioning Things That Happened in this WCOP.
For starters I'd like to mention the uncharacteristic struggle of US Northeast. NE is a crazy strong team filled w/ incredible players; a star-studded lineup with some of the best players ever like Star, Insult and ABR, def poised to make a splash in the new generation. To the surprise of many, though, they put up a pretty middling 10-14 record, with only three players managing positive pools records. That certainly happens to good players all the time, even the best slip up, but most who are in-tune w/ SV would agree that NE were largely struggling due to team choices that just didn't work out rather than playing issues from the members of the teams themselves. I'm not on NE, I'm not gonna claim to know what went into their prep decisions or say they didn't make sense. I would like to contrast them with their Western cousins though.
US West this year looks very different to before. The players aren't entirely new but they have certainly uprooted their old roster (likely bc most of them stopped playing if I had to guess), and they wouldn't have been expected to put up an amazing record by any means. Yet here we are, with US West comfortably taking the #2 spot in the pools phase after an MS Paint tiebreaker. They have multiple excellent players that are new(ish?) to OU like Attribute and mushamu, and super good returning old players that are super in-tune with the metagame like Vert and shiloh; this willingness to adapt and keep up really stood to them. They've made great team choices and played solid games and bam here they are, doing great in the new generation. It really isn't just new players that are benefiting either; old, respected builders like CTC and NJNP have managed to thrive in this tier too!
The above is nothing more than an attempt to dispel the idea that Tera removes skill from the game and turns games into a matchup fest, because that simply isn't true. Some more aggressive anti-Tera voters have responded to this saying that worse players can beat better players off surprise factor; respectfully, this is cope. Players and even whole teams have been able to maintain high levels of consistency - in an RNG surprise meta, this would not be possible, the ship would sink eventually. But it hasn't, because Tera allows for huge skill expression. Whether or not you like that aspect of the game is of course entirely subjective.
I'm not sure where to put this part of the post but I'm not educated enough on the methodology of the vote to have a strong opinion on that, but what Amaranth suggested seems reasonable if restrictions are the desired route. I think I generally align w/ Vert in that ban or no ban is better, but preview is popular enough to justify it.
Beyond that, I'm still very pro-Tera for the reasons listed in post's like CBB's, ABR's, Nat's and NJNP's. I don't wanna sit here regurgitating what they've already brought up, so I'll just encourage you to read those instead.
I will just say in short: Tera is skill-based, great for engagement, allows for huge metagame development options and is super helpful in the teambuilder to band-aid flaws you would otherwise have, essentially adding another dimension to your team that makes the game even more complex in a beautiful way. It's great for engagement which is beneficial for everyone; more players is always good for growth of both Smogon and PS!, which amplifies competition. And beyond all that, it's super fun to use.
So ya, from a biased player who has been told she had her records boosted by the gimmick: keep Tera. It rewards those who actively keep up with the tier in a way that's unprecedented in competitive Pokemon and I think that alone outweighs any flaws with the mechanic, alongside all the other great things myself and others have listed.
If I am allowed to share how I feel about the situation...
I have been playing for over 10 years trying to stay competitive over a variety of different metagames and from the perspective of trying to learn a tier and get involved into it, Terastalization does play a very important role into making the dynamics in a battle much more fascinating. Every gen has the skillset which many players can shine on it, gen9 with tera isnt different from that in my eyes.
I can understand that there are some pretty annoying mental gymnastics around the mechanic as a whole but thats just honestly part of a skill one player needs to develop in order to do well, risk/reward with an added layer of uncertainty that you need to decipher based on game information. Same analysis can be done by trying to identify what sets a mon could use on preview, and for at least it has worked to think what Tera type could the respective Pokemon to achieve good defensive or offensive counterplay.
To me this has added a pretty entertaining layer of analysis in competitive games and one thing I have been getting better at while looking at games and playing them, I honestly dont see anything wrong when you need to play the tier differently than any previous gens. You cannot play the same game you did in gen 8 with this gen and I think thats just something people need to accept, if you were great in gen8 and struggling in gen9 there is some self-reflection to make, it is fine to get rolled in the process, I definitely have been rolled myself.
Regarding the "robbery" aspect of the mechanic, I believe the mechanic starts making sense once you understand how some interactions work in the game. There are essentially 3 ways to make a tera: 1. boost the offensive presence of a mon by powering up the stab and allowing it to clean more consistency or have additional coverage it may not have naturally, scarf enamorus being tera fairy or dragapult going for ghost, or some niche dragon dancers like gyarados gaining a stab in tera blast. 2. Defensive counterplay, biggest example is garganacl that can use tera flying to use grounds as setup bait, or tera fairy and water which have been proven to be neutral defensive types due to minimal weaknesses and important resistances all around, and also turning hazard setters turning into spinblockers in a pinch. 3. Luring or Preserving a gameplan, less ideal since using your tera for something like this but it works just fine under specific circumstances to increase the potency of a mon that could use x move removed.
See? Making a concrete analysis is possible. Making yourself the same questions like "what set it could be?" and adding the extra question of "what tera could this use if x set?" is just part of the package, and havent been that much of a hassle. Every "robbery" I could have experienced was preventable by taking some considerations or just failing in the builder with some failsafes to be honest. Forcing certain mons to tera to survive the stride and not allowing certain mon to use it in the back is honestly something that can be learned as well.
As biased as it is to say, I just have to point out that banning this would be detrimental due to the precedent of how awful gen8 was a whole, every tier was absolutely boring and just really frustrating with so many pivots just going around unscathed clicking u-turn and volt switch and you not being able to do anything about it thanks to boots, that was the chance of lower tiers and all of them are awful in gen8 in my opinion due to how stale some stuff is, besides some notorious matchup problems that you cannot resolve with hazards on the equation, at least tera gives me a way to punish that level of complacency
Now, I will just be like I am mind-blown by the generation as a whole, it has a plethora of problems but honestly terastalization isnt one of them in my eyes, it honestly helps keeping some of those issues at bay with defense having a chance against so many extremely strong setup sweepers. If there needs to be a restriction tera on preview works since that additional layer of information can help in doing a gameplan to survive, but I am definitely on the pro tera lane too, it is busted but it is good and intuitive and more helpful than harmful imo.
My two cents, keep discussion since it is entertaining.
I've personally been a proponent of Tera Preview due to my experiences with competitive Mega Man Battle Network (which utilizes something similar for matches in its community) and I don't think it lowers the skill ceiling, but other, much better players than me have explained why it's undesirable so I won't dwell on that. I'd be fine with no restriction if it came down to it. Instead I'm gonna talk about my distaste for the oft-proposed Tera Blast ban.
First of all, as an intended half-measure, it doesn't solve much of anything. A number of notable Tera abusers (e.g. Garg and King) don't even make use of the move for coverage since they rely on the mech purely for defensive purposes. And many other abusers are problematic for a number of reasons outside of the given coverage. This would rescue Regieleki from Ubers and... that's kind if it?
Second of all, the idea behind Tera Blast -- a move that lets a Pokémon muscle past an otherwise solid check/counter -- isn't even new. Hidden Power is basically the same thing and we've been dealing with it since Gen II. Tera Blast admittedly has a couple major advantages over Hidden Power (higher BP, being able to work off Attack, Fairy-type as an option), but it's also a much bigger commitment since you have to use your one-time mechanic that changes your type and potentially compromises your defensive utility in the process. I think that's a fair trade and the existence of the move isn't problematic.
Finally, we already set a precedent that most-to-all of a move's users need to be proven as broken before the move gets banned. I seriously doubt literally every OU Pokémon is broken by Tera Blast, especially when Tera is most complex topic than that.
First of all, as an intended half-measure, it doesn't solve much of anything. A number of notable Tera abusers (e.g. Garg and King) don't even make use of the move for coverage since they rely on the mech purely for defensive purposes. And many other abusers are problematic for a number of reasons outside of the given coverage. This would rescue Regieleki from Ubers and... that's kind if it?
Removing Tera Blast obviously is not going to change the core way that Tera is used in the metagame, but that's not really the point of the ban as I'll explain later. Removing Tera Blast does also save Espathra and Volcarona, the latter of which does contribute some worth to the metagame and arguably Espathra as well when their variance is limited by their existing coverage options.
Second of all, the idea behind Tera Blast -- a move that lets a Pokémon muscle past an otherwise solid check/counter -- isn't even new. Hidden Power is basically the same thing and we've been dealing with it since Gen II. Tera Blast admittedly has a couple major advantages over Hidden Power (higher BP, being able to work off Attack, Fairy-type as an option), but it's also a much bigger commitment since you have to use your one-time mechanic that changes your type and potentially compromises your defensive utility in the process. I think that's a fair trade and the existence of the move isn't problematic.
Finally, we already set a precedent that most-to-all of a move's users need to be proven as broken before the move gets banned. I seriously doubt literally every OU Pokémon is broken by Tera Blast, especially when Tera is most complex topic than that.
The issue I have with this argument is that the circumstances on which Tera Blast operates are not really comparable to Hidden Power. I don't like Hidden Power either ftr but there are several key factors behind the move that make it far more egregious.
1: Tera Blast's variance and surprise factor is not independent; it is comorbid with the mechanic we are discussing
The variance of Hidden Power is independent from Tera as a whole; you have a general idea on how Hidden Power works and in what ways it will be used most of the time. The added problem with Tera Blast is that we also have to consider how its variance contributes and interacts with that of Tera, as Tera Blast is more or less an extension of the mechanic due to how its function is entirely contingent on it. Tiering Tera Blast in my eyes is essentially tiering Tera.
2: Tera Blast can be used on both sides of the attacking spectrum
Hidden Power's variance in modern gens is honed down considerably by the fact that only special attacking/mixed Pokemon were capable of viably using the move. In comparison to Tera Blast which can be used viably by anything, it is more difficult to predict the kind of Pokemon you can expect to see it on and more difficult to isolate and play around due to its wider applications.
3: Hidden Power in modern generations has only been used for super-effective special coverage
Without x4 weaknesses, Hidden Power's one-tap potential is entirely contingent on weaknesses due to often lacking a STAB-boost and a low BP in modern generations, which greatly limits its application. Tera Blast not only offers you that coverage, but also gives that coverage STAB and its base BP is very serviceable for a STAB move. There have been several Pokemon like Kingambit, Hisuian Lilligant, and Galarian Moltres that can viably use Tera Blast to get a strong complementary STAB to their primary attacking STAB (mainly Fairy for Kingambit and Galarian Moltres, hell even that goofy CM Landorus-T used it), that can also offer some defensive merits.
In all fairness, you mentioned the latter two, but they matter a lot more in practice than you would think.
Finally, we already set a precedent that most-to-all of a move's users need to be proven as broken before the move gets banned. I seriously doubt literally every OU Pokémon is broken by Tera Blast, especially when Tera is most complex topic than that.
Regarding this, this isn't really true. Moves like Baton Pass and Swagger are widely distributed options that have seen bans as well due to facilitating an unhealthy and uncompetitive dynamic within their respective metagames, even with many users that can only situationally (if at all) use them to their max potential. If we were to tier Tera Blast on its own merits, referring to these moves as precedent is more than fine because Tera Blast itself isn't broken in the traditional sense like Last Respects or Shed Tail. That being said, Tera Blast isn't comparable to any of these moves anyway because it is fundamentally a mechanic of Tera.
The argument isn't that the move is broken because it does have rather noteworthy drawbacks as you've stated. The argument is that Tera Blast is an easily tierable aspect of Tera that directly adds to some of the potentially unhealthy dynamics that Tera can encourage, and may take away from the more skill-based aspects of it.
Admittedly I am kind of still torn on whether or not I'm pro or against banning tera, but I really want to implore everyone to take the tera preview option off the table. Sorry if I reiterate points that have been brought up, I just wanted to share my thoughts since I despise this proposal so much.
Regarding the VGC parallel, it's extremely flawed because of the myriad of different factors present. Forcing team lock creates disadvantages towards people who aren't networked and those who have games shown on stream, and open team sheets are a way of equalizing this information imbalance in a format that literally forces you into one team. It has nothing to do with balancing tera as a mechanic and is solely for the competitive balance of that specific format.
Modding the game so that players get access to information unavailable on cart at team preview is horseshit. Dancing around dangerous threats with multiple sets and move options based on what you can surmise with limited information is an incredible form of skill expression, and tera preview dampens the need to do that. Sets can either be outright revealed or made way easier to narrow down solely from tera types. As an example, seeing tera fighting on a gambit at team preview removes the necessity of scouting for low kick and gives away a huge part of the opponent's set. There is a ton of examples of this that would come to play if tera preview was enacted and it would be for the worse of the game.
With regards to other proposals and my thoughts on tera in general, it's honestly been really hard for me to form a solid opinion on it. People like Nat, stresh, and mind gaming in particular have proven that consistency is still very achievable in a tier with tera, so I don't really buy the whole "tera forces too many 50/50s", "roulette wheel tier", etc type arguments. The detrimental effects of tera are more felt in the teambuilder, where certain setup sweepers can just completely floor your team with the right tera type or a defensive pokemon can completely shut down your main source of counterplay for a bulky team, spiraling a game out of control. On the other hand, people like CBB and Nat are definitely correct in saying that tera increases the skill gap of the tier and punishes people that aren't as familiar with the metagame. It's difficult to really pick a side on the issue, and that makes me want to settle for a tera blast ban since it offers a band-aid to a very nuanced issue.
Terastallization is easily the most polarizing and controversial topic in the history of competitive Pokemon. It’s important that we get this right.
For me personally, it’s been pretty humbling being in charge of the format with so much on the line, but it’s also a big responsibility that I take really seriously. Given that, I think I owe the community my thoughts and full transparency on the process, Tera itself, and recent developments.
Tera is unique and has evoked a wide array of responses. You have talented and long-tenured players on both extremes saying the game is ruined by the mere presence of Tera and that the game would be ruined by the removal of Tera. As a councilmen and leader, you have to throw all of your people-pleasing instincts out the window and just find out what’s best for your metagame. I think our approach in finding that has gotten better over the last couple of generations (obviously always room for improvement though).
Historically council decisions have been determined internally with the council deciding on early quickbans and the subjects of suspects without much external consultation. This isn’t a shot at 10+ years of councils, including the first 3-4 years I was a councilmen, but just how Smogon was. Since I took over and TDK came up with surveys during the middle of last generation, we have transitioned to a data-driven approach fueled by our playerbase with surveys. We also have tried to be as transparent and communicative with any parts of the process that have to be handled quickly or internally during this time as well. It certainly hasn’t been perfect and as recently as the Volcarona ban, there have been controversies and learning experiences galore, but we are trying to make this a tier by the players and for the players.
And to me, it seems like many players want to keep Tera around. In particular, the vast majority of posts in the PR thread indicate a desire to keep it around while a smaller, but still clear, majority of the points made in OU discussion thread reflect the same. Of course, there are still a lot of reasons to keep Tera discussions going such as its survey response and the ardent expressions of anti-Tera sentiment in the other posts. In all honesty, you can justify a suspect on Tera now in various formats right now and it is entirely on the table. However, you can also justify pushing the envelope a bit longer be it in a matter of weeks or looking again after DLC and then tackling Kingambit first with a suspect. The council has been discussing these options and will continue to. I do not expect a verdict today or tomorrow, but likely next week as we ramp up in the coming days.
Personally I think Tera is pretty complicated. It is a whole mechanic, so looking at it in the same exact way as a Pokemon is tough and that is our normal approach for suspects, so we have to be careful here. With this in mind, over time you can draw conclusions about how it impacts the balancing of our metagame and the competitiveness/skillfulness of the format through the lens of the Pokemon throughout the format. Obviously there is the whole debate of aggressively tiering Pokemon impacted by Tera (i.e: what we have done) vs touching Tera, and I do not think it is a super linear argument as there is so much makeup behind both, but in going to a suspect, we would essentially give the community a chance to determine if the current approach is optimal or of the fundamentals need to be altered to maximize this generation's potential.
I think that Tera itself offers a lot of skillful interactions to our metagame. For starters, it rewards a lot of playing experience/knowledge as to what does what as there are so many nuisances to Tera. In addition, sequencing and the risk-reward to Tera'ing at a certain point, using a Tera offensively or defensively, etc. offers great strategic merit. There is no denying that there are more decisions made by players throughout games with Tera than without. However, it is also true that not every single decision is a balanced one and not every inference can be viewed equally as some have certain confidence and intuition behind them while others a bit less so. It's hard not to look at it a bit through the scope of how many Pokemon have been impacted by Tera to the point that they have been deemed banworthy, which you can likely say applies to Regieleki, Espathra, Volcarona, and Annihilape. It is not a perfect or really relevant (to the current metagame) to largely go off of things already banned though -- if anything, this just opens up discussion on Tera Blast, which caused 3 of those things to be broken arguably. I think all things considered: if we are looking for the most balanced metagame that results in fewer bans and aligns with the norms of prior generations, then Tera may not have as much of a place. However, if we are looking for the most skillful and completitive metagame with layers of strategy that still has potential for balancing, then Tera very much has a place. While my historic tiering insight makes me feel the former is important and we should do something on Tera, it seems like a lot of the community embraces Tera and aligns more with the latter. I take no issue with that myself.
A lot is up in the air and I hope to update people more formally next week, but the council is discussing a lot internally, including the contents/vibe of this thread, and I will do my best to keep you updated. Formal testing on Tera still remains an option, but so does pivoting to something else like a Kingambit test and potentially looking into this down the road.
I'll be blunt, terastallization has no place in a serious competitive environment.
The main point in my eyes that makes the mechanic not feasible to handle properly is the timing of activation of tera. As much as tera supporters wants everyone to believe that clear patterns exist in this regard, it's not really like that. It makes gameplanning super inconsistent and that really hurts the competitive aspect since we're talking about one of the big fundamentals of the game. I don't see any fun or skill in randomly changing your type to screw up rkilling and mons clearly is a game of variables but tera adds to many to the point the game hardly holds any competitive value at all.
Not too long ago clumsy attempts were made at finding a culprit in stored power because certain threats were easily getting out of hand sweeping quite easily instead of considering the fact that those threats had a far easier time setting up with tera magic and they could get more than one free turn and start a big mess. To me it really looks like a delusional attempt at defending something that can't be defended. I rather see those that support the mechanic just admitting they like it for the fun(which is very subjective and has nothing to do with the competitive benefit of a metagame) rather than pretending there is some added skill layer behind tera that makes the game a lot deeper.
Another interesting aspect that was brought up that is even more delusional is that "It helps and make teambuilding much more skillful", to which I answer "In which multiverse exactly?" and clearly it's not the one we live in. Tera doesn't help in the slightest since it multiplied the potential of a threat to insane levels, dealing with valiant just in preview is like you're put in front of 10 diff threats, every set with diff tera type requires you to have a very diff way to deal with that. The same happens when you face a tera fairy gambit or a tera flying gambit, they require you to have specific answers that are not good for every tera type and set to the point we're playing a roulette metagame. Baxcalibur and garganacl are other good examples, you could argue they would be broken even with no tera and you would be in fact right about it for once, but they'd have at least their base typing and it would be easier to make a proper gameplan to play around them unlike now. The strain put in the teambuilder is already big enough but with tera is like teambuilding doesn't even require you to be competent anymore at it, just slap your magic tera and fish for the best mu, eventually you will be praised because you had the creative idea of using x tera mon and get away with it. It's not a surprise seeing many people that before gen 9 couldn't even put 6 mons together now finding themselves to be amazing teambuilders, this mechanic totally killed teambuilding making it more approachable and requiring less competence for it.
And to no one surprise many that wants the mechanic alive hate gen 8 with a passion(and are trying to ruin gen 9 too) and mind it, you're right when you say it's hot garbage but it's not because of regen spam and pex. Most of you had troubles breaking fat core just because the best wallbreaker you were using was twave knock clef and then no wonder you complain about that thing lol. Meanwhile in ss no one tried to address the actual issues like fs and in particular tapu lele or the fact that static and flame body are mindless rng garbage that are starting infesting even the actual gen but sure toxapex is the real demon of ss ou, it speaks loud about the competence of certain players. Ruining this gen now keeping tera alive just because you were bored of ss is not a brilliant idea.
The only actual solution that would see gen9 becoming an actual playable and competitive gen and not an OM would be getting rid of tera completely, preview is definitely not helping at all, increasing 50/50s and randomly giving info to my opponent just to save an unbalanced mechanic, if anything I rather keep playing like we do now than accepting this loloption. Banning terablast also won't do any better, it's like preteding tera would be fine without it and clearly it's not the case, if tera stays I rather see everything unbanned after all it would mean the gen is dead for good so at least you keep all your funny moments and creative contents.
I'll be blunt, terastallization has no place in a serious competitive environment.
The main point in my eyes that makes the mechanic not feasible to handle properly is the timing of activation of tera. As much as tera supporters wants everyone to believe that clear patterns exist in this regard, it's not really like that. It makes gameplanning super inconsistent and that really hurts the competitive aspect since we're talking about one of the big fundamentals of the game. I don't see any fun or skill in randomly changing your type to screw up rkilling and mons clearly is a game of variables but tera adds to many to the point the game hardly holds any competitive value at all.
Not too long ago clumsy attempts were made at finding a culprit in stored power because certain threats were easily getting out of hand sweeping quite easily instead of considering the fact that those threats had a far easier time setting up with tera magic and they could get more than one free turn and start a big mess. To me it really looks like a delusional attempt at defending something that can't be defended. I rather see those that support the mechanic just admitting they like it for the fun(which is very subjective and has nothing to do with the competitive benefit of a metagame) rather than pretending there is some added skill layer behind tera that makes the game a lot deeper.
Another interesting aspect that was brought up that is even more delusional is that "It helps and make teambuilding much more skillful", to which I answer "In which multiverse exactly?" and clearly it's not the one we live in. Tera doesn't help in the slightest since it multiplied the potential of a threat to insane levels, dealing with valiant just in preview is like you're put in front of 10 diff threats, every set with diff tera type requires you to have a very diff way to deal with that. The same happens when you face a tera fairy gambit or a tera flying gambit, they require you to have specific answers that are not good for every tera type and set to the point we're playing a roulette metagame. Baxcalibur and garganacl are other good examples, you could argue they would be broken even with no tera and you would be in fact right about it for once, but they'd have at least their base typing and it would be easier to make a proper gameplan to play around them unlike now. The strain put in the teambuilder is already big enough but with tera is like teambuilding doesn't even require you to be competent anymore at it, just slap your magic tera and fish for the best mu, eventually you will be praised because you had the creative idea of using x tera mon and get away with it. It's not a surprise seeing many people that before gen 9 couldn't even put 6 mons together now finding themselves to be amazing teambuilders, this mechanic totally killed teambuilding making it more approachable and requiring less competence for it.
And to no one surprise many that wants the mechanic alive hate gen 8 with a passion(and are trying to ruin gen 9 too) and mind it, you're right when you say it's hot garbage but it's not because of regen spam and pex. Most of you had troubles breaking fat core just because the best wallbreaker you were using was twave knock clef and then no wonder you complain about that thing lol. Meanwhile in ss no one tried to address the actual issues like fs and in particular tapu lele or the fact that static and flame body are mindless rng garbage that are starting infesting even the actual gen but sure toxapex is the real demon of ss ou, it speaks loud about the competence of certain players. Ruining this gen now keeping tera alive just because you were bored of ss is not a brilliant idea.
The only actual solution that would see gen9 becoming an actual playable and competitive gen and not an OM would be getting rid of tera completely, preview is definitely not helping at all, increasing 50/50s and randomly giving info to my opponent just to save an unbalanced mechanic, if anything I rather keep playing like we do now than accepting this loloption. Banning terablast also won't do any better, it's like preteding tera would be fine without it and clearly it's not the case, if tera stays I rather see everything unbanned after all it would mean the gen is dead for good so at least you keep all your funny moments and creative contents.
When I read that the gen is the most skillfull ever, that the mechanic is perfect or that it requieres to be an amazing builder/battler to success in it.... I really don't think It's being objective.
Now I only have one question to ask : Do you think tera would actually remain unbanned if we didn't ban the dynamax mechanic in gen8?
Because I'm really not sure about it. I'm having a feeling where we realize that the mech is banworthy but we absolutely don't want to replicate what happenned last gen so we try to defend it as best as possible.
At the time we're talking to, hundreds of people are arguing everyday about Tera and the SV OU metagame as a whole, what to fix, what to ban... and it's been going since the release of then gen as we're almost in August now. Insane.
But for how long It's gonna last?
I don't know if banning tera would 100% be the right solution, but something BIG needs to be done in the tier, wether it's a gambit ban, a tera blast ban or the whole mechanic to be gone.
Massive pressure on the council props to yall for dealing with that, hopefully the good choice will be made whatever it is.. I gotta admit spectating all of this is very entertaining at least.
Hi, just figured I'd respond to these posts because I disagree with them on a fundamental level, and I don't just mean Tera vs No Tera (mostly WoF's post, Corazan's isn't anything egregious).
The main point in my eyes that makes the mechanic not feasible to handle properly is the timing of activation of tera. As much as tera supporters wants everyone to believe that clear patterns exist in this regard, it's not really like that. It makes gameplanning super inconsistent and that really hurts the competitive aspect since we're talking about one of the big fundamentals of the game. I don't see any fun or skill in randomly changing your type to screw up rkilling and mons clearly is a game of variables but tera adds to many to the point the game hardly holds any competitive value at all.
Well, that's your opinion, and that's certainly fine to think, but clearly there is a subset that believes, truly, that such a thing is possible. Who are you to tell people that they're literally, objectively wrong, especially when their consistency points towards the contrary? Maybe you are the one who should approach gameplanning with a different mindset more centered around Tera, scouting Teras, and generally making it harder for your opponent to flip your entire gameplan on its head with one well-timed execution? Barely any competitive value is laughable, I think Nat has made a great point about how every playstyle is viable and the consistent people are clearly that: consistent. Because they understand Tera better and more deeply than others. If this game had hardly any competitive merit, then don't you think people wouldn't consistently be able to do well? What, did god just choose those people to always get lucky in the uncompetitive landscape that is SV OU with Tera? This is removed from the idea that you can get a "feel" for Tera too, I'm sure lots of them are just a lot better at playing with and around the mechanic. You're entitled to your own opinion like anyone, but calling this uncompetitive when there's clearly people doing well on a regular basis is absolutely laughable. Don't say people pretend stuff for the sake of it, or that this game is uncompetitive just because your idea of what Pokemon should be played like doesn't align with what's currently happening. It does nothing to strengthen your arguments.
Not too long ago clumsy attempts were made at finding a culprit in stored power because certain threats were easily getting out of hand sweeping quite easily instead of considering the fact that those threats had a far easier time setting up with tera magic and they could get more than one free turn and start a big mess. To me it really looks like a delusional attempt at defending something that can't be defended. I rather see those that support the mechanic just admitting they like it for the fun(which is very subjective and has nothing to do with the competitive benefit of a metagame) rather than pretending there is some added skill layer behind tera that makes the game a lot deeper.
Again, that is your opinion, and how can it not be defended when the results are right there? A lot of the same players topping the ladder over and over, lots of the same people consistently doing well in tournaments. I'll admit that I do think Tera is fun (shocker, I know), but I don't think it'd be fun to me if I didn't see the skill-based aspect of it as well. There's stuff like Landorus-I, Pokemon that I think are some of the most fun ever to use, but I also realize that they're way too good at what they do and give you way too much payoff for way too little investment. I definitely don't see that with Tera, and all I see is that there's tons of people adapting and feeling way more comfortable with it after playing with it for a lot more. Again, maybe instead of calling everyone a liar/pretender with absolutely zero proof, maybe do some introspection and think about what the Pro-Tera side sees in Tera that you don't. Discrediting actually good players who see it this way, once again, really does nothing but make you seem angry that you can't attain their level of competence when playing with Tera.
Another interesting aspect that was brought up that is even more delusional is that "It helps and make teambuilding much more skillful", to which I answer "In which multiverse exactly?" and clearly it's not the one we live in. Tera doesn't help in the slightest since it multiplied the potential of a threat to insane levels, dealing with valiant just in preview is like you're put in front of 10 diff threats, every set with diff tera type requires you to have a very diff way to deal with that. The same happens when you face a tera fairy gambit or a tera flying gambit, they require you to have specific answers that are not good for every tera type and set to the point we're playing a roulette metagame. Baxcalibur and garganacl are other good examples, you could argue they would be broken even with no tera and you would be in fact right about it for once, but they'd have at least their base typing and it would be easier to make a proper gameplan to play around them unlike now. The strain put in the teambuilder is already big enough but with tera is like teambuilding doesn't even require you to be competent anymore at it, just slap your magic tera and fish for the best mu, eventually you will be praised because you had the creative idea of using x tera mon and get away with it. It's not a surprise seeing many people that before gen 9 couldn't even put 6 mons together now finding themselves to be amazing teambuilders, this mechanic totally killed teambuilding making it more approachable and requiring less competence for it.
Wow, not sure where I even begin with this. Again, I've said this for like every paragraph so far (because, so far, everything is your opinion without any actual facts), but this is very much your opinion. I love the last sentence in particular - more ad-hominem statements caused by lack of arguments, once again putting yourself (I guess? Not sure who else) on a pedestal, and talking down onto people. Who appointed you as the head chief superior officer of Pokemon teambuilding? Who are you to call people good teambuilders, bad teambuilders, or Gen 9 Teambuilding requiring less competence? Maybe you're the one who just hasn't figured it out, to the degree where you think Tera is completely random hogwash instead of something you can build and plan around? Again, maybe look at yourself before blaming anything and everything on others, it doesn't make for good arguments and certainly isn't going to sway any Pro-Tera people. If anything, maybe try to build some more teams with Tera in mind :) It will teach you a lot about both using the mechanic and playing against it! Really, I'm not even sure what I should say to a paragraph that does nothing but belittle, call out, and borderline insult SV OU teambuilders. Yes, we know Tera can flip the defensive type chart on its head. Just because you can't form a proper gameplan around Tera options doesn't mean others can't. I'm sure I could dig up a bunch of replays just from this WCOP alone where it becomes really, really apparent that one person knows how to use Tera better than the other, and like I said, I don't think that's a bad thing. The fact that this is one of the most liked Anti-Tera posts really says something...
And to no one surprise many that wants the mechanic alive hate gen 8 with a passion(and are trying to ruin gen 9 too) and mind it, you're right when you say it's hot garbage but it's not because of regen spam and pex. Most of you had troubles breaking fat core just because the best wallbreaker you were using was twave knock clef and then no wonder you complain about that thing lol. Meanwhile in ss no one tried to address the actual issues like fs and in particular tapu lele or the fact that static and flame body are mindless rng garbage that are starting infesting even the actual gen but sure toxapex is the real demon of ss ou, it speaks loud about the competence of certain players. Ruining this gen now keeping tera alive just because you were bored of ss is not a brilliant idea.
Again, more opinions, and my argument is not that Gen 9 OU is gonna become Gen 8 OU+ without Tera, so I won't really go into detail with this. Honestly, you could have just removed this entire paragraph, it does nothing but call people out for using fat teams in Gen 8 OU (which has little do with the conversation at hand in the first place, even if you're responding to the aforementioned argument), while then complaining about the tier. Again, neither is really relevant here, and I'll point you towards more actual evidence instead of just stating my opinion. Our most recent Smogon Tour had, in semifinals, a ~300 turn tied game between MichaelDerBeste2 and Soulwind. Clearly, if two of our best Gen 8 OU players land in a tie using fat teams, then there's merit to using those kind of teams? Regardless, the metagame is the way the metagame is, and no amount of "but you can run offense!" is gonna change what people ACTUALLY run... Which definitely isn't fat teams leading to 500 turn games every game, but it's a huge part of the metagame. And, really, who are you to rag on people's supposed skill level? Where does this entitlement even come from? Who made you the supreme judge of skill in Gen 8 OU? The arguments some people use really speak loudly about the competence of what they are writing. Regardless, like I said, this entire paragraph says basically nothing, but it says so much wrong stuff/stuff that makes you seem more bitter than anything that I really had to respond.
The only actual solution that would see gen9 becoming an actual playable and competitive gen and not an OM would be getting rid of tera completely, preview is definitely not helping at all, increasing 50/50s and randomly giving info to my opponent just to save an unbalanced mechanic, if anything I rather keep playing like we do now than accepting this loloption. Banning terablast also won't do any better, it's like preteding tera would be fine without it and clearly it's not the case, if tera stays I rather see everything unbanned after all it would mean the gen is dead for good so at least you keep all your funny moments and creative contents.
Honestly, the more I re-read this post, the more I do think you're just bitter and getting personal, but have no actual arguments backed up by any facts. You say the game is uncompetitive, I point you towards people doing well, both in tournaments and on ladder, on a regular basis. You say it's the people's fault for playing Gen 8 OU the way they do, but clearly people in the semifinals of one of our biggest tournaments think playing like this isn't just legitimate, but very strong. Why use something else when this usually works, after all? This last paragraph in general is just heinous. Here's a little secret: No one is holding a gun to your head telling you to play SV OU. Hell, you hate SS OU as well, going by what you wrote, so this makes me wonder why you care so much in general. You seem to hate both tiers, and at this point, I'm really not sure what you even want out of Pokemon if two tiers this radically different are both tiers you hate. No one is going to unban everything if we save Tera - we'd much rather try to make the tier the best it can be, but no one is forcing you to be a part of that if you really hate the game that much. Not really sure why people seemingly force themselves to play Pokemon in the first place????? Absolute mystery to me. And before someone brings up how many players would be driven away by Tera staying in SV OU - there's plenty of people on the other side of this. I know Tricking and I, for example, have literally no interest in Gen 9 OU without Terastallize. You're not special because you hate Generation 9 the way it is, I dealt with almost 2 full generations of OU tiers I did not want to engage with at all. That's just what happens. No way to please everyone. I wish there was more to say about this post other than "that's your opinion" and "WoF on his high horse talking down to people again", but there really isn't, so I'll leave it at that.
When I read that the gen is the most skillfull ever, that the mechanic is perfect or that it requieres to be an amazing builder/battler to success in it.... I really don't think It's being objective.
Again, I hate this line of argumentation. Why do people feel the need to call Pro-Tera people dishonest and subjective while everyone else is apparently the paragon of objectivity? And, if that's not what you are saying: Why even state it like Pro-Tera = Objective, Anti-Tera = Subjective when everything about this is based on opinions? I'm being as objective as I can be, it's no secret that I love Tera, but I genuinely do think it's good for the game. Something tells me that you're being pretty subjective yourself (as you should be, if you want something done in this test...).
Now I only have one question to ask : Do you think tera would actually remain unbanned if we didn't ban the dynamax mechanic in gen8?
Because I'm really not sure about it. I'm having a feeling where we realize that the mech is banworthy but we absolutely don't want to replicate what happenned last gen so we try to defend it as best as possible.
Almost none of the good arguments say anything about Dynamax, even I only talk about it very briefly because it's a whole different story compared to Tera. Nevermind that there's not even that much overlap: I think Dynamax is fucking ass, boring, and just generally doesn't make for interesting gameplay. Yes, gonna be subjective here again, but I find toying around with the Type Chart about 500x more engaging, worthwhile, and rewarding than stacking a ton of random boosts to 5 different stats. I'd never, ever, put this kind of effort into saving Dynamax, because I think it's one of the most boring and pointless mechanics we've ever had, and because I don't see the worth in saving it from a gameplay perspective. I would still absolutely delete Dynamax and save Tera. Yes, there is some give and take that comes with Tera, but obviously I think that the benefits FAR outweigh the drawbacks, or I wouldn't be arguing for it. I know it's shocking to some people, but yes, there are people who actually, genuinly think Tera makes the game better. I'm not really sure why that's so hard to accept. Different players have different preferences, even outside of Pokemon.
I do not think people support terastallization just because they hated SS, I think they support it because it has brought a real fun component to competitive pokémon, uncomparable to any other, and it changes all you believed about competitiveness in pokémon.
I understand people who are known as really good builders in past fairy gens not knowing how to approach this, and instead of trying to understand and solve the problems it brings, just try to get rid of this, but this shouldn't be and is not how it works.
I can see the problems @ close sheet, since as mentioned, not knowing what Valiant/Kingambit/Tusk/Baxcalibur.... etc you are facing multiplies the threat, and you can't act until they reveal their tera, first of all this can be solved sometimes trying to force they to tera, not allowing them to tera whenever they want, but that's the player problem, not the mechanic, second, open tera would solve a lot of problems, some of you say that it won't, but I disagree, knowing what threat I'm facing means I can react and play according to that, and if you are saying to me that it is still a 50/50 situation I don't know what game you are playing, because this game is ridiculously full of 50/50s, and a lot of them are not even 50/50.
Also, this mechanic was brought by the creators of the game, and I fully support to make the game more competitive with bans and limitations, but don't forget you are playing their game, don't get too far with this because I still want to play pokémon and not a fangame with pokémon.
And last, you should try to play old gens with no preview, where you don't have any info in turn 1, and you will realize what playing almost blind means, but some of you are used to have a lot of info since the beggining of the match and can't play without that.
Hi, just figured I'd respond to these posts because I disagree with them on a fundamental level, and I don't just mean Tera vs No Tera (mostly WoF's post, Corazan's isn't anything egregious).
Well, that's your opinion, and that's certainly fine to think, but clearly there is a subset that believes, truly, that such a thing is possible. Who are you to tell people that they're literally, objectively wrong, especially when their consistency points towards the contrary? Maybe you are the one who should approach gameplanning with a different mindset more centered around Tera, scouting Teras, and generally making it harder for your opponent to flip your entire gameplan on its head with one well-timed execution? Barely any competitive value is laughable, I think Nat has made a great point about how every playstyle is viable and the consistent people are clearly that: consistent. Because they understand Tera better and more deeply than others. If this game had hardly any competitive merit, then don't you think people wouldn't consistently be able to do well? What, did god just choose those people to always get lucky in the uncompetitive landscape that is SV OU with Tera? This is removed from the idea that you can get a "feel" for Tera too, I'm sure lots of them are just a lot better at playing with and around the mechanic. You're entitled to your own opinion like anyone, but calling this uncompetitive when there's clearly people doing well on a regular basis is absolutely laughable. Don't say people pretend stuff for the sake of it, or that this game is uncompetitive just because your idea of what Pokemon should be played like doesn't align with what's currently happening. It does nothing to strengthen your arguments.
Again, that is your opinion, and how can it not be defended when the results are right there? A lot of the same players topping the ladder over and over, lots of the same people consistently doing well in tournaments. I'll admit that I do think Tera is fun (shocker, I know), but I don't think it'd be fun to me if I didn't see the skill-based aspect of it as well. There's stuff like Landorus-I, Pokemon that I think are some of the most fun ever to use, but I also realize that they're way too good at what they do and give you way too much payoff for way too little investment. I definitely don't see that with Tera, and all I see is that there's tons of people adapting and feeling way more comfortable with it after playing with it for a lot more. Again, maybe instead of calling everyone a liar/pretender with absolutely zero proof, maybe do some introspection and think about what the Pro-Tera side sees in Tera that you don't. Discrediting actually good players who see it this way, once again, really does nothing but make you seem angry that you can't attain their level of competence when playing with Tera.
Wow, not sure where I even begin with this. Again, I've said this for like every paragraph so far (because, so far, everything is your opinion without any actual facts), but this is very much your opinion. I love the last sentence in particular - more ad-hominem statements caused by lack of arguments, once again putting yourself (I guess? Not sure who else) on a pedestal, and talking down onto people. Who appointed you as the head chief superior officer of Pokemon teambuilding? Who are you to call people good teambuilders, bad teambuilders, or Gen 9 Teambuilding requiring less competence? Maybe you're the one who just hasn't figured it out, to the degree where you think Tera is completely random hogwash instead of something you can build and plan around? Again, maybe look at yourself before blaming anything and everything on others, it doesn't make for good arguments and certainly isn't going to sway any Pro-Tera people. If anything, maybe try to build some more teams with Tera in mind :) It will teach you a lot about both using the mechanic and playing against it! Really, I'm not even sure what I should say to a paragraph that does nothing but belittle, call out, and borderline insult SV OU teambuilders. Yes, we know Tera can flip the defensive type chart on its head. Just because you can't form a proper gameplan around Tera options doesn't mean others can't. I'm sure I could dig up a bunch of replays just from this WCOP alone where it becomes really, really apparent that one person knows how to use Tera better than the other, and like I said, I don't think that's a bad thing. The fact that this is one of the most liked Anti-Tera posts really says something...
Again, more opinions, and my argument is not that Gen 9 OU is gonna become Gen 8 OU+ without Tera, so I won't really go into detail with this. Honestly, you could have just removed this entire paragraph, it does nothing but call people out for using fat teams in Gen 8 OU (which has little do with the conversation at hand in the first place, even if you're responding to the aforementioned argument), while then complaining about the tier. Again, neither is really relevant here, and I'll point you towards more actual evidence instead of just stating my opinion. Our most recent Smogon Tour had, in semifinals, a ~300 turn tied game between MichaelDerBeste2 and Soulwind. Clearly, if two of our best Gen 8 OU players land in a tie using fat teams, then there's merit to using those kind of teams? Regardless, the metagame is the way the metagame is, and no amount of "but you can run offense!" is gonna change what people ACTUALLY run... Which definitely isn't fat teams leading to 500 turn games every game, but it's a huge part of the metagame. And, really, who are you to rag on people's supposed skill level? Where does this entitlement even come from? Who made you the supreme judge of skill in Gen 8 OU? The arguments some people use really speak loudly about the competence of what they are writing. Regardless, like I said, this entire paragraph says basically nothing, but it says so much wrong stuff/stuff that makes you seem more bitter than anything that I really had to respond.
Honestly, the more I re-read this post, the more I do think you're just bitter and getting personal, but have no actual arguments backed up by any facts. You say the game is uncompetitive, I point you towards people doing well, both in tournaments and on ladder, on a regular basis. You say it's the people's fault for playing Gen 8 OU the way they do, but clearly people in the semifinals of one of our biggest tournaments think playing like this isn't just legitimate, but very strong. Why use something else when this usually works, after all? This last paragraph in general is just heinous. Here's a little secret: No one is holding a gun to your head telling you to play SV OU. Hell, you hate SS OU as well, going by what you wrote, so this makes me wonder why you care so much in general. You seem to hate both tiers, and at this point, I'm really not sure what you even want out of Pokemon if two tiers this radically different are both tiers you hate. No one is going to unban everything if we save Tera - we'd much rather try to make the tier the best it can be, but no one is forcing you to be a part of that if you really hate the game that much. Not really sure why people seemingly force themselves to play Pokemon in the first place????? Absolute mystery to me. And before someone brings up how many players would be driven away by Tera staying in SV OU - there's plenty of people on the other side of this. I know Tricking and I, for example, have literally no interest in Gen 9 OU without Terastallize. You're not special because you hate Generation 9 the way it is, I dealt with almost 2 full generations of OU tiers I did not want to engage with at all. That's just what happens. No way to please everyone. I wish there was more to say about this post other than "that's your opinion" and "WoF on his high horse talking down to people again", but there really isn't, so I'll leave it at that.
Again, I hate this line of argumentation. Why do people feel the need to call Pro-Tera people dishonest and subjective while everyone else is apparently the paragon of objectivity? And, if that's not what you are saying: Why even state it like Pro-Tera = Objective, Anti-Tera = Subjective when everything about this is based on opinions? I'm being as objective as I can be, it's no secret that I love Tera, but I genuinely do think it's good for the game. Something tells me that you're being pretty subjective yourself (as you should be, if you want something done in this test...).
Almost none of the good arguments say anything about Dynamax, even I only talk about it very briefly because it's a whole different story compared to Tera. Nevermind that there's not even that much overlap: I think Dynamax is fucking ass, boring, and just generally doesn't make for interesting gameplay. Yes, gonna be subjective here again, but I find toying around with the Type Chart about 500x more engaging, worthwhile, and rewarding than stacking a ton of random boosts to 5 different stats. I'd never, ever, put this kind of effort into saving Dynamax, because I think it's one of the most boring and pointless mechanics we've ever had, and because I don't see the worth in saving it from a gameplay perspective. I would still absolutely delete Dynamax and save Tera. Yes, there is some give and take that comes with Tera, but obviously I think that the benefits FAR outweigh the drawbacks, or I wouldn't be arguing for it. I know it's shocking to some people, but yes, there are people who actually, genuinly think Tera makes the game better. I'm not really sure why that's so hard to accept. Different players have different preferences, even outside of Pokemon.
I know I’m echo-ing the thoughts of others here hut please…. I’m my hands and knees…. begging from the very recesses of my soul…. please on everything that is good and holy and right give us a dang SUSPECT LADDER. Why are we asking the community to make such a big decision on theory alone?
The pro-tera peeps can look at months of ladder play with tera + WCoP and other tournaments. All the anti-tera people can do is go NUH UH. It’s all just theory rn… we need something CONCRETE!!
I know I’m echo-ing the thoughts of others here hut please…. I’m my hands and knees…. begging from the very recesses of my soul…. please on everything that is good and holy and right give us a dang SUSPECT LADDER. Why are we asking the community to make such a big decision on theory alone?
Theory would be adding a suspect ladder without Tera. Reflecting the actual current metagame is in no way theory. The premise of your post does not add up.
The metagame without Tera would be vastly different with many unforeeen differences. There would be potential for many bans or unbans as well as different things being used (across Pokemon themselves, sets on Pokemon, etc.) Using this blindly as an experimental variable in the most important suspect ever would be a historically bad decision.
The point of a suspect test is to determine if something is broken in the metagame or not. The metagame itself should be the sole determinant of this.
If it’s broken, we act from there accordingly. There may be more shifts or bans from there, but there’s ample time to accommodate to that. This goes for suspects of Pokemon and other variables.
The point is not to determine if the metagame is immediately better with or without something as there are so many external factors there and we cannot account for future ramifications the same. For example, if we suspect and ban Kingambit, it’s feasible the day1 metagame may be worse despite a potential ban the community wants as Gholdengo and Dragapult may run rampant. But with adaptation or future suspects, it can ultimately be better in the long haul. Using that day1 metagame solely without that one thing (be it Kingambit or, in this instance, Tera) for anything of shortsighted and a bad tiering practice.
I already discussed this with tiering admin when multiple people publicly brought this up and someone on my council did, and they confirmed a non-Tera ladder is not on the table. I am not even committed to a suspect test at all, but it won’t be marred with a second ladder if it occurs.
There should probably not be a test but if there’s a test there should only be 2 voting options (keep vs preview or keep vs fullban). Having more than 2 options just weighs down and complicates the very big decision.
Reqs should be acquired through a regular Tera ladder and then afterwards (not simultaneously) a ladder of whatever proposed change there is. I understand that for individual pokemon we just do 1 test with it allowed but that’s much easier to theorize.
The logic of “we’ll just ban whatever comes next” doesn’t fully cover the scope of what a tera-altered metagame would imply.
There’s no harm in making it a multi-step thing besides effort but something so big should require effort. Standard Smogon Protocol isn’t necessarily made for situations like this.
Still, the above is mostly a contingency plan and we are probably better off not doing a test.
Theory would be adding a suspect ladder without Tera. Reflecting the actual current metagame is in no way theory. The premise of your post does not add up.
The metagame without Tera would be vastly different with many unforeeen differences. There would be potential for many bans or unbans as well as different things being used (across Pokemon themselves, sets on Pokemon, etc.) Using this blindly as an experimental variable in the most important suspect ever would be a historically bad decision.
The point of a suspect test is to determine if something is broken in the metagame or not. The metagame itself should be the sole determinant of this.
If it’s broken, we act from there accordingly. There may be more shifts or bans from there, but there’s ample time to accommodate to that. This goes for suspects of Pokemon and other variables.
The point is not to determine if the metagame is immediately better with or without something as there are so many external factors there and we cannot account for future ramifications the same. For example, if we suspect and ban Kingambit, it’s feasible the day1 metagame may be worse despite a potential ban the community wants as Gholdengo and Dragapult may run rampant. But with adaptation or future suspects, it can ultimately be better in the long haul. Using that day1 metagame solely without that one thing (be it Kingambit or, in this instance, Tera) for anything of shortsighted and a bad tiering practice.
I already discussed this with tiering admin when multiple people publicly brought this up and someone on my council did, and they confirmed a non-Tera ladder is not on the table. I am not even committed to a suspect test at all, but it won’t be marred with a second ladder if it occurs.
The point of a suspect ladder has nothing to do with the quality of the metagame, and everything to do with the quality of the mechanic. This isn’t about determining which metagame would produce the most balance or fun, this about determining if the mechanic is actually one the promotes the values we as a community want to see in a competitive metagame. Tera is a fundamental mechanic difference to how the game is played, people need to know what its like to play the game with any mechanic changes that are proposed. There is nothing theoretical about that. There will never be a satisfying solution to this if every base isn’t covered.
Anyway in the post above me, ABR basically said everything I was trying to say with much more tact so I’ll leave it at that.
I personally believe that if the general consensus leans more toward Tera being a generally positive and appreciated presence in the metagame (as is evident by this thread and the OU forum discussion thread), the course of action that would be best to take with the mechanic imo would be to test Tera Blast. Sure, Tera Blast does not address the core dynamics of Tera but as I've mentioned before, that's not the point. If we generally agree that Tera enables skill expression through resource management and strong deduction skills, having a more dedicated dialogue about Tera Blast and its role in that dynamic I think is worthwhile. I personally believe it undermines the skillful interactions you get out of the mechanic otherwise, even if it's not especially common and may be sub-optimal in some cases. I've elaborated a lot more on my stance regarding Tera Blast in my previous posts, which you can read here and here if you're interested.
That being said, I don't really think it's particularly high priority. Most of how Tera is utilized does not center around Tera Blast- I think that, while it's something worth having a dialogue about, it isn't something I'd clamor for a suspect for ASAP. I believe suspecting Pokemon like Kingambit is of greater importance.
Otherwise, it seems Team Preview is generally agreed upon to not really do a lot. After reading many of the well-written posts in this thread as well as those in the OU forum, I agree if our goal is to maintain the high competitive skill floor that Tera enables. I think Team Preview is a viable choice if we value limiting variance, but otherwise it can considerably undermine the positive aspects of Tera on the tier. I personally believe a higher skill floor is entirely acceptable. As many have stated far more elegantly than me previously there is definitely an element of skill involved with deducing the opponent's Tera and why/when it will be used, and it doesn't really tread into uncompetitive territory because, to me, there's not really much in the realm of surprise that can radically shake up matches that aren't centered around Tera Blast. If anything I'd argue that making the tier less polarized by removing or restricting Tera outright wouldn't really change many of the core dynamics that you get out of resource and information management. Why not just keep the skill floor that Tera enables at that point?
As such I've come around on full ban vs no ban; while I believe Tera Blast to be something worth evaluating further, it should be tested independently.
Before stating my opinion, there are some things I would like to mention. Since most of them are not really that relevant, I'll leave that in a spoiler tag and you can choose whether you want to read it or not
I am not an active SV OU player. What this essentially means is that I'm unleashing my inner Oglemi/Bughouse/whoever else compulsively posts in PR threads for tiers they hardly play. I've engaged with Gen 9 mostly through other means (BSS and VGC), and am fully aware that my experience with those formats does not quite translate to a fully educated opinion on the state of the tier at hand. I've avidly spectated a lot of WCoP games and interact on a daily basis with a bunch of people who are still active within the Smogon tournament sphere, but that's the extent of my post-HOME SV OU expertise.
However, I did ladder for the first Tera suspect test and I will (most likely) do it again if it comes down to that. Smogon is a website that has given a lot to me in many ways, so deep down I feel a sense of duty/obligation to voice my opinion on this matter, as I genuinely do think that a Tera ban in Smogon's main tier would be one of the biggest PR mistakes in the history of the website (entirely subjective, but it's truly how I feel about it). As a former tier leader, I am fully aware of the fact that tiering isn't meant to be handled with the intention of "appealing to the masses", but at the same time I'm of the opinion that banning a core gameplay mechanic for the second generation in a row is not a good decision for Smogon's growth in the long run. This isn't 2013 anymore, and nowadays there are multiple venues through which people get introduced to competitive Pokemon, such as VGC and Draft Leagues, which means that creating interest among newer players should be a genuine concern (and right now Freezai and blunder seem to be doing way more in that regard than anybody in a position of power on this website). This isn't really meant to be a "boo-hoo" Smogon is dying post, and I don't want to make it seem like I'm trying to get people to change sides by playing that card. However, I do feel that it's a reality which everyone should be more conscious of. Like honestly, calling Smogon the "paragon" for Pokemon competition would feel kinda pointless if it isn't even the place grabbing the attention out of the biggest amount of high level competitors.
On that same topic, I'd also like to add that this post is pretty much wholly self-indulgent. What I mean by this is that deep down I'm just voicing my thoughts without any real desire to try and get people to change their opinion. This whole debate is filled with a lot of subjectivity and a lot of the posts I've read so far seem to stem from stances of rigidity of thought regarding the game we play.
This is not really aimed at the OP of this thread in particular since this is far from the only thread abusing this idea.
From a tiering philosophy perspective:
There is no such thing as a 'generational core mechanic' in the context of needing a special tiering philosophy any more than new legendary pokemon need special tiering treatment. That's it, that's the post. I beg people to stop using the term, stop treating it separately like it has any reason to be a privileged category when considering the most competitive possible metagame. If you wanna take tiering action on something and it has popular support, DO IT. The hesitancy about modifying a supposed 'generational mechanic' is 'built in' to the playerbase, i.e, this concern is already reflected in the feedback they give you in surveys. It doesn't need to be given 'double weight' or extra consideration in the tiering process. This isn't an old gen where you know maybe it is rly necessary to have lots of compelling evidence for say a BW OU volcarona ban/suspect. There is plenty of time for gen9 to undergo significant changes yet, and a metastasizing 'generational core mechanic' precedent has never before been invoked in other gens' OU tiering while they were the current gen afaik. I don't care what happens w tera, but I do care about the precedent. This is a bad concept that is not obviously related to competitiveness and so we should avoid centering it in our discussions. Smogon is all abt competitive pokemon, what could kill smogon is if we give into the impulse to maximize todays youtube views over tomorrow's competitiveness reputation.
If this post seems like it has any invective, I literally have no dog in this fight other than to say 'actually, you do have options' you don't have to commit to a supposed 'generational core mechanic' picked out two weeks after the release (generous) and let that dictate gen 9 tiering. There is no prior tiering philosophy that says you do, all to the contrary.
I slightly disagree with this post, and I feel like saying so is important to contextualize where I'm coming from with what I'm about to write. Frankly, I see some merit to that train of thought, as it makes sense logically. However, I also feel that it's a stance which is very reductive of a fairly complex topic, and personally I believe that it is important to make a distinction between core mechanics and other (lesser) aspects of the game we play. In my subject reality, a blanket ban on Terastalization is closer to banning special attacks in their entirety (for example) than it is to banning Espathra or Volcarona. I was going to use a fighting game balance comparison to explain my train of thought, but at the end of the day you can probably twist anything hard enough to make an analogy defending either side's logic.
I do understand that there are precedents backing up a decision of this magnitude (with Dynamax being the most common direct comparison), but honestly one of my biggest issues with "Smogon logic" is how precedents get swung around to justify present decisions all the time (I felt this the most during the short time in which I was a TD). While it is important to have a framework, Pokemon is a very complex game with a multitude of ever-changing factors shaping each different generation's metagames, and so the best course of action is to look at each single problematic element in isolation, this being the part in which I agree with you, and why I'm not entirely averse to the possibility of testing Tera, even if I don't find it to be banworthy.
I'm pretty much just echoing Malekith's post in my statement above, but even if we do open up our minds to the possibility of testing this mechanic, there are still other aspects that I want to highlight, with one of those being Smogon Tournament culture. Do note that I'm fully aware of some ladder players not being happy with the state of the tier either (or even that not every CG tournament is played in a BO1 format), and I don't mean to minimize/cancel their opinion by looking at this issue through these lens. However, most of my contant with Smogon formats in the past came from tournament play, which makes it easier for me to analyse things that way.
What I mean by that (and I also want to add that this isn't meant to be a BKC-esque rant on how tournament players should be playing BO3 in team tournaments, I'll leave that to him and other passionate folks) is that Smogon tournaments often emphasize results obtained through winning BO1s, and honestly I can totally see how it can be frustrating to lose a tournament-deciding game because the opponent's Iron Valiant grew a ghost on its head at the very last moment possible and swung the tides of a game that was otherwise over. However, prepping and teching aren't really a new element in this environment, and even though Tera adds a whole new (potentially overwhelming) layer to it, I'm a believer that there is a whole "underground" metagame to terastalization that makes it a lot more telegraphed than you would expect a mechanic of that nature to be. To put it in more simple terms, an unexpected Tera option might get a tournament win once and then fade into obscurity because of its lack of widespread utility/efficiency. However, as the metagame progresses people will seek to get the most value possible out of their Tera options, and so the range of types Pokemon can turn into in a given scenario will decrease as a consequence. For example, in BSS and in VGC's cartridge ladder you have access to stats on how often a given Pokemon uses its Tera to turn into a different type, and it looks something like this (honestly, it could even be a fun little project to keep track of how people use their Tera alongside other usage statistics). Yes, you can lose to some bogus option no normal human being could possibly come up with, but I don't really see how that's any different from getting sniped by dedicated Z-move lures in Gen 7 or even just regular (but uncommon) coverage options. In fact, I would argue that there's a higher opportunity cost to utilizing Tera in that way as you're now exposed to the opponent's unrevealed Tera that they can now use without any fear of having their plan foiled by the possibility of something using it defensively (I think Kingambit is like the quintessential example of this).
Other people have already touched upon this so I'll be brief about it, but it's still important to reiterate that even in these circumstances there have been players that have managed to find consistency in this environment, and it helps proving that "worse" players (I'd like to avoid getting into the skill argument as I've seen it get thrown around with some malicious intent in this thread, but yeah) aren't actually keeping the top dogs from winning games as often as the best players in prior generations did. I do think that "feeling" can give more valuable information than stats do sometimes, but acting like Tera is "sucking" the skill out of competitive Pokemon is nothing short of dishonest, I'd say even disrespectful to the people putting up results. On that note:
It's not a surprise seeing many people that before gen 9 couldn't even put 6 mons together now finding themselves to be amazing teambuilders, this mechanic totally killed teambuilding making it more approachable and requiring less competence for it.
A different user has already replied to you, but like, what is this? Who are these people that couldn't put 6 mons together that are now capable of making teams (Pokemon players/teambuilders are incapable of improving, by the way)? How did Tera kill teambuilding? How is teambuilding being "more approachable" bad? Why does it require less competence? Do you want to see "shoutouts WoF" in people's winposts so badly that only a select few should be able to put teams together? Shouldn't we be encouraging people to explore the metagame on their own? Like, framing something being "more approachable" as a bad thing is probably one of the most gatekeep-y statements I've ever read on this website, and I can't even tell where it's coming from off reading this post alone.
I do agree however that if a second suspect were to happen, the only two available options should be "Ban" and "Do Not Ban" (nobody likes Abstain anyway, that can stay at home). Most of the alternatives proposed in the first test felt like a bigger attempt at turning SV OU into a OM than keeping Tera in the tier is, and I don't think Smogon needs any more Aldaron-esque adhesives poorly holding its tiers together.
I believe there is some confusion on this matter so what I want to do is trying to give you a neutral analysis on what elements I think we should consider in the decision making process about Tera. I'll try to stay as short as possible but the topic is complex and I believe it needs to be fragmented and analyzed piece by piece, bringing some concrete example of in-game scenarios and giving different solutions depending on the final outcome we want to obtain. I think this element is particularly important and deserves to be considered at first.
First, we should ask ourselves whether the work of Tiering Policy/Councils should privilege competitiveness, however you define that, or fun. The community is made of both strong competitive players and casual players that are approaching the game for fun and with low efforts. There are also users that don't play the game much but they like a lot to spectate and comment important tournament games. Smogon is by definition a competitive Pokémon site, but this doesn't mean that every single measure should only take into account the increase of competitiveness in a given tier, especially when the enjoyability of the gameplay is put at risk. It is fundamental to keep a balance between the 2 things. If you only privilege competitiveness, you risk to create an elitist environment that makes the game hard to approach for new players and slowly kills the interest in the game itself. If you exclusively focus on fun, the game stops to reward skills and becomes too much accessible, and a competitive site loses its sense of being.
Now of course a single action on a single element of a single (or a group of) tier(s) will not be the end of the site. But this virtual guideline, this tendency to balance has to be kept in mind when you are administrating the main new mechanic of the most important tier, the CG OU. In general what I am seeing in the majority of the posts in this thread is a lot of people focusing on just one of the 2 elements, competitiveness or fun.
This fails to give the community the tools to make a conscious decision. Nobody doubts that Tera is funny. Game Freak literally creates the mechanics to make the game more attractive for the general public. I would lie if I didn't admit that Tera is by far the funniest mechanic ever added. It gives the tier infinite possibilities on the builder and makes the single match unpredictable and more likely to have a comeback. But on the other hand, are we sure that this is necessarily good for a healthy metagame? What I listed appears to collide with competitiveness, if you think at it as the element that creates the biggest difference in terms of winrate % between good and bad players. This for sure isn't enough to define competitiveness in its entirety - probably it's not even possible to give an universal definition - but it's a decent approximation that will work out for my purpose in this post.
So the point isn't to prove that Tera is very funny or that it has atleast some element of uncompetitiveness, but rather to analyze in concrete how the mechanic interacts with the tier and whether said balance between competitiveness and fun is better satisfied with or without it. The best way to do it in my opinion is to consider the major arguments in favor and against Tera and comment them based on experience and datas.
The most important element in game imo is the absence of any restriction on the Pokémon that can Terastallize and the timing of Terastallization. This is what has the biggest impact in the gameplay. Basically the difference is that a long term gameplan is extremely hard to conceive and even when somehow possible the timer is too low to consider all the possible scenarios. That is the reason the winrate is considerably higher when you Terastallize after your opponent: it's not just about the advantage of still having your Tera slot, it's also because you can only really start to make a solid gameplan once your opponent has Terastallized. Everything coming before is a mix of guts plays and elementary planning made of thoughts like "I'm gonna keep this because I need it for that later".
Now whether you like this or not is subject to personal taste, but it is hard to debate that we are talking about an increase in competitiveness. Unless you consider the coinflips competitive, a theory i strongly disagree with because all the players that could only distinguish themselves for being good in 5050s ended their career quickly or were forced to get better in gameplan to stay afloat.
About teambuilding, by an offensive point of view it's great for creative builders to have an infinite amount of possibilities to experiment. It really is cool to think at specific scenarios and 1v1 matchups to reverse with Terastallization and Tera Blast and to actually see it working in game. But the point is that the one who suffers it can do nothing to prevent it from happening and the play around chances are also not so comfortable, since you have 5 more Pokémon that can Terastallize to keep in check. Whoever states that you can guess the teratypes is lying to themselves, you can guess some but you're never sure and an unexpected teratype changes the match completely. Note that an unexpected teratype is not comparable to an unexpected move in the 4 slots. The typing is way more influent in changing the way you need to approach a threat, even more with the existence of Tera Blast. Of course with experience, knowledge and skills you can do a better job in reducing the possibilities and play around them at the best you can, but most times it won't be relevant for the outcome.
Another thing many people likes is that the tier requires some experience to be played. But the truth, as someone who started playing SV OU like 3 days before my first WCOP game, is that the experience required is all about Teratyping usages. It's not much related to single scenarios, calcs knowledge and experience needed to deal against specific threats in 1v1s, but mostly about knowing Teratypes. Is it really something that rewards skills and experience? Because that's the only reason why approaching the tier for a new player is harder than in some of the previous gens. In fact after 7-8 hours in ladder I built the team that won my G1.
I want to add a personal take on the future of the tier: over the course of OLT when the metagames evolves at x10 speed, we will see the real potential of Tera Blast that will likely make viable an incredible number of new threats. We already had a taste of what is going to happen in games like this but it will get out of control imo. Still hard to say if it will make people frustrated enough to ask for action on Tera Blast, but if I had to guess I'd say so.
However, let's move to the last point that is also the main concern I personally have regarding a possible Tera Ban. This is not directly related with SV OU but totally deserves a reflection. I'm talking about how SS OU evolved after Dynamax Ban. Game Freak is giving us some of the strongest Pokémon in terms of reliability in the most recent generations. The ways to cheat out of losing HP's are always more and more consistent. I think the main mechanics are a way they - probably unconsciously - give us to break repetitive and boring scenarios and make the game enjoyable, especially in Singles format where you can't double target a fat Pokémon. Banning Dynamax was probably necessary in SS OU, but over the course of the time the tier slowed down a lot, also thanks to HDB that nullify the effect of hazards, the most important way we have to make progress against fat teams. This made the tier unenjoyable in the opinion of many people that used to play and like SS (and also mine). While I must admit that SS OU is a tier I considered born diseased, because of some annoying Pokémon, moves and mechanics, I am still scared that SV OU would evolve in a similar way. We still have the Boots and we have even more bulky strong Pokémon. We still have everything that caused SS OU to collapse, and even more. However, a suspect isn't enough to justify keeping the mechanic.
For this reason, once again my proposal is to institute a parallel ladder for SV OU without Terastallization / Tera Blast / with limits to the mechanic:
I have really no clue what to do otherwise, I don't think we have enough info to decide on the matter if we don't look at the tier without the mechanic.
As for now, I would focus on banning a couple Pokémon that I consider to be too much even for a Tera metagame, like Kingambit and Baxcalibur. For the latter I was very surprised when I saw that the vast majority of people didn't consider it broken. They both look like cheatmons to me.
I won't make a TL;DR because I think the way I arrived to my conclusions are way more important than the conclusion themselves. People will come to their own conclusion.
I slightly disagree with this post, and I feel like saying so is important to contextualize where I'm coming from with what I'm about to write. Frankly, I see some merit to that train of thought, as it makes sense logically. However, I also feel that it's a stance which is very reductive of a fairly complex topic, and personally I believe that it is important to make a distinction between core mechanics and other (lesser) aspects of the game we play. In my subject reality, a blanket ban on Terastalization is closer to banning special attacks in their entirety (for example) than it is to banning Espathra or Volcarona. I was going to use a fighting game balance comparison to explain my train of thought, but at the end of the day you can probably twist anything hard enough to make an analogy defending either side's logic.
I do understand that there are precedents backing up a decision of this magnitude (with Dynamax being the most common direct comparison), but honestly one of my biggest issues with "Smogon logic" is how precedents get swung around to justify present decisions all the time (I felt this the most during the short time in which I was a TD). While it is important to have a framework, Pokemon is a very complex game with a multitude of ever-changing factors shaping each different generation's metagames, and so the best course of action is to look at each single problematic element in isolation, this being the part in which I agree with you, and why I'm not entirely averse to the possibility of testing Tera, even if I don't find it to be banworthy.
I will briefly unpack to avoid any further confusion along these lines:
Keeping in mind we play w Sleep clause, freeze clause, etc, picking and choosing what is and isn't a core mechanic can get pretty arbitrary. This must be kept in mind when considering concerns about 'the real game vs pet metas'. Nonetheless, asserting that people deliberating about a tera ban are analogous to people who want special attackers banned is simply so much the more tortured logic and analogy than 'tera can be considered like dynamax'. I think this is apparent to everyone, and so to go into the merits of the respective analogies here is not necessary, although I may be mistaken. I don't see anyone on the pro-tera section espousing such a 'virtuous generational core mechanic' argument over an argument centred on questions of competitiveness, which I don't mind at all and I have 'liked' many of them. It's an odd distraction to keep returning to these ideological debates, given there appear to be so many pro-tera arguments that the meta w tera may be more competitive.
The sole reason I posted in this thread was to get away from the notion that tiering action can be foreclosed by the 'generational core mechanic' concept superseding competitiveness. I don't know how this is lost on some people, but feel free to keep letting me know.
My post isn't an argument about analogy, all it says is there is no novel tiering philosophy to apply here. The questions we have w tera centre on competitiveness and not any bizarre opinions about alleged 'generational core mechanics'. I want to be crystal clear about this for future reference, so we don't ideologically tie future tiering leadership's hands on determinations about some new element that is contentious within the player-base. If, as the user quoted above avows, you don't like weird precedents being dragged up to justify actions, then you should be all onboard w this.
CrashinBoomBang I see you took it very personally so I'll give you a very personal answer. It's very clear you guys around these parts are not used to get contradicted but don't worry we'll get there.
Let's start by breaking one of your strong beliefs that since players have consistency in their performances then the metagame is good, I saw players being consistent anyway even with stuff like Genesect around in past gens, even in ubers metagame in which by definition you don't get the most balanced metagame, so I don't get why you insist on making that a strong point, certain players will eventually perform and succeed even in awful and very chaotic metagame.
You also should have studied better your move because if you think I'm just mad because I can't perform well in a Tera metagame then you're dead wrong.
Lately, I helped a friend giving teams for wcop and he succeded with them, surprisingly for you I even know how to plan and play with Tera in mind. So, if you ask me if I have any reference to judge someone else's teambuilding then yes, I very much do. I'm sorry for you, I can judge both building and playing. Adapting has never been a problem for me( I don't need to brag about my achievements, do a memory effort eventually, unless with achievements you mean talking no sense on stour discord then I don't have them) and again I don't see Tera as an adaptation that could work for the current gen. Also people get offended anyway by power rankings that are more politically correct than me so I'm not surprised, still I'm free to speak and judge as much as I want.
About gen 8, maybe you interpreted it highly wrong but I did not say people using fat are morons with no idea of how the metagame works, the recent series you talked about saw that long game because both players decided to use a fat style that in general has low risks in being played, which doesn't mean it's the best if anything. With the clef thing I was simply stating that many in ss and not just ss, not being capable of building proper teams struggle most of the times to break fat or simply they fish for no fat then complain the gen is ass because fat is too good, I did not bash any of the egregious stour playoff players if that was your concern.
I had an interaction not too long before with Vertex about the current situation in the sv ou metagame and despite the fact we had different opinions on the matter we came to understand and respect each personal thought, maybe it happened because vertex unlike most of you did not show this casual and careless approach and gave actual arguments instead of copy pasting like an artificial intelligence. And it's not like you're not looking like a raging puppy(and the pro Tera side is the noble and polite one remember people!) in your post but I'm not offended you can go on with your wave of ignorance.
I have a strong passion for the game and I play it without anyone forcing me on it, if I can do something that in my eyes go for the betterment of the metagame you can bet I'm doing all I can to reach that state.
Also I don't know what kind of circus you want to put up tagging people like tricking or mentioning yourself eventually abandoning gen 9 if Tera goes, tricking defended dynamax last gen with his casual way of viewing the game and can't put 6 mons together even if he tried, if I'm on a high horse talking down to people you're on a donkey doing honestly nothing but covering yourself in shame.
But since you're doubting what I'm capable of forgetting we eventually worked in team during spl(so you know what I can do but you eventually decided to forget for the moment), I'll remind you again, we can rewatch replays together from gen 9 tours and confront our ideas again after that.
Pearl since I consider teambuilding an important skill, maybe the most important you can develop in the game, I believe it's very important preserving it. If you actually try reading my post you would eventually see what I mean with ruining it in the sense of restricting but if you want more details about why I see very badly the situation about the easy approach you can come in pm and I'll explain in details with no problem, post is long enough already. Pokemon is already inclusive enough as it is we don't need Tera to make teambuilding a lesser important skill. I'm not hungry for s/o, people should be already encouraged with the passion they have for the game, I respect whoever has enough passion to explore the metagame fully but that doesn't mean they need something like Tera to do so.
I highly suggest for whoever is interested in gaining actual insights on Tera to form their own opinion to also read Niko's post, he developed more a few of the points I talked about.
My stances on tera have not changed over these months, but I'd still like to contribute to the discourse. Strap in because I like to be thorough.
Part 1: Why exactly did we hate Shed Tail?
I first want to recognize the main argument on the opposition (That tera is skillful) and demonstrate why this is not good enough. In order to do this, let me first define what a skillful meta looks like, and then talk about the shed tail meta.
What does a skillful meta look like? A meta where player's decisions matter, where good plays are rewarded, and where bad plays are punished.
That's a pretty broad definition, so let's acknowledge that metas can be not too skillful but technically be "skillful." Prime examples are the ORAS Swagger+t-wave+foul play strats, if OHKO moves/evasion strats were legal, etc. These strats leave the outcomes purely to chance and player's decisions do matter, but much less than they do in the current meta. It's not technically "skill less," but let's call it that anyway as a point of reference.
People often have a kneejerk reaction to calling playstyles they don't like "skill less." Stall haters will call stall skill less, HO haters will call HO skill less, and shed tail haters will call shed tail skill less. Of course, we know none of that's true. Stall players know stall requires skill, HO players know HO requires skill, and even shed tail players knew that shed tail required skill. Much more skill than swagplay, evasion, etc. Readers may not be convinced, so let's take a look at OST finals.
Shed tail makes an appearance in every game, but it loses 2/3 games. Let's look at the one game that the shed tail user wins, and see if there's anything stellar flares could've done differently: game 3. If the great tusk was taunt or hydreigon was flamethrower, SF could've used it to kill glimmora rather than using pex, and thus not give orthworm an opportunity to shed tail. Seeing as tusk didn't taunt on turn 15 however, it wasn't taunt. Therefore on turn 14, rather than rapid spinning SF could've predicted the orthworm and gone into cinderace to prevent shed tail again. If neither tusk was taunt nor hydreigon was flame, this simply seems like a poorly built team for a shed tail meta! Regardless, the player's decisions mattered at every point in this game. This was a skillful meta.
So even in the only game where the shed tail user wins, there were perfectly reasonable and skillful avenues to prevent shed tail from happening. You could also argue that this meta had a high skill ceiling. SF did after all get very punished for their misplays in a shed tail meta, which seems to be a good thing? It's not like shed tail is an autowin button or anything, Vert adapted to the meta in game 2 by bringing red card corv and taunt tusk and won vs shed tail as a result! He was rewarded for having metagame knowledge and creative teambuilding, and shouldn't those kinds of things be rewarded? Vert also won 2-0 in semifinals, 2-1 in quarters, 2-0 in round 8, 2-1 in round 7, 2-0 in round 6, 2-0 in round 5, 2-1 in round 4, 2-0 in round 3...you get the idea. No doubt vert had like ~3 ladder alts in top 100 at the time as well. Clearly, consistent success was possible in a shed tail meta.
Old gen gods like M dragon and ojama couldn't just be passed teams and succeed either! They made it to round 6 but were knocked out by round 8. Perhaps shed tail was rewarding the metagame knowledge of current and active players?
I'll go one step further: let's quote Nat's first paragraph of their post and just replace "tera" with "shed tail" and see how it sounds:
TeraShed tail, to me, is a valid and consistent form of skill expression. Navigating your own terashed tail, your opponents terashed tail (yes, even kingambit), teambuilding consistent teams in a terashed tail metagame and understanding the meta enough to properly ascertain game-routes are all legitimate skills that will translate to your success or lack thereof in games. There are players within tournaments & ladder that have showcased this.
(I won't tag them or directly quote anybody because they've stated they'd just like to state their piece and move on, not go back and forth) This reads perfectly well and makes complete sense, every argument defending shed tail just made is something I've backed up with evidence.
The main statement of the next paragraph is this:
there's consistent, provable success not only due to the skills outlined in the previous paragraph, but also with just about any team style possible.
Was success possible with any team style in a shed tail meta? In the finals alone we saw balance, sun, non shed tail HO and shed tail HO brought to one of the most important tournament matches on the website. Stall was also very viable at this time, so I think we can safely say a variety of team styles were viable during the shed tail meta too.
I also feel like, in practice, games are not that random and types are reasonably predictable. It’s still a skillful tier that contains consistent players.
I personally think Tera Shed tail in the tier forces the player base to be educated, much more active, and overall aware of what's going on in the tier.
The tera skill gap? More like the shed tail skill gap. Players who were unprepared for and inexperienced with shed tail did much worse than those who were prepared+experienced, much like players who are unprepared+inexperienced with tera do much worse than those who are prepared+experienced.
Shed tail sure did punish misplays and force a perfect game! Great, right?!
You think the player using shed tail had an advantage over the player that wasn't? Shed tail lost more often than it won in OST finals! Clearly Cope+Skill issue+try adapting+try teambuilding+skill gap issue+did you try adapting?
But let's come back to reality: Shed tail was quickbanned with overwhelming popular support. But why didn't people like the shed tail meta, even though it was promoting a skillful tier, had consistent top players, rewarded creative teambuilding and metagame knowledge, and had a variety of viable teamstyles? The Shed tail meta was perfectly competitive and skill expressive!
This might be a bitter pill to swallow but...None of that guarantees a healthy, stable, fun meta. None of that is good enough.
What about the parts I'm skipping over? The depth of tera, the uniqueness, the timing etc are things I've already addressed but will be addressed now and again later as they don't translate in the shed tail comparison. Idt tera is that deep or fun, I don't care that its unique (shed tail is also unique and exclusive to gen9 :O), and the timing of tera is annoying but w/e.
So why was shed tail banned? Perhaps the announcement can clue us in:
"This move is providing not only a free entry to a Pokemon but potentially multiple free turns and so a 'wrong' turn can set you back heavily."
The thing is...tera also can give potentially multiple free turns, and a wrong turn can also set back your opponent heavily.
"In current SV play we see Shed Tail paired with abusers such as Iron Valiant (Calm Mind & SD), Roaring Moon (DD Taunt, DD Roost, DD 3 Atk), Iron Moth (Spa Booster & Speed Booster), Kingambit, Volcarona (Quiver Dance 3 Atk & Bulky Quiver Dance) & many more. Giving such potent sweepers a free turn it is not a surprise how Shed Tail has become such a centralizing move."
Tera is also giving these potent sweepers a free turn, and also new coverage or strengthening existing coverage.
"Some view phasing options such as Red Card & Whirlwind/Roar as a fair countermeasure to Shed Tail. The main issue with those options are they can’t be consistent and they aren’t a sure thing."
Some view a defensive tera in response as a fair countermeasure to your opponent's tera...But that's not consistent either, is it? Don't people still view defensive tera's as a valid adaptation?
"a proper Shed Tail mitigates many risks for your preferred win condition. There is limited counterplay and constrained methods to outplay a free Substitute for the player using Shed Tail."
A proper tera also mitigates many risks for your preferred win con. There is limited counterplay and constrained methods to outplay a wide set of dangerous tera sweepers, as listed above.
"The metagame has started to revolve around this singularity, and that has been reflective on the metagame from ladder to tour play that either you use Shed Tail based teams or teams built to outlast Shed Tail and the abusers it compliments."
The metagame also revolves around tera, and you can certainly see that everywhere. Even pro-tera players must acknowledge that the games are majorly decided by who uses their tera better.
Funny enough, the announcement also misses the key issue as to what made Shed tail so unhealthy: HIGH VARIANCE
If they missed this, it's no wonder they took so long to address shed tail.
If orthworm was forced to always shed tail only to kingambit, would it have been a problem? Not anymore problematic than kingambit already is. You can simply switch in your gambit check on orthworm (tusk, encore, dozo, id corv, whatever) and handle the gambit behind a sub the same way you always handle gambit. The sub adds an extra layer of difficulty yes, but the opponent is using an entire pokemon and a free turn and half its HP to allow this. Seems like a fair tradeoff.
The problem is that when you play incorrectly and give orthworm a single free turn, it can pass a free sub to 4 different pokemon, each of which can terastallize into at least 3 viable tera types and easily snowball out of control. There were too many possibilities to account for, too many ways you could get punished for a single misplay. All of this forces you to push long term planning to the side and hyperfocus on preventing any single threat from snowballing: don't let that orthworm get a free turn. If you do, you lose on the spot.
All of the following is also true in a tera meta, but to a lesser extent. There are too many possibilities to account for on key turns, too many threats to handle in the teambuilder, and wrong turns are too punishing. Ultimately, all the biggest arguments defending tera can also be used to defend shed tail, and the all the reasons why shed tail was unhealthy also describe why tera is unhealthy. Everything that was wrong with the shed tail meta is still wrong with the current meta, although to a lesser extent. You must lower variance for a healthy, stable meta.
What do I mean by healthy? It's more subjective than "broken" and "uncompetitive," which is why I'm taking forever to make my case. Let me quote the tiering policy framework which defines "unhealthy":
IV.) Unhealthy - elements that are neither uncompetitive nor broken yet are deemed undesirable for the metagame such that they inhibit "skillful play" to a large extent.
These are elements that may not limit either team building or battling skill enough individually but combine to cause an effect that is undesirable for the metagame.
This can also be a state of the metagame. If the metagame has too much diversity wherein team building ability is greatly hampered and battling skill is drastically reduced, we may seek to reduce the number of good-to-great threats. This can also work in reverse; if the metagame is too centralized around a particular set of Pokemon, none of which are broken on their own, we may seek to add Pokemon to increase diversity.
This is the most controversial and subjective one and will therefore be used the most sparingly. The Tiering Councils will only use this amidst drastic community outcry and a conviction that the move will noticeably result in the better player winning over the lesser player.
When trying to argue a particular element's suspect status, please avoid this category unless absolutely necessary. This is a last-ditch, subjective catch-all, and tiering arguments should focus on uncompetitive or broken first. We are coming to a point in the generations where the number of threats is close to overwhelming, so we may touch upon this more often, but please try to focus on uncompetitive and broken first.
I believe the bolded parts describe the current tera meta perfectly.
Part 2: Does tera promote too much meta variance?(yes)
Tera supporters would say no, and point you towards the records of top players, proving they are consistent and thus the meta cannot be MU fishy.
Nat makes this argument here:
mind gaming went 9-2 in SPL and is currently 3-0 in wcop, a trendsetter in teambuilding not only offensive gimmicky teams but also very balanced teams or even fatter teams. xavgb is currently 10-3 on the year and also won the no johns tour, a player utilizing fairly balanced teams overall. Vert won OST and also is having a nice wcop showing while using pretty much exclusively offense. I have had a great year too, with a 9-2 spl, 3-1 wcop, top 8 ost/stour, and one of only two alts to attain a 90 gxe on the current ou ladder. (sorry for this absurd flexing it will make sense below) I bring myself up to say it's largely been using balance, but sometimes fatter or more offensive teams, nothing too definitive. On the ladder, there's people that extremely consistently are in the top 5,10,50, whatever (such as vert, myself, storm zone, ayevon, pinecoishot, tournament test alts, players I might not even know, etc) using a myriad of team styles. I namedrop all of these players to say there's consistent, provable success not only due to the skills outlined in the previous paragraph, but also with just about any team style possible.
But I've already shown this argument is meaningless. The best, consistent players are always the best and consistent. They were during the shed tail meta, and they were even during dynamax meta. This does not prove that meta variance is low, and does not prove the meta is healthy. All it proves is that people adapt to the meta, no matter how good or bad it is.
So what kind of evidence can show that meta variance is high?
A) Compare GXE between SV OU and SS OU
As Nat stated, there have only been two alts to attain a 90 gxe on the current SV OU ladder. On the current gen SS OU ladder, gxe was much higher overall. Take a look at OLT qualifiers here: Cycle 1Cycle 2Cycle 3Cycle 4. Across all cycles, across 24 great players, ONLY THREE PLAYERS HAD LOWER than 85 gxe. In comparison, take a look at top ladder right now:
Out of the top 25 accounts, ONLY THREE ARE GREATER than 85 gxe... (Relic stone and shikuleo are both storm zone, so we are also comparing 24 players)
OLT ladder vs non-OLT ladder is not a perfect comparison, but the difference is like night and day. I will not be proven wrong when OLT comes around this generation. The gxe of OLT qualifiers will be markedly lower than they were last gen, I am calling it now. Not because the players have become worse, but because the meta has become more volatile and MU fishy.
8/29/23 EDIT: Made a better comparison here looking at the average gxe of qualifiers in the first OLT of both gen8 and gen9
B) Look at one-sided due to MU tournament replays
Some matchup imbalance is inevitable, and player skill varies, so this is more subjective than A). It's also not 100% clear what counterplay teams may have had because tera types are hidden; spectators like us have MUCH less of an idea of "was that a choke" than we did in past gens. But some replays are egregious in how unprepared teams are for MAJOR threats. Other replays show teams buckling under the slightest bit of offensive pressure. I'll mostly be looking at wcop posthome. Obligatory disclaimer: no disrespect to any player mentioned, teambuilding is hard af this gen.
[EUR] Eeveeto vs. El Quixana [USW] - I'm not sure if specs gholdengo had psyshock or trick for cresselia. If not, El quixana's whole team is blown away by cress. Also a rare case of early tera working out very well. [CAN] Fc vs. INSULT [USN] - Agility flamethrower booster spa WW just rolls insult's entire HO. FC didn't even need to tera and insult had to risk tera steel on WW to rk. Idk if agility was the right play from insult as once again, everybody has incomplete information on the team, but still very one-sided. [BEL] Eoward vs. M Dragon [SPA] - A tragic stall goobing, but it's hard to say if M dragon choked vs hatt. On turn 15, maybe 1 cm sufficed to reduce draining kiss healing and stoss shoulda just been spammed at that point? Maybe ting lu should not have been let go? Without amnesia clodsire this kind of thing is kinda hard to stop anyway, so I chalk it up to MU. [SPA] M Dragon vs. oldspicemike [USM] - This one is not too one-sided in terms of results, but I look at M Dragon's team and think to myself "what is the real gameplan vs garg here?" You have a ting-lu which can whirlwind and set hazards, but if it's not rest it's getting chipped down. You can knock it off, and that's nice. Cress can break through eventually I guess? The tools are arguably technically there but it felt like garg put in 10x more work than it does vs any team prepared for it. [BEL] B1Kharma vs. DonSalvatore [FRA]- It looks over for DonSalvatore on turn 14 but they manage to clutch with red card glowking. Is this deja vu? I feel like I've seen this tech before...from a "competitive and skillful" meta.. [BEL] B1Kharma vs. xavgb [UK] - Wanna know why xavgb felt so confident in tera ghost gholdengo so early? Bc there was no gambit on the other side aka gholdengo goob city. Super tough MU for b1kharma based on that alone. Garg could be tera water, but what do they do if gholdengo is NP recover with cloak and it tera's ghost/water to tank eq? [FRA] DonSalvatore vs. xavgb [UK] - This isn't super one-sided but I want you to take note of how much DonSalvatore's team just...gives up vs hazards? Like there's not a shadow of hazard control, no boots spam, it just..gives up lol.. [OCE] Aberforth vs. Ahsan-219 [UK] - Even though the pyro ball miss hurts vs azu, it could have still set up vs corv and 6-0d all the same. Another lopsided MU. [OCE] Aberforth vs. QWILY [GER] - I love how nothing QWILY did mattered until turn 20 where they got 1 play wrong and proceeded to lose the whole game because of it. That game deciding 50/50 on whether to sucker punch or kowtow is just what a skillful meta looks like man! You may ask "how is tera to blame here?" Aqua jet doesnt kill cress without tera water boost, assuming cress is max defense and azu is adamant. [UK] Ahsan-219 vs. MANNAT [USM] - Again, what's the plan for garg here? Sack somebody to salt cure so your tera fairy specs (I hope) enamorus or maybe tera dragon pult cb darts can get scouted by protect? [UK] Ahsan-219 vs. QWILY [GER] - Once again what is the plan for garg here?? From turn 18 to turn 32 QWILY's garg literally is not needing to switch and it's just getting off salt cure chip the whole time. Did I mention garg wasn't even forced to tera? You know this was one-sided when the winner didn't even burn their tera and the loser did. [USM] Luthier vs. QWILY [GER] - The garg plan was to tera water the glowking..and QWILY may have only avoided a full sweep because kingambit got a crit. [USM] Kyo vs. RaJ.Shoot [IND] - Sneezed. I know dire claw sleep cheesed tusk, but ask yourself what happens if sneasler was tera flying acro. Only way to avoid a 6-0 may be tera steel zapdos and outplay but damn are the margins tight for that. [USM] Kyo vs. Attribute [USW] - Tera cheese'd. Please lmk in the replies how Kyo was supposed to use their skill, metagame knowledge, and experience to preserve heatran in case of a dd tera blast steel dragapult and instead sack their garg+save their tera. Do you think attribute's team will work a second time or ever see major tour use again? This is what I call an inconsistent MU fish, one which Kyo could not have seen coming, which makes the meta feel very volatile and unhealthy. [USS] Ox the Fox vs. Ruft [EUR] - It's not everyday a team looks weak to BU Ice spinner tusk, but here it is. I felt like the game sort of ended on turn 29 when ox's pult died. After that it was just making sure the dnite wasn't hurricane and saving tusk for the last 2. [USS] crying vs. Vert [USW] - It's not everyday u see TR vs delphox and tinkaton lmao. Both of these teams seem quite fringe & inconsistent to me but it's also cool so I just wanted to highlight it here. Ursaluna mopped up tho sheesh. [BAN] SKC44 vs. Vert [USW] - Scizor just rekt Vert's HO after Walking Wake took any damage. [LAT] Fakee vs. March Fires [OCE] - Gargled [LAT] Fakee vs. So Noisy [IND] - It was looking like a hydreigon 6-0 but fakee choked on turn 14 and it got knocked off. Still, game never felt too out of fakee's control. [USN] Star vs. Yelodash [UK] - subcm enamorus put tons of pressure on glowking and moltres, and once moltres died, sub id zama just cleaned up. Not sure how else yelodash was supposed to respond. [USN] Star vs. Mashing [LAT] - this didn't look like it would be one-sided on preview but keeping up rocks vs tusk/ace for the enamorus/cb dnite meant that moltres posed such a threat, molt+ghold just kept Mashing stunlocked from turns 14-25 until glowking/ace were too weakened to stop ival's rampage lategame. [GER] xdRudi.exe vs. Yelodash [UK] - Gholdengo connected one focus blast on gambit and then hatt just did the rest. [SPA] Javi vs. Leftiez [FRA] - Leftiez seems overwhelmed by hazards but tera blast fairy gambit just won on preview, Javi never had anything for it. [SPA] Ado vs. Vaboh [USW] - Ado actually prepares for garg and is able to easily handle it, who knew? Cloak ghold just outlasts its answers and wins. [GER] Ewin vs. Vaboh [USW] - Ewin's blissey gets overwhelmed by a Walking Wake and its joever. [EUR] Kushalos vs. myjava [IND] - Gargled again. Didn't even need to tera water as alo caught the volcanion with mirror coat, but assuming it was tera water, garg just does its thing. [USM] avarice vs. watashi [CAN] - The tera water garg is stopped by none other than the hero brute bonnet and its supporting cast (sun mu W) [USW] velvet vs. sunsets [CAN] - balance sucks lol [BEL] AtraX Madara vs. RggV [LAT] - No SD Kingambit/NP gholdengo or other very specific cress counterplay? Cress 6-0. [USN] blunder vs. Rubyblood [BEL] - Teams with flimsy water resists like pult/hsamu are inherently at a disadvantage vs Specs WW. As a result, WW makes too many holes and speed booster tusk cleans up. [OCE] DugZa vs. Rubyblood [BEL] - Ival was barely a zamazenta check as is without moonblast. Zama didn't even need to tera and it cleaned up shop quite early. [BEL] Rubyblood vs. Scarlet Stars [CAN] - Hard to contain the cm ival if it decides to tera, and Scarlet Stars unfortunately tera steels the hsamu expecting moonblast but gets popped by aura sphere. [GER] mind gaming vs. Punny [ITA] - SD LO Tera Dragon Bax just showing us all why its busted. Balance sucks :/ [LAT] dahli vs. Fairy Peak [FRA] - Fairy Peak's offense just seemed to lack the tools to really challenge heavy slam tinglu+zapdos, and the stone edge miss from lando-t certainly didn't help. [FRA] Fairy Peak vs. MichaelderBeste2 [GER] - Sneezed... [FRA] Fairy Peak vs. Skypenguin [CAN] - Gren pushes through amoongus, and from there the lack of water resists becomes apparent. [BAN] Feen vs. MSnt [BEL] - Garg plan was to bd in front of it with azu? Gargled bro. [OCE] etern vs. McMeghan [EUR] - Nobody expects the stall...but the stall prep was lacking. [USW] Fusien vs. njnp [USS] - Fusien runs a fairly oppressive hstack and njnp's BO just can't keep up. [ITA] Niko vs. Piyush25 [IND] - Piyush25 plays the heatran a tad impatiently (rocks on turn 12 into taunt? no scouting pjab/sludge bomb on turn 16?) but ultimately it claims 2 kills and that is enough to open the stall up to some volturn action and pult. [ITA] Niko vs. Tace [USM] - Insane mew set goes on a rampage and sneasler cleans up [USM] FatFighter2 vs. Trogba Trogba [UK] - HO team just cannot get past 1 wisp moltres, rip. [BAN] Kaif vs. mimilimi [FRA] - one dbond to surprise a skeledirge and then tera water hatt just 6-0s [FRA] mimilimi vs. Trogba Trogba [UK] - ursaluna tore open a balance team [CAN] 3d vs. ayevon [USM] -3d had nothing for the Lando-T and team kinda just died. [FRA] Carkoala vs. kythr [USM] - Once dd wisp pult forced the gambit to get burned, the cm tera water hatt just swept. [USM] kythr vs. PikachuZappyZap [USW] - The sub 3 attacks lando harasses BO again, and only a clunky scarf enamorus can really force it out, which is easily taken advantage of by glowking. [IND] Floss vs. Joeshh [UK] - 3 attacks SD ival just 6-0s lol [IND] Floss vs. Samqian [USS] - Zapdos volt switch on glowking into CB pult just wore down the gambit and the opposition crumbled. Turn 1 tera to goob enamorus worked out really strongly. [UK] Joeshh vs. aesf [USS] - The sub cm ep tera blast fairy lando-t...6-0'd [OCE] false vs. Igniizard [BAN] - The dkiss/cm/taunt/ep enam-t sauced up the whole team, sick set but got lucky with no sludge bomb poison
freezai vs Yelodash - Gmolt just 6-0s, disgusting mon with tera Nat vs SKC44 - This is the difference between a team that is ready to win a hazard war and one that just hopes it wins. With max layers on both sides, the team that is built better ends up much farther on top.
Lily vs Yelodash - This one might seem close, but lily is in control bc yelodash has no real garg plan Vaboh vs ninjadog - This wonky ass pult set put in way more work than it had any right to, but why didn't ninjadog just go into ival after pult picked up surprise kills vs tusk and garg? The rotom-w died for no reason, but this was one wack MU regardless El Quixana vs Drifting - hazards went up vs rain with no removal and all its progress just got boxed out, gren+bascu didn't get the ball rolling and the supporting cast fell apart. mushamu vs Chloe - SD tera dragon bax just 6-0s. Silly mon. Dasmer vs dice - Interesting battle where dice's gambit made little progress but Dasmer's did. Reze vs MANNAT - Roaring moon put in stupid work and enamorus just cleaned up from there Shafofficiel vs MichaelderBeste2 - So it turns out tera+qd is pretty goofy stuff
Once again, you can disagree with my subjective analysis of these replays and what I conclude as "one-sided due to MU." But doing some quick maths, 51/234 matches felt one-sided due to MU, 21.7%. Does that seem like a healthy number to you? 1/5 of the time you're just fucked? I think we need to take this number seriously and try to get it lower.
I'm not even commenting on theoretical weaknesses of the teams I saw, I'm just commenting on the poor MUs that actually happen. They are frequent imo, alarmingly so. Garg for example (only borderline broken due to tera btw, mono rock defensive typing is laughable otherwise) is a pokemon that is not difficult to prepare for. I outlined many forms of counterplay here in pre-home, and we were blessed with chilly reception glowking and viable covert cloak users like cresselia to add to the mix. The issue is that the tera metagame places too much strain on the teambuilder and specific prep for garg gets pushed to the side, resulting in many garg weak teams.
I scoured wcop replays but let me also provide one from myself. I think it's ridiculous that last mon Kingambit+Tera can reverse sweep 1-4 through wisp and 100% healthy bulk up tusk. Kingambit is inherently balanced by its 4x fighting weakess, the type that also resists sucker punch, and would not be broken without tera. In case my dear reader is unaware, the team I fought is loosely referred to as "german 6" and saw great success in wcop this year with slight variations, so I believe my opponent has beaten the "build better" allegations. The meta is very volatile and by the time you're reading this, german 6 may just be a relic of the past, but believe me when I say this team was dominant when I fought it. I don't think any big chokes or lucky breaks dictated the outcome of the game here and they had 2k+ elo; I believe they lack the "skill issue". I was only able to win this battle because I happened to bring the right kingambit+tera set that basically won on preview, a set that my opponent had absolutely no way of knowing even though they were very well prepared for gambit with wisp cinderace+bulk up tusk.
Despite all that, I doubt the pro-tera crowd would see tera as the problem here. I think it's pretty bad that an extremely solid and successful team was just MU fished by a common tera on the top dog, idk how else to show via replays that this meta feels MU fishy as hell and that you cannot even cover common teras on common threats. Despite not fully knowing either side's teams though, the pro-tera crowd will always say "Skill issue" or "should've built a better team" or "should've positioned/played better or scouted/forced tera so you didn't have to make this guess," missing the inherent problems that there's too much to cover in this meta and there is no running away from weighted tera guesswork. I purposefully did this in bad faith when defending the shed tail meta early in this post.
C) Try building balance
Have you seen a successful balance build that meaningfully deviates from bird/ting lu/dondozo/glowking/great tusk/filler? They are few and far between. There's a reason why: there are too many threats to try and defensively cover without turning into stall (You need two pokemon just for kingambit, and even that's not enough sometimes lmao) The evidence? Go through wcop replays, and you will find that balance usually fails or succeeds due to factors outside of the team as a unit. How do I define balance vs BO? I think balance requires the presence of at least one passive pokemon, something like clodsire, toxapex, blissey, dondozo, alomomola, scream tail etc. You can disagree, but that's the definition I'll be using to identify balance in every wcop game.
-Eeveeto tries here but the team falls apart because NP gholdengo is incredibly toxic to any slower team. It's telling that stall has to resort to horseshit like calm mind blissey and amnesia unaware clodsire because it can't rely on passive damage vs good as gold and it can't even rely on attacks due to defensive tera.
-Eeveeto tries again here but it crumbles to sd stone edge landot+band tera fight zama.
-Aurella here uses haze pex+id corv (with torn-t, ting lu, tusk, bax) to try and hold off the opposition but it does not work. Team simply crumbles to basic pressure from set up mons, not even wallbreakers.
-Ahsan-219 here brings pex+bu corv (with pult, tusk, iron hands, cinderace) but the team struggles a ton with garg and cb iron hands just never makes enough progress.
-Lax here uses the power of tera ghost rest ting-lu to get and keep up max layers, finally a balance W which meaningfully deviates from the balance template I outlined earlier.
-Attribute here manages to win with rotom-w/ting lu/dozo/amuk/moltres/tusk, an ever so slight deviation from my balance template with amuk>glowking. It was looking a kinda dicey around turn 25, if bax was the LO Glaive rush SD set then dondozo was getting melted and the game might've swung the other way.
-Blimax here brings pex+corv+blissey+hippo+torn-t+skeledirge, I'm on the fence to consider this semistall but I'll be lenient and call it balance. The opponent's offensive pressure is sort of all over the place, with acid spray glowking struggling to accomplish much, specs WW left to wallbreak on its own, and SD gambit on its own as well. Still, a balance W that deviates from my template is what it is.
-pj here brings dozo+pex but then standard tusk/gambit/pult with an enamorus-t mixed in. This looks more like an HO cteam than a real team tbh, momentum sinks like dozo/pex make no sense with no pivots to bring in teammates like pult (unless you're certain your opponent is bringing HO) I'm not certain why this team was brought but hey not counting this one.
-TPP here brings ting lu/pex/corv/torn-t/bax/tusk which does lose but an unfortunate focus blast miss means that I'm not sure if this was a balance L or hax L. Both sides probably had a shot but results are results.
-SKC44 here wins with balance and deviates from my template but tbh I am not too impressed by the team choices or plays of the opponent (keeping kingambit in on turn 35? Gengar in general???) it's a balance W but reluctant to give it.
-Vert here brings scream tail/zapdos/garg/tusk/ace/hoopa which i'd call balance and breaks my mold, but wins primarily due to hax. Who knows if the team could've weathered specs enamorus tera fairy moonblasts, idk either way not counting this as a balance W.
-Fakee here brings the same 6 as above and wins, but I hesitate to say balance W bc it was more of a solo garg W.
-So Noisy here brings zapdos/dondozo/tusk/glowking/heatran/bax and loses. Notably they deviated from my balance template by lacking ting-lu, and as a result they were super weak to hydreigon which probably 6-0d had fakee not choked on turn 14.
-Leftiez here brings corv pex gren gambit zapdos ting lu but tera blast fairy gambit won on preview, this is a gambit W hardly a balance W imo.
-Ewin here brings Blissey/alo/av torn-t/corv/dondozo/sd protect ursaluna??? and gets throttled by WW under sun
-1 True Lycan here brings corv/pex/torn-t/bax/ting-lu/tusk and after a close shave with hatt, barely is able to win.
-myjava here brings dondozo/roaring moon/enamorus/glowking/heatran/tusk which could arguably be called balance? it loses to future sight pressure after the jaw lock roaring moon doesn't work.
-Kushalos here brings alo/garg/gholdengo/lando-t/cinderace/meowscarada and garg does most of the heavy lifting here. Alo is the only really passive mon but I'll give it to em and call it balance, but Tera water garg got the W the team was just chilling.
-Lily here brings the same scream tail/zapdos/garg/tusk/ace/hoopa balance vert and fakee brought, but unlike them narrowly loses.
-Lily here brings slither wing/toxapex/lando-t/hoopa/hsamu/kingambit and wins by the skin of her teeth. Balance W just barely.
-Shiloh here brings the scream tail+hoopa balance I've mentioned 3 times, solid W. Turning point was catching the tera fairy enamorus though, until that point shiloh seemed to be on the back foot.
-Velvet here brings pex/corv/ting lu/torn-t/tusk/bax balance and gets 6-0d, plain and simple. No overwhelming breaker or super dedicated anti-fat plan just one smack down lando-t and an ival with some coverage+tera is enough.
-rggv here gzap/ival/clod/corv/ace/bax and gets 6-0d by cresselia.
-rggv here brings the same (?) team and loses again :[
-ninjadog here brings the scream tail+hoopa balance, 5th time showing up, narrow W.
-Finchinator here brings corv/pex/zama/tusk/garg/tinglu and gets a narrow W.
-Punny here brings that corv/pex/torn-t/bax/tinglu/tusk team we've seen many times and claims a solid W
-Punny here brings donzo/corv/pex/garg/tusk/cinderace and tera dragon SD LO bax tears a gaping hole, and there's no coming back
-Skypenguin here brings amuk/garg/scream tail/lando-t/pult/ace but the bax answer gets crit by bax and its joever
-DJ Breloominati here brings dozo/ting lu/tusk/rotom-wash/amuk/moltres (slight deviation from my template with amuk>glowking) and weathers a tera dragon CB bax assault to clutch the W. Key was turn 27 when they made the hard read to stay in with tusk and knock off Bax's CB.
-Ciro Napoli here brought pult/zapdos/tinglu/toxapex/bax/kingambit and lost.
-Xrn here brings scream tail/dondozo/cinderace/great tusk/kingambit/dragonite and loses barely
-Nat here brings dondozo/amuk/rotom/tusk/moltres/tinglu and wins, muk especially puts in a ton of work.
-Nat here brings dondozo/tinglu/moltres/tusk/cress/slowking and loses to specs tera fairy enamorus
-Stareal here brings dondozo/pex/corv/garg/lando-t/cinderace and beats Fusien's balance as it melts to garg. Bc this is the first balance vs balance match I've seen (24/32 groups deep...), one must necessarily win and one must lose, which doesn't prove much about the playstyle, so we'll ignore this one. Both teams deviate from my template though.
-Trogba Trogba here brought the scream tail+hoopa u balance and lost to ursaluna breaking open too much
-ayevon here brought my balance template with lando-T as the filler and zapdos as the bird and won. Balance W
-Highvoltag3 here brought enamorus/meow/dondozo/clodsire/corv/glowking and managed to dance around a tera ghost block garg to a W.
-ABR here brought scream tail/moltres/garg/hoopa/glowking/tusk and lost to opposing bu tusk once ival chipped moltres+dbond'd scream tail.
-ABR here brought toxapex/zamazenta/great tusk/garg/tinglu/corv and lost. Volcanion pressured the ting-lu to tera water, and as a result the team became very weak to zapdos.
-false here brought dondozo/amuk/moltres/tinglu/tusk/rotomwash and was going to lose (I'm fairly sure) but won by timeout. Counting this as a balance L, also it only slightly deviates from my template with amuk>glowking.
-Blimax here brings dondozo/tusk/iron moth/bax/hatt/corv, a very strange 6 (balance with no ghost resist?) and loses. Tera dark gambit is real.
-Blunder here brings dondozo/moltres/meow/tinglu/ghold/dnite and u-turns his way to a W
-fade here brings dondozo/moltres/chomp/ghold/tinglu/ival and wins, but gets lucky fighting a hydreigon that definitely could've won instead.
-Highvoltag3 here brings garg/tusk/gambit/dondozo/gren/amoong and wins, but opponent used ursaluna a little weirdly (why no eq on turn 21?) Opponent's team was ultimately quite gambit weak and it lost to it lategame.
-McMeghan here brings the dondozo/moltres/chomp/ghold/tinglu/ival balance we saw fade bring and wins, but who tf signed off on the opponent's team I just wanna talk.
-shiloh here brings tinglu/ghold/torn-t/tusk/dondozo/amuk and loses, I thought waterfall>liquidation but was I mistaken???
-Achimoo here brings scream tail/tusk/sneasler/volcanion/gholdengo/ting lu and loses, specs pelipper+tera blast fairy gambit broke it down.
So let's do some breakdowns of the numbers: Out of a total of 42 legitimate balances matches we're considering, we get 18 wins and 24 losses. Not great. However, how did the balances which followed my template do? Allowing for Amuk>glowking because they have very similar defensive profiles, the record is 4 Wins - 1 Loss. Which means the balances that did not follow my template went 14-23...not a great sign. Remember, I'd say roughly even W-L records prove that the teamstyle is at least staying afloat...18-24 is a sign balance is taking on water.
There were a few recurring balances, one of which I'd like to point out. The scream tail/hoopa/zapdos/garg/tusk/ace balance was brought 5 times and also went 4-1, this was a successful balance that my template did not catch, so I have to admit my mistake there. Outside of the 2 successful balance builds, the record was 10-22, truly bad.
In a healthy meta, we should see a variety of teamstyles be viable, but also see a variety of successful builds within those specific teamstyles. If you are seeing 100 successful offense builds across hundreds of wcop games and high ladder and only 2 successful balance builds and then try to tell me "look bro balance is doing fine" I'm not biting.
(I'll throw in this one too, bringing us to 3).
You're free to disagree with my subjective analysis of the 234 wcop matches (at the time I am typing this) that I looked at in parts 2B and 2C. If you do, I expect a more objective and complete analysis of every match and we can compare numbers
Part 3: Weak Arguments from the Other Sides
Another obligatory disclaimer: I am attacking arguments here, not users. Don't take any of this personally please.
The OP Pearl already understands that we shouldn't make tiering decisions to appeal to the masses, which is nice. They also stated they understand this point is subjective and that they're not trying to change minds, so I wont go too hard.
Let me ask you instead: do you think that keeping dmax in gen8 would've been better for smogon's growth than banning it? Should we be compromising our competitive integrity to put a "core mechanic" on a pedestal, forever giving special treatment to whatever goofy shit GF balances around doubles next? The only special treatment I accept giving a core mechanic is taking quickban off the table. I do understand it's important to do outreach to newer players, so I understand how bad a quickban of dynamax would've looked from the outside, no matter how justified it would've been.
Hot take, but I think that keeping unhealthy core mechanics in the tier can do more damage to Smogon's rep than banning them might. I'm not going to put my foot down and say this is the case with Tera, because I try to tie down my opinions with a sliver of evidence. But put your ears to the ground and you will notice a lot of casuals are not having fun trying to adapt to tera, a lot who might be leaving for greener pastures. The flip side of the skill gap that is being lauded so much on this thread is that this tier is also very inaccessible to newer players, who will need to learn 2x more than they would in previous gens. Learning which mons tend to tera into which types, getting a feel for when they tera, and learning to teambuild with tera in mind are all skills which take a huge effort to get adjusted to. Because I'm a mod in the OU room, people have PM'd me on PS saying they're having trouble adjusting to tera and ask me for advice. Does it seem very welcoming if I tell them "skill issue bro, grind 4 hours a day if you want to keep up"? Because that is the response I get when I complain about tera. If outreach is what you care about, don't assume keeping generational mechanics is guaranteed to help you.
FYI (responding to u mr. blunder 1:00:30) I was fine with z-moves. They made ORAS-->SM a very big change, and that is OK. With a higher opportunity cost, lower power level, more predictability, and more counterplay than tera, I regard SM as a healthy and balanced tier in comparison to SV with tera.
"In the next suspect test, the playerbase shouldn't be able to vote for options I don't like!"
We should only have do not ban and ban as options for suspect ... Hopefully these examples were enough to show that tera preview is an insanely bad decision and shouldn't even be considered for even having as a option on suspect
I am well and truly shocked at how seemingly popular it is to hold the opinion that the "next suspect should have a voting structure which cuts out SIGNIFICANT parts of the community I disagree with." I'm not talking about little timmy who wants to try kyogre without water moves in OU, I am talking about 30.92% or 107 voters who wanted to try team preview on the last test. It's one thing to think that preview is pointless (that would be your opinion, pure speculation as we have not tried it yet) or that it would turn OU into an OM (Sleep clause already breaks cartridge play, gentleman's agreements are already fair game). It is a whole other leap to suggest silencing the community that wants to try it based on your pure speculation and opinion. I have my own problems with tera preview and tera blast ban but I wholeheartedly support people's ability to vote for it, unlike the users above. Only 35.5% of the qualified responses want no action on tera, should we take away "Do Not Ban" as an option because it's unlikely to represent a majority and I don't like it? Obviously not. I sincerely hope ou council did not take any of the quoted statements too seriously. It gets even worse...
64.7% of the qualified playerbase wants tiering action on tera but yea bro let's just ignore them so we can keep playing the meta that you like. This ridiculous opinion was stated twice in the post, just in case you thought ABR wasn't serious. I'm not sure what else to say...yes, please do a suspect test on the imo root cause of most of the problems in this tier. If our opinions could matter a little, that'd be great.
It makes way more sense to suspect tera first and mons like kingambit later too. If we do end up nerfing or banning tera, kingambit's power level could drop to the point a suspect isn't necessary. Even a tera blast ban removes tera blast flying/fairy from gambit's toolkit, a noteworthy nerf. Or what if we ban kingambit, then ban tera and have to let kingambit back into the tier? The first kingambit test would've been a waste of time and resources. Unlikely scenario I know, but still one to be avoided.
Most important is the fact, yes fact, that kingambit is only broken due to tera. Without this tool, it is inherently balanced by fighting types resisting sucker punch and hitting it with 4x effective stab. This is on top of all the other counterplay to tera+kigambit we've managed to fit onto our teams like wisp, encore, trick, faster spore etc all still work. Supreme Overlord, high BST, and great typing make it an excellent pokemon but not OP, only tera pushes it over the edge. Why suspect gambit when people want a tera suspect and gambit is only broken due to tera?
^I typed the above 2 paragraphs before learning that a gambit suspect is likely going to happen before tera. It's not the end of the world that this is happening, I think tera suspect overlapping with OLT would be pretty crazy especially if meaningful change happens. But I still think it's a silly decision to keep dancing around the elephant in the room and pretending it's going to disappear if we close our eyes. The vibes on the PR thread are just that: vibes. Community surveys have a greater survey size and are a better (not perfect) gauge of how we feel.
Source: my ass.
This is just blatant fearmongering backed with nothing. If you aren't interested in SV without tera, cool. But saying a tera ban would "Kill SV immediately!" lol.
I want every pro-tera player to look at this replay and just look at the preview. If you're familiar with this game, you know that the baxcalibur is dd tera blast fire, a tech used to get around common bax counterplay such as balloon kingambit/gholdengo. So can somebody explain to me, using words and arguments NOT intuition, how Luthier could've pieced together that the baxcalibur was tera blast fire? Specifically what about MichaelderBeste2's team gives away the hint that it is tera blast fire?
Ok fine maybe preview isn't enough information. Can you point out which turn in particular, which play gave you solid information that you could use to reason that baxcalibur was tera blast fire? It's easier to create explanations in hindsight but I really want you to put yourself in Luthier's shoes, pretend you only know about team preview and the information gathered from turns 1-3.
If, for whatever reason, you cannot use your skill, experience, or metagame knowledge to explain to me how you could've known or even had a strong hunch that baxcalibur was going to be tera blast fire...maybe deducing tera from team structure isn't a skill? The people who dislike preview claim that it is removing skill by showing that information, but I think it's not a skill to begin with. You can get familiar with team structures but your opponent's tera types are ambiguous at best and random at worst.
"But top players are consistent" see part 1.
"But the random tera didn't immediately win!" I agree, that's not the point I'm trying to make.
"That set is bad it just loses to tusk anyway!" That's a fair opinion, but not what I'm trying to argue.
"You can guess almost all of them!" Alright, let's have a little wager. Take a look at this pastebin, which contains the full team of my Arboliva Sun. This team almost hit 1900s, its not a complete meme. Storm zone is almost hitting 2k with his own arboliva team, not a complete meme pokemon either. The pokemon are torkoal, great tusk, arboliva, walking wake, ceruledge, and corviknight. PM me your tera type guesses and I'll give you the password to unlock the pastebin and check. This way, I can't change the tera types after you guess. Arboliva on sun isn't even bad bro, sun just sucks because fighting Chilly Reception Glowking all the time is an uphill battle.
I bet you can't get all of them.
Anyway, if top players are using their skill to know the tera types of 95% of mons with certainty, then what would preview change? Wouldn't helping the rest of us and showing that last 5% make the tier more accessible and feel more fair? Either guessing tera types isn't that difficult and preview doesn't change much, or tera types are ambiguous and showing that information brings the guessing game from 1/3-4 viable types to a 1/2 guess of whether they'll tera or not, which is an improvement.
If your teams are relying on blind tera to succeed and would fail if tera types are known, you are building inconsistent teams. The difference between a consistent and inconsistent team is that a consistent team can succeed even if your opponent knows all your sets. If tera preview can encourage consistent teams and discourage inconsistent matchup fishing, isn't this a good thing for meta health? Won't skill expression still remain in teambuilding?
I hear "skill issue" all the time. I put this in the "weak argument" section but it's really just ad-hominem, and not even "the truth hurts" kind! I don't want to speak too much for others, but I know xavgb isn't happy with a tera meta, and they are at least top 3 SV players rn. At the time I am typing this xavgb has the best record in wcop, 5-0 (vert, who called them unviable, is 2-2) (CTC, who called them microbrained, is 0-0). Remember that ladder screenshot I posted up in Part 2A? My man Pinkacross just got back from like a month long vacation and hit #22 on ladder within days of getting back what a goat. He also isn't a fan of the current meta. I can say similar things about Pinecoishot, high ladder hero who doesn't enjoy the tera meta (Nat shouted out my man pineco too). I've heard tons of players from teams uk and canada share the sentiment as well shoutouts BALOOR.
"Post elo"
I hope top 50 is good enough for now. I have another high ladder alt with 85+ GXE.
Good and bad players exist on both sides (and in between), but more importantly: you can adapt to tera and still hate it. So often I have seen arguments like this
This is complete nonsense. All the players I've talked about prove this opinion wrong. I hope we can move on from this.
Closing thoughts in the next post because I hit the fucking 65000 character limit.
The metagame is not in a good place. We have extremely low scores for meta enjoyment (6.38/10) and competitiveness (5.43/10) in our most recent SV survey. Keep in mind that the last SS survey had qualified scores of 7.16/10 for enjoyment and 7.65/10 for competitiveness! Despite how much the pro-tera crowd will complain about how SV will become SS without tera and how bad SS was, these scores are significantly higher than they are for SV right now.
Flawed as they might be, this isn't why Lily. There's no way to concretely prove or disprove that those unhappy with the meta are more likely to respond, but let me try anyway. If you read the metagame discussion thread after the survey was posted, a lot of the people who discuss what they put down are actually quite happy with the meta!
From what I could tell, only dreadfury, ant4456, and myself have emphasized that they truly hate this meta/tera (3/28). But ok, let's be more strict: who wants a ban on tera over preview or unrestricted? RoyalDispenser, Cheryl., Dreadfury, SnackwasTaken, Srn, Carbonlifeform, and Baloor (7/28). Want to be more strict? RoyalDispenser, Cheryl., Dreadfury, luckie, 658Greninja, SnackWasTaken, MX42, VTMagno, Srn, Pabloaram, ant4456, ianlazerbeem, Return to Zero, Carbonlifeform, sg pokemon, Baloor, Andviet, and Jhoxha are the ones who want action on tera, including preview or ban (18/28).
Personally, I don't consider Tera preview to be a major departure from the status quo, some random tera lures become less effective boohoo. No real changes in overall team structure, metagame dominance, etc. Contrary to what Lily thinks regarding the "unhappy with status quo" crowd supposedly rushing to take the survey and announce what they put down, only 7/28 posts are actually what Lily describes. The not so silent majority of 21/28 either think the meta is fine or would like to slightly tweak it and try preview. Do you wanna know a better descriptor of who is most likely to answer the survey? People who care. Those who are actually active in the community and care about the meta are the most likely to fill out the survey, not the people who are unhappy with the status quo. This is why I vastly prefer a shadow of objective data over whatever anecdotes or vague feelings individual people have, and these community surveys are easily the best way to gauge how the playerbase is feeling.
Finchinator here believes that survey scores will naturally rise as the home meta settles, but I disagree. Survey scores only rose steadily pre-home SV OU because we were actually banning stuff and improving the meta, but are you sure the same will happen to kingambit and many other borderline cases? As a reminder, only 69% of voters wanted to ban chien fucking pao. I am predicting kingambit to remain, which means the meta remains as is. You cannot assume survey scores will rise if the status quo is untouched. SS OU is actually a great example of this, I think a flame body/static suspect test would've been received very favorably (I would've voted to ban) but no major change occurred. In SS OU surveys the enjoyment+competitiveness scores for February/July/September were 7.59/7.33/7.16+7.83/7.29/7.65. Enjoyment scores steadily went down and competitiveness scores fluctuated, it was not the upwards trend Finchinator alludes to.
The vocal minority (35.3% per recent SV survey) that wants to keep tera unrestricted are happy with the 5.43/10 competitive meta. A few others will try banning tera blast, but even they acknowledge it does not solve the key problem of tera and are largely satisfied with how things are. I am not happy or satisfied with a 5.43/10 competitive meta, and Tera is the main cause. If we ever want this meta's competitiveness scores to get close to the 7.65 they were in SS, we need to take drastic and immediate action. The meta without tera will not be perfect on day 1, but nobody said this was the last ban ever, so I encourage you all to vote with the long term health and stability of the meta in mind. Tera makes the meta better and worse in different ways, and we can't isolate the bad parts with any restrictions, so there's only one real solution.
If we let this opportunity pass us by, we are probably stuck in this 5.43 rut until DLC drops. Who knows if that brings any meaningful change. Rather than waiting and seeing if GF randomly decides to improve the singles meta or burn it to the ground, I would prefer to take action that I am confident would immediately improve the meta and fix problems that cannot be addressed otherwise. BAN TERA>Tera blast ban>tera preview>totk addiction.
TL;DR there is none go back and read every word book report is due next thursday.
So here's what I'd like to ask the pro-tera crowd, if you want to try swaying me:
1) Watch this replay, put yourself in Luthier's shoes, pretend you only know about team preview and the information gathered from turns 1-3. Can you explain, using words and arguments NOT intuition, how Luthier could've pieced together that the baxcalibur was tera blast fire?
2) Can you explain why the competitiveness score is at an extremely low 5.43/10, despite the meta supposedly being fine as is and fun and rewarding?
3) Can you offer any evidence that SV OU will NOT be fundamentally competitive+skill expressive+healthy if tera is banned, and that tera must remain for the health of the meta? This is after any bans on mons we may have to do (Bax, WW, who knows). Do not respond if your answer is "OU will be dead/stale/boring!!" etc
I don't like it when weak arguments go unchallenged, and imo weak arguments defending tera+"I think it's fun" is all I've seen. If this post challenges the pro-tera crowd to develop better arguments, then I am happy. If this post is ignored and weak arguments get recycled (like they did after my first big post on tera) then I will be sad.
Make me happy pls smogon
Thanks for reading. I encourage and look forward to any and all complete responses.
My stances on tera have not changed over these months, but I'd still like to contribute to the discourse. Strap in because I like to be thorough.
Part 1: Why exactly did we hate Shed Tail?
I first want to recognize the main argument on the opposition (That tera is skillful) and demonstrate why this is not good enough. In order to do this, let me first define what a skillful meta looks like, and then talk about the shed tail meta.
What does a skillful meta look like? A meta where player's decisions matter, where good plays are rewarded, and where bad plays are punished.
That's a pretty broad definition, so let's acknowledge that metas can be not too skillful but technically be "skillful." Prime examples are the ORAS Swagger+t-wave+foul play strats, if OHKO moves/evasion strats were legal, etc. These strats leave the outcomes purely to chance and player's decisions do matter, but much less than they do in the current meta. It's not technically "skill less," but let's call it that anyway as a point of reference.
People often have a kneejerk reaction to calling playstyles they don't like "skill less." Stall haters will call stall skill less, HO haters will call HO skill less, and shed tail haters will call shed tail skill less. Of course, we know none of that's true. Stall players know stall requires skill, HO players know HO requires skill, and even shed tail players knew that shed tail required skill. Much more skill than swagplay, evasion, etc. Readers may not be convinced, so let's take a look at OST finals.
Shed tail makes an appearance in every game, but it loses 2/3 games. Let's look at the one game that the shed tail user wins, and see if there's anything stellar flares could've done differently: game 3. If the great tusk was taunt or hydreigon was flamethrower, SF could've used it to kill glimmora rather than using pex, and thus not give orthworm an opportunity to shed tail. Seeing as tusk didn't taunt on turn 15 however, it wasn't taunt. Therefore on turn 14, rather than rapid spinning SF could've predicted the orthworm and gone into cinderace to prevent shed tail again. If neither tusk was taunt nor hydreigon was flame, this simply seems like a poorly built team for a shed tail meta! Regardless, the player's decisions mattered at every point in this game. This was a skillful meta.
So even in the only game where the shed tail user wins, there were perfectly reasonable and skillful avenues to prevent shed tail from happening. You could also argue that this meta had a high skill ceiling. SF did after all get very punished for their misplays in a shed tail meta, which seems to be a good thing? It's not like shed tail is an autowin button or anything, Vert adapted to the meta in game 2 by bringing red card corv and taunt tusk and won vs shed tail as a result! He was rewarded for having metagame knowledge and creative teambuilding, and shouldn't those kinds of things be rewarded? Vert also won 2-0 in semifinals, 2-1 in quarters, 2-0 in round 8, 2-1 in round 7, 2-0 in round 6, 2-0 in round 5, 2-1 in round 4, 2-0 in round 3...you get the idea. No doubt vert had like ~3 ladder alts in top 100 at the time as well. Clearly, consistent success was possible in a shed tail meta.
Old gen gods like M dragon and ojama couldn't just be passed teams and succeed either! They made it to round 6 but were knocked out by round 8. Perhaps shed tail was rewarding the metagame knowledge of current and active players?
I'll go one step further: let's quote Nat's first paragraph of their post and just replace "tera" with "shed tail" and see how it sounds:
(I won't tag them or directly quote anybody because they've stated they'd just like to state their piece and move on, not go back and forth) This reads perfectly well and makes complete sense, every argument defending shed tail just made is something I've backed up with evidence.
The main statement of the next paragraph is this:
Was success possible with any team style in a shed tail meta? In the finals alone we saw balance, sun, non shed tail HO and shed tail HO brought to one of the most important tournament matches on the website. Stall was also very viable at this time, so I think we can safely say a variety of team styles were viable during the shed tail meta too.
The tera skill gap? More like the shed tail skill gap. Players who were unprepared for and inexperienced with shed tail did much worse than those who were prepared+experienced, much like players who are unprepared+inexperienced with tera do much worse than those who are prepared+experienced.
Shed tail sure did punish misplays and force a perfect game! Great, right?!
You think the player using shed tail had an advantage over the player that wasn't? Shed tail lost more often than it won in OST finals! Clearly Cope+Skill issue+try adapting+try teambuilding+skill gap issue+did you try adapting?
But let's come back to reality: Shed tail was quickbanned with overwhelming popular support. But why didn't people like the shed tail meta, even though it was promoting a skillful tier, had consistent top players, rewarded creative teambuilding and metagame knowledge, and had a variety of viable teamstyles? The Shed tail meta was perfectly competitive and skill expressive!
This might be a bitter pill to swallow but...None of that gaurantees a healthy, stable, fun meta. None of that is good enough.
What about the parts I'm skipping over? The depth of tera, the uniqueness, the timing etc are things I've already addressed but will be addressed now and again later as they don't translate in the shed tail comparison. Idt tera is that deep or fun, I don't care that its unique (shed tail is also unique and exclusive to gen9 :O), and the timing of tera is annoying but w/e.
So why was shed tail banned? Perhaps the announcement can clue us in:
"This move is providing not only a free entry to a Pokemon but potentially multiple free turns and so a 'wrong' turn can set you back heavily."
The thing is...tera also can give potentially multiple free turns, and a wrong turn can also set back your opponent heavily.
"In current SV play we see Shed Tail paired with abusers such as Iron Valiant (Calm Mind & SD), Roaring Moon (DD Taunt, DD Roost, DD 3 Atk), Iron Moth (Spa Booster & Speed Booster), Kingambit, Volcarona (Quiver Dance 3 Atk & Bulky Quiver Dance) & many more. Giving such potent sweepers a free turn it is not a surprise how Shed Tail has become such a centralizing move."
Tera is also giving these potent sweepers a free turn, and also new coverage or strengthening existing coverage.
"Some view phasing options such as Red Card & Whirlwind/Roar as a fair countermeasure to Shed Tail. The main issue with those options are they can’t be consistent and they aren’t a sure thing."
Some view a defensive tera in response as a fair countermeasure to your opponent's tera...But that's not consistent either, is it? Don't people still view defensive tera's as a valid adaptation?
"a proper Shed Tail mitigates many risks for your preferred win condition. There is limited counterplay and constrained methods to outplay a free Substitute for the player using Shed Tail."
A proper tera also mitigates many risks for your preferred win con. There is limited counterplay and constrained methods to outplay a wide set of dangerous tera sweepers, as listed above.
"The metagame has started to revolve around this singularity, and that has been reflective on the metagame from ladder to tour play that either you use Shed Tail based teams or teams built to outlast Shed Tail and the abusers it compliments."
The metagame also revolves around tera, and you can certainly see that everywhere. Even pro-tera players must acknowledge that the games are majorly decided by who uses their tera better.
Funny enough, the announcement also misses the key issue as to what made Shed tail so unhealthy: HIGH VARIANCE
If they missed this, it's no wonder they took so long to address shed tail.
If orthworm was forced to always shed tail only to kingambit, would it have been a problem? Not anymore problematic than kingambit already is. You can simply switch in your gambit check on orthworm (tusk, encore, dozo, id corv, whatever) and handle the gambit behind a sub the same way you always handle gambit. The sub adds an extra layer of difficulty yes, but the opponent is using an entire pokemon and a free turn and half its HP to allow this. Seems like a fair tradeoff.
The problem is that when you play incorrectly and give orthworm a single free turn, it can pass a free sub to 4 different pokemon, each of which can terastallize into at least 3 viable tera types and easily snowball out of control. There were too many possibilities to account for, too many ways you could get punished for a single misplay. All of this forces you to push long term planning to the side and hyperfocus on preventing any single threat from snowballing: don't let that orthworm get a free turn. If you do, you lose on the spot.
All of the following is also true in a tera meta, but to a lesser extent. There are too many possibilities to account for on key turns, too many threats to handle in the teambuilder, and wrong turns are too punishing. Ultimately, all the biggest arguments defending tera can also be used to defend shed tail, and the all the reasons why shed tail was unhealthy also describe why tera is unhealthy. Everything that was wrong with the shed tail meta is still wrong with the current meta, although to a lesser extent. You must lower variance for a healthy, stable meta.
What do I mean by healthy? It's more subjective than "broken" and "uncompetitive," which is why I'm taking forever to make my case. Let me quote the tiering policy framework which defines "unhealthy":
I believe the bolded parts describe the current tera meta perfectly.
Part 2: Does tera promote too much meta variance? (yes)
Tera supporters would say no, and point you towards the records of top players, proving they are consistent and thus the meta cannot be MU fishy.
Nat makes this argument here:
But I've already shown this argument is meaningless. The best, consistent players are always the best and consistent. They were during the shed tail meta, and they were even during dynamax meta. This does not prove that meta variance is low, and does not prove the meta is healthy. All it proves is that people adapt to the meta, no matter how good or bad it is.
So what kind of evidence can show that meta variance is high?
A) Compare GXE between SV OU and SS OU
As Nat stated, there have only been two alts to attain a 90 gxe on the current SV OU ladder. On the current gen SS OU ladder, gxe was much higher overall. Take a look at OLT qualifiers here: Cycle 1Cycle 2Cycle 3Cycle 4. Across all cycles, across 24 great players, ONLY THREE PLAYERS HAD LOWER than 85 gxe. In comparison, take a look at top ladder right now:
Out of the top 25 accounts, ONLY THREE ARE GREATER than 85 gxe... (Relic stone and shikuleo are both storm zone, so we are also comparing 24 players)
OLT ladder vs non-OLT ladder is not a perfect comparison, but the difference is like night and day. I will not be proven wrong when OLT comes around this generation. The gxe of OLT qualifiers will be markedly lower than they were last gen, I am calling it now. Not because the players have become worse, but because the meta has become more volatile and MU fishy.
B) Look at one-sided due to MU tournament replays
Some matchup imbalance is inevitable, and player skill varies, so this is more subjective than A). It's also not 100% clear what counterplay teams may have had because tera types are hidden; spectators like us have MUCH less of an idea of "was that a choke" than we did in past gens. But some replays are egregious in how unprepared teams are for MAJOR threats. Other replays show teams buckling under the slightest bit of offensive pressure. I'll mostly be looking at wcop posthome. Obligatory disclaimer: no disrespect to any player mentioned, teambuilding is hard af this gen.
[EUR] Eeveeto vs. El Quixana [USW] - I'm not sure if specs gholdengo had psyshock or trick for cresselia. If not, El quixana's whole team is blown away by cress. Also a rare case of early tera working out very well. [CAN] Fc vs. INSULT [USN] - Agility flamethrower booster spa WW just rolls insult's entire HO. FC didn't even need to tera and insult had to risk tera steel on WW to rk. Idk if agility was the right play from insult as once again, everybody has incomplete information on the team, but still very one-sided. [BEL] Eoward vs. M Dragon [SPA] - A tragic stall goobing, but it's hard to say if M dragon choked vs hatt. On turn 15, maybe 1 cm sufficed to reduce draining kiss healing and stoss shoulda just been spammed at that point? Maybe ting lu should not have been let go? Without amnesia clodsire this kind of thing is kinda hard to stop anyway, so I chalk it up to MU. [SPA] M Dragon vs. oldspicemike [USM] - This one is not too one-sided in terms of results, but I look at M Dragon's team and think to myself "what is the real gameplan vs garg here?" You have a ting-lu which can whirlwind and set hazards, but if it's not rest it's getting chipped down. You can knock it off, and that's nice. Cress can break through eventually I guess? The tools are arguably technically there but it felt like garg put in 10x more work than it does vs any team prepared for it. [BEL] B1Kharma vs. DonSalvatore [FRA]- It looks over for DonSalvatore on turn 14 but they manage to clutch with red card glowking. Is this deja vu? I feel like I've seen this tech before...from a "competitive and skillful" meta.. [BEL] B1Kharma vs. xavgb [UK] - Wanna know why xavgb felt so confident in tera ghost gholdengo so early? Bc there was no gambit on the other side aka gholdengo goob city. Super tough MU for b1kharma based on that alone. Garg could be tera water, but what do they do if gholdengo is NP recover with cloak and it tera's ghost/water to tank eq? [FRA] DonSalvatore vs. xavgb [UK] - This isn't super one-sided but I want you to take note of how much DonSalvatore's team just...gives up vs hazards? Like there's not a shadow of hazard control, no boots spam, it just..gives up lol.. [OCE] Aberforth vs. Ahsan-219 [UK] - Even though the pyro ball miss hurts vs azu, it could have still set up vs corv and 6-0d all the same. Another lopsided MU. [OCE] Aberforth vs. QWILY [GER] - I love how nothing QWILY did mattered until turn 20 where they got 1 play wrong and proceeded to lose the whole game because of it. That game deciding 50/50 on whether to sucker punch or kowtow is just what a skillful meta looks like man! You may ask "how is tera to blame here?" Aqua jet doesnt kill cress without tera water boost, assuming cress is max defense and azu is adamant. [UK] Ahsan-219 vs. MANNAT [USM] - Again, what's the plan for garg here? Sack somebody to salt cure so your tera fairy specs (I hope) enamorus or maybe tera dragon pult cb darts can get scouted by protect? [UK] Ahsan-219 vs. QWILY [GER] - Once again what is the plan for garg here?? From turn 18 to turn 32 QWILY's garg literally is not needing to switch and it's just getting off salt cure chip the whole time. Did I mention garg wasn't even forced to tera? You know this was one-sided when the winner didn't even burn their tera and the loser did. [USM] Luthier vs. QWILY [GER] - The garg plan was to tera water the glowking..and QWILY may have only avoided a full sweep because kingambit got a crit. [USM] Kyo vs. RaJ.Shoot [IND] - Sneezed. I know dire claw sleep cheesed tusk, but ask yourself what happens if sneasler was tera flying acro. Only way to avoid a 6-0 may be tera steel zapdos and outplay but damn are the margins tight for that. [USM] Kyo vs. Attribute [USW] - Tera cheese'd. Please lmk in the replies how Kyo was supposed to use their skill, metagame knowledge, and experience to preserve heatran in case of a dd tera blast steel dragapult and instead sack their garg+save their tera. Do you think attribute's team will work a second time or ever see major tour use again? This is what I call an inconsistent MU fish, one which Kyo could not have seen coming, which makes the meta feel very volatile and unhealthy. [USS] Ox the Fox vs. Ruft [EUR] - It's not everyday a team looks weak to BU Ice spinner tusk, but here it is. I felt like the game sort of ended on turn 29 when ox's pult died. After that it was just making sure the dnite wasn't hurricane and saving tusk for the last 2. [USS] crying vs. Vert [USW] - It's not everyday u see TR vs delphox and tinkaton lmao. Both of these teams seem quite fringe & inconsistent to me but it's also cool so I just wanted to highlight it here. Ursaluna mopped up tho sheesh. [BAN] SKC44 vs. Vert [USW] - Scizor just rekt Vert's HO after Walking Wake took any damage. [LAT] Fakee vs. March Fires [OCE] - Gargled [LAT] Fakee vs. So Noisy [IND] - It was looking like a hydreigon 6-0 but fakee choked on turn 14 and it got knocked off. Still, game never felt too out of fakee's control. [USN] Star vs. Yelodash [UK] - subcm enamorus put tons of pressure on glowking and moltres, and once moltres died, sub id zama just cleaned up. Not sure how else yelodash was supposed to respond. [USN] Star vs. Mashing [LAT] - this didn't look like it would be one-sided on preview but keeping up rocks vs tusk/ace for the enamorus/cb dnite meant that moltres posed such a threat, molt+ghold just kept Mashing stunlocked from turns 14-25 until glowking/ace were too weakened to stop ival's rampage lategame. [GER] xdRudi.exe vs. Yelodash [UK] - Gholdengo connected one focus blast on gambit and then hatt just did the rest. [SPA] Javi vs. Leftiez [FRA] - Leftiez seems overwhelmed by hazards but tera blast fairy gambit just won on preview, Javi never had anything for it. [SPA] Ado vs. Vaboh [USW] - Ado actually prepares for garg and is able to easily handle it, who knew? Cloak ghold just outlasts its answers and wins. [GER] Ewin vs. Vaboh [USW] - Ewin's blissey gets overwhelmed by a Walking Wake and its joever. [EUR] Kushalos vs. myjava [IND] - Gargled again. Didn't even need to tera water as alo caught the volcanion with mirror coat, but assuming it was tera water, garg just does its thing. [USM] avarice vs. watashi [CAN] - The tera water garg is stopped by none other than the hero brute bonnet and its supporting cast (sun mu W) [USW] velvet vs. sunsets [CAN] - balance sucks lol [BEL] AtraX Madara vs. RggV [LAT] - No SD Kingambit/NP gholdengo or other very specific cress counterplay? Cress 6-0. [USN] blunder vs. Rubyblood [BEL] - Teams with flimsy water resists like pult/hsamu are inherently at a disadvantage vs Specs WW. As a result, WW makes too many holes and speed booster tusk cleans up. [OCE] DugZa vs. Rubyblood [BEL] - Ival was barely a zamazenta check as is without moonblast. Zama didn't even need to tera and it cleaned up shop quite early. [BEL] Rubyblood vs. Scarlet Stars [CAN] - Hard to contain the cm ival if it decides to tera, and Scarlet Stars unfortunately tera steels the hsamu expecting moonblast but gets popped by aura sphere. [GER] mind gaming vs. Punny [ITA] - SD LO Tera Dragon Bax just showing us all why its busted. Balance sucks :/ [LAT] dahli vs. Fairy Peak [FRA] - Fairy Peak's offense just seemed to lack the tools to really challenge heavy slam tinglu+zapdos, and the stone edge miss from lando-t certainly didn't help. [FRA] Fairy Peak vs. MichaelderBeste2 [GER] - Sneezed... [FRA] Fairy Peak vs. Skypenguin [CAN] - Gren pushes through amoongus, and from there the lack of water resists becomes apparent. [BAN] Feen vs. MSnt [BEL] - Garg plan was to bd in front of it with azu? Gargled bro. [OCE] etern vs. McMeghan [EUR] - Nobody expects the stall...but the stall prep was lacking. [USW] Fusien vs. njnp [USS] - Fusien runs a fairly oppressive hstack and njnp's BO just can't keep up. [ITA] Niko vs. Piyush25 [IND] - Piyush25 plays the heatran a tad impatiently (rocks on turn 12 into taunt? no scouting pjab/sludge bomb on turn 16?) but ultimately it claims 2 kills and that is enough to open the stall up to some volturn action and pult. [ITA] Niko vs. Tace [USM] - Insane mew set goes on a rampage and sneasler cleans up [USM] FatFighter2 vs. Trogba Trogba [UK] - HO team just cannot get past 1 wisp moltres, rip. [BAN] Kaif vs. mimilimi [FRA] - one dbond to surprise a skeledirge and then tera water hatt just 6-0s [FRA] mimilimi vs. Trogba Trogba [UK] - ursaluna tore open a balance team [CAN] 3d vs. ayevon [USM] -3d had nothing for the Lando-T and team kinda just died. [FRA] Carkoala vs. kythr [USM] - Once dd wisp pult forced the gambit to get burned, the cm tera water hatt just swept. [USM] kythr vs. PikachuZappyZap [USW] - The sub 3 attacks lando harasses BO again, and only a clunky scarf enamorus can really force it out, which is easily taken advantage of by glowking. [IND] Floss vs. Joeshh [UK] - 3 attacks SD ival just 6-0s lol [IND] Floss vs. Samqian [USS] - Zapdos volt switch on glowking into CB pult just wore down the gambit and the opposition crumbled. Turn 1 tera to goob enamorus worked out really strongly. [UK] Joeshh vs. aesf [USS] - The sub cm ep tera blast fairy lando-t...6-0'd [OCE] false vs. Igniizard [BAN] - The dkiss/cm/taunt/ep enam-t sauced up the whole team, sick set but got lucky with no sludge bomb poison
freezai vs Yelodash - Gmolt just 6-0s, disgusting mon with tera Nat vs SKC44 - This is the difference between a team that is ready to win a hazard war and one that just hopes it wins. With max layers on both sides, the team that is built better ends up much farther on top.
Lily vs Yelodash - This one might seem close, but lily is in control bc yelodash has no real garg plan Vaboh vs ninjadog - This wonky ass pult set put in way more work than it had any right to, but why didn't ninjadog just go into ival after pult picked up surprise kills vs tusk and garg? The rotom-w died for no reason, but this was one wack MU regardless El Quixana vs Drifting - hazards went up vs rain with no removal and all its progress just got boxed out, gren+bascu didn't get the ball rolling and the supporting cast fell apart. mushamu vs Chloe - SD tera dragon bax just 6-0s. Silly mon. Dasmer vs dice - Interesting battle where dice's gambit made little progress but Dasmer's did. Reze vs MANNAT - Roaring moon put in stupid work and enamorus just cleaned up from there Shafofficiel vs MichaelderBeste2 - So it turns out tera+qd is pretty goofy stuff
Once again, you can disagree with my subjective analysis of these replays and what I conclude as "one-sided due to MU." But doing some quick maths, 51/234 matches felt one-sided due to MU, 21.7%. Does that seem like a healthy number to you? 1/5 of the time you're just fucked? I think we need to take this number seriously and try to get it lower.
I'm not even commenting on theoretical weaknesses of the teams I saw, I'm just commenting on the poor MUs that actually happen. They are frequent imo, alarmingly so. Garg for example (only borderline broken due to tera btw, mono rock defensive typing is laughable otherwise) is a pokemon that is not difficult to prepare for. I outlined many forms of counterplay here in pre-home, and we were blessed with chilly reception glowking and viable covert cloak users like cresselia to add to the mix. The issue is that the tera metagame places too much strain on the teambuilder and specific prep for garg gets pushed to the side, resulting in many garg weak teams.
I scoured wcop replays but let me also provide one from myself. I think it's ridiculous that last mon Kingambit+Tera can reverse sweep 1-4 through wisp and 100% healthy bulk up tusk. Kingambit is inherently balanced by its 4x fighting weakess, the type that also resists sucker punch, and would not be broken without tera. In case my dear reader is unaware, the team I fought is loosely referred to as "german 6" and saw great success in wcop this year with slight variations, so I believe my opponent has beaten the "build better" allegations. The meta is very volatile and by the time you're reading this, german 6 may just be a relic of the past, but believe me when I say this team was dominant when I fought it. I don't think any big chokes or lucky breaks dictated the outcome of the game here and they had 2k+ elo; I believe they lack the "skill issue". I was only able to win this battle because I happened to bring the right kingambit+tera set that basically won on preview, a set that my opponent had absolutely no way of knowing even though they were very well prepared for gambit with wisp cinderace+bulk up tusk.
Despite all that, I doubt the pro-tera crowd would see tera as the problem here. I think it's pretty bad that an extremely solid and successful team was just MU fished by a common tera on the top dog, idk how else to show via replays that this meta feels MU fishy as hell and that you cannot even cover common teras on common threats. Despite not fully knowing either side's teams though, the pro-tera crowd will always say "Skill issue" or "should've built a better team" or "should've positioned/played better or scouted/forced tera so you didn't have to make this guess," missing the inherent problems that there's too much to cover in this meta and there is no running away from weighted tera guesswork. I purposefully did this in bad faith when defending the shed tail meta early in this post.
C) Try building balance
Have you seen a successful balance build that meaningfully deviates from bird/ting lu/dondozo/glowking/great tusk/filler? They are few and far between. There's a reason why: there are too many threats to try and defensively cover without turning into stall (You need two pokemon just for kingambit, and even that's not enough sometimes lmao) The evidence? Go through wcop replays, and you will find that balance usually fails or succeeds due to factors outside of the team as a unit. How do I define balance vs BO? I think balance requires the presence of at least one passive pokemon, something like clodsire, toxapex, blissey, dondozo, alomomola, scream tail etc. You can disagree, but that's the definition I'll be using to identify balance in every wcop game.
-Eeveeto tries here but the team falls apart because NP gholdengo is incredibly toxic to any slower team. It's telling that stall has to resort to horseshit like calm mind blissey and amnesia unaware clodsire because it can't rely on passive damage vs good as gold and it can't even rely on attacks due to defensive tera.
-Eeveeto tries again here but it crumbles to sd stone edge landot+band tera fight zama.
-Aurella here uses haze pex+id corv (with torn-t, ting lu, tusk, bax) to try and hold off the opposition but it does not work. Team simply crumbles to basic pressure from set up mons, not even wallbreakers.
-Ahsan-219 here brings pex+bu corv (with pult, tusk, iron hands, cinderace) but the team struggles a ton with garg and cb iron hands just never makes enough progress.
-Lax here uses the power of tera ghost rest ting-lu to get and keep up max layers, finally a balance W which meaningfully deviates from the balance template I outlined earlier.
-Attribute here manages to win with rotom-w/ting lu/dozo/amuk/moltres/tusk, an ever so slight deviation from my balance template with amuk>glowking. It was looking a kinda dicey around turn 25, if bax was the LO Glaive rush SD set then dondozo was getting melted and the game might've swung the other way.
-Blimax here brings pex+corv+blissey+hippo+torn-t+skeledirge, I'm on the fence to consider this semistall but I'll be lenient and call it balance. The opponent's offensive pressure is sort of all over the place, with acid spray glowking struggling to accomplish much, specs WW left to wallbreak on its own, and SD gambit on its own as well. Still, a balance W that deviates from my template is what it is.
-pj here brings dozo+pex but then standard tusk/gambit/pult with an enamorus-t mixed in. This looks more like an HO cteam than a real team tbh, momentum sinks like dozo/pex make no sense with no pivots to bring in teammates like pult (unless you're certain your opponent is bringing HO) I'm not certain why this team was brought but hey not counting this one.
-TPP here brings ting lu/pex/corv/torn-t/bax/tusk which does lose but an unfortunate focus blast miss means that I'm not sure if this was a balance L or hax L. Both sides probably had a shot but results are results.
-SKC44 here wins with balance and deviates from my template but tbh I am not too impressed by the team choices or plays of the opponent (keeping kingambit in on turn 35? Gengar in general???) it's a balance W but reluctant to give it.
-Vert here brings scream tail/zapdos/garg/tusk/ace/hoopa which i'd call balance and breaks my mold, but wins primarily due to hax. Who knows if the team could've weathered specs enamorus tera fairy moonblasts, idk either way not counting this as a balance W.
-Fakee here brings the same 6 as above and wins, but I hesitate to say balance W bc it was more of a solo garg W.
-So Noisy here brings zapdos/dondozo/tusk/glowking/heatran/bax and loses. Notably they deviated from my balance template by lacking ting-lu, and as a result they were super weak to hydreigon which probably 6-0d had fakee not choked on turn 14.
-Leftiez here brings corv pex gren gambit zapdos ting lu but tera blast fairy gambit won on preview, this is a gambit W hardly a balance W imo.
-Ewin here brings Blissey/alo/av torn-t/corv/dondozo/sd protect ursaluna??? and gets throttled by WW under sun
-1 True Lycan here brings corv/pex/torn-t/bax/ting-lu/tusk and after a close shave with hatt, barely is able to win.
-myjava here brings dondozo/roaring moon/enamorus/glowking/heatran/tusk which could arguably be called balance? it loses to future sight pressure after the jaw lock roaring moon doesn't work.
-Kushalos here brings alo/garg/gholdengo/lando-t/cinderace/meowscarada and garg does most of the heavy lifting here. Alo is the only really passive mon but I'll give it to em and call it balance, but Tera water garg got the W the team was just chilling.
-Lily here brings the same scream tail/zapdos/garg/tusk/ace/hoopa balance vert and fakee brought, but unlike them narrowly loses.
-Lily here brings slither wing/toxapex/lando-t/hoopa/hsamu/kingambit and wins by the skin of her teeth. Balance W just barely.
-Shiloh here brings the scream tail+hoopa balance I've mentioned 3 times, solid W. Turning point was catching the tera fairy enamorus though, until that point shiloh seemed to be on the back foot.
-Velvet here brings pex/corv/ting lu/torn-t/tusk/bax balance and gets 6-0d, plain and simple. No overwhelming breaker or super dedicated anti-fat plan just one smack down lando-t and an ival with some coverage+tera is enough.
-rggv here gzap/ival/clod/corv/ace/bax and gets 6-0d by cresselia.
-rggv here brings the same (?) team and loses again :[
-ninjadog here brings the scream tail+hoopa balance, 5th time showing up, narrow W.
-Finchinator here brings corv/pex/zama/tusk/garg/tinglu and gets a narrow W.
-Punny here brings that corv/pex/torn-t/bax/tinglu/tusk team we've seen many times and claims a solid W
-Punny here brings donzo/corv/pex/garg/tusk/cinderace and tera dragon SD LO bax tears a gaping hole, and there's no coming back
-Skypenguin here brings amuk/garg/scream tail/lando-t/pult/ace but the bax answer gets crit by bax and its joever
-DJ Breloominati here brings dozo/ting lu/tusk/rotom-wash/amuk/moltres (slight deviation from my template with amuk>glowking) and weathers a tera dragon CB bax assault to clutch the W. Key was turn 27 when they made the hard read to stay in with tusk and knock off Bax's CB.
-Ciro Napoli here brought pult/zapdos/tinglu/toxapex/bax/kingambit and lost.
-Xrn here brings scream tail/dondozo/cinderace/great tusk/kingambit/dragonite and loses barely
-Nat here brings dondozo/amuk/rotom/tusk/moltres/tinglu and wins, muk especially puts in a ton of work.
-Nat here brings dondozo/tinglu/moltres/tusk/cress/slowking and loses to specs tera fairy enamorus
-Stareal here brings dondozo/pex/corv/garg/lando-t/cinderace and beats Fusien's balance as it melts to garg. Bc this is the first balance vs balance match I've seen (24/32 groups deep...), one must necessarily win and one must lose, which doesn't prove much about the playstyle, so we'll ignore this one. Both teams deviate from my template though.
-Trogba Trogba here brought the scream tail+hoopa u balance and lost to ursaluna breaking open too much
-ayevon here brought my balance template with lando-T as the filler and zapdos as the bird and won. Balance W
-Highvoltag3 here brought enamorus/meow/dondozo/clodsire/corv/glowking and managed to dance around a tera ghost block garg to a W.
-ABR here brought scream tail/moltres/garg/hoopa/glowking/tusk and lost to opposing bu tusk once ival chipped moltres+dbond'd scream tail.
-ABR here brought toxapex/zamazenta/great tusk/garg/tinglu/corv and lost. Volcanion pressured the ting-lu to tera water, and as a result the team became very weak to zapdos.
-false here brought dondozo/amuk/moltres/tinglu/tusk/rotomwash and was going to lose (I'm fairly sure) but won by timeout. Counting this as a balance L, also it only slightly deviates from my template with amuk>glowking.
-Blimax here brings dondozo/tusk/iron moth/bax/hatt/corv, a very strange 6 (balance with no ghost resist?) and loses. Tera dark gambit is real.
-Blunder here brings dondozo/moltres/meow/tinglu/ghold/dnite and u-turns his way to a W
-fade here brings dondozo/moltres/chomp/ghold/tinglu/ival and wins, but gets lucky fighting a hydreigon that definitely could've won instead.
-Highvoltag3 here brings garg/tusk/gambit/dondozo/gren/amoong and wins, but opponent used ursaluna a little weirdly (why no eq on turn 21?) Opponent's team was ultimately quite gambit weak and it lost to it lategame.
-McMeghan here brings the dondozo/moltres/chomp/ghold/tinglu/ival balance we saw fade bring and wins, but who tf signed off on the opponent's team I just wanna talk.
-shiloh here brings tinglu/ghold/torn-t/tusk/dondozo/amuk and loses, I thought waterfall>liquidation but was I mistaken???
-Achimoo here brings scream tail/tusk/sneasler/volcanion/gholdengo/ting lu and loses, specs pelipper+tera blast fairy gambit broke it down.
So let's do some breakdowns of the numbers: Out of a total of 42 legitimate balances matches we're considering, we get 18 wins and 24 losses. Not great. However, how did the balances which followed my template do? Allowing for Amuk>glowking because they have very similar defensive profiles, the record is 4 Wins - 1 Loss. Which means the balances that did not follow my template went 14-23...not a great sign. Remember, I'd say roughly even W-L records prove that the teamstyle is at least staying afloat...18-24 is a sign balance is taking on water.
There were a few recurring balances, one of which I'd like to point out. The scream tail/hoopa/zapdos/garg/tusk/ace balance was brought 5 times and also went 4-1, this was a successful balance that my template did not catch, so I have to admit my mistake there. Outside of the 2 successful balance builds, the record was 10-22, truly bad.
In a healthy meta, we should see a variety of teamstyles be viable, but also see a variety of successful builds within those specific teamstyles. If you are seeing 100 successful offense builds across hundreds of wcop games and high ladder and only 2 successful balance builds and then try to tell me "look bro balance is doing fine" I'm not biting.
(I'll throw in this one too, bringing us to 3).
You're free to disagree with my subjective analysis of the 234 wcop matches (at the time I am typing this) that I looked at in parts 2B and 2C. If you do, I expect a more objective and complete analysis of every match and we can compare numbers
Part 3: Weak Arguments from the Other Sides
Another obligatory disclaimer: I am attacking arguments here, not users. Don't take any of this personally please.
The OP Pearl already understands that we shouldn't make tiering decisions to appeal to the masses, which is nice. They also stated they understand this point is subjective and that they're not trying to change minds, so I wont go too hard.
Let me ask you instead: do you think that keeping dmax in gen8 would've been better for smogon's growth than banning it? Should we be compromising our competitive integrity to put a "core mechanic" on a pedestal, forever giving special treatment to whatever goofy shit GF balances around doubles next? The only special treatment I accept giving a core mechanic is taking quickban off the table. I do understand it's important to do outreach to newer players, so I understand how bad a quickban of dynamax would've looked from the outside, no matter how justified it would've been.
Hot take, but I think that keeping unhealthy core mechanics in the tier can do more damage to Smogon's rep than banning them might. I'm not going to put my foot down and say this is the case with Tera, because I try to tie down my opinions with a sliver of evidence. But put your ears to the ground and you will notice a lot of casuals are not having fun trying to adapt to tera, a lot who might be leaving for greener pastures. The flip side of the skill gap that is being lauded so much on this thread is that this tier is also very inaccessible to newer players, who will need to learn 2x more than they would in previous gens. Learning which mons tend to tera into which types, getting a feel for when they tera, and learning to teambuild with tera in mind are all skills which take a huge effort to get adjusted to. Because I'm a mod in the OU room, people have PM'd me on PS saying they're having trouble adjusting to tera and ask me for advice. Does it seem very welcoming if I tell them "skill issue bro, grind 4 hours a day if you want to keep up"? Because that is the response I get when I complain about tera. If outreach is what you care about, don't assume keeping generational mechanics is guaranteed to help you.
FYI (responding to u mr. blunder 1:00:30) I was fine with z-moves. They made ORAS-->SM a very big change, and that is OK. With a higher opportunity cost, lower power level, more predictability, and more counterplay than tera, I regard SM as a healthy and balanced tier in comparison to SV with tera.
"In the next suspect test, the playerbase shouldn't be able to vote for options I don't like!"
I am well and truly shocked at how seemingly popular it is to hold the opinion that the "next suspect should have a voting structure which cuts out SIGNIFICANT parts of the community I disagree with." I'm not talking about little timmy who wants to try kyogre without water moves in OU, I am talking about 30.92% or 107 voters who wanted to try team preview on the last test. It's one thing to think that preview is pointless (that would be your opinion, pure speculation as we have not tried it yet) or that it would turn OU into an OM (Sleep clause already breaks cartridge play, gentleman's agreements are already fair game). It is a whole other leap to suggest silencing the community that wants to try it based on your pure speculation and opinion. I have my own problems with tera preview and tera blast ban but I wholeheartedly support people's ability to vote for it, unlike the users above. Only 35.5% of the qualified responses want no action on tera, should we take away "Do Not Ban" as an option because it's unlikely to represent a majority and I don't like it? Obviously not. I sincerely hope ou council did not take any of the quoted statements too seriously. It gets even worse...
64.7% of the qualified playerbase wants tiering action on tera but yea bro let's just ignore them so we can keep playing the meta that you like. This ridiculous opinion was stated twice in the post, just in case you thought ABR wasn't serious. I'm not sure what else to say...yes, please do a suspect test on the imo root cause of most of the problems in this tier. If our opinions could matter a little, that'd be great.
It makes way more sense to suspect tera first and mons like kingambit later too. If we do end up nerfing or banning tera, kingambit's power level could drop to the point a suspect isn't necessary. Even a tera blast ban removes tera blast flying/fairy from gambit's toolkit, a noteworthy nerf. Or what if we ban kingambit, then ban tera and have to let kingambit back into the tier? The first kingambit test would've been a waste of time and resources. Unlikely scenario I know, but still one to be avoided.
Most important is the fact, yes fact, that kingambit is only broken due to tera. Without this tool, it is inherently balanced by fighting types resisting sucker punch and hitting it with 4x effective stab. This is on top of all the other counterplay to tera+kigambit we've managed to fit onto our teams like wisp, encore, trick, faster spore etc all still work. Supreme Overlord, high BST, and great typing make it an excellent pokemon but not OP, only tera pushes it over the edge. Why suspect gambit when people want a tera suspect and gambit is only broken due to tera?
^I typed the above 2 paragraphs before learning that a gambit suspect is likely going to happen before tera. It's not the end of the world that this is happening, I think tera suspect overlapping with OLT would be pretty crazy especially if meaningful change happens. But I still think it's a silly decision to keep dancing around the elephant in the room and pretending it's going to disappear if we close our eyes. The vibes on the PR thread are just that: vibes. Community surveys have a greater survey size and are a better (not perfect) gauge of how we feel.
Source: my ass.
This is just blatant fearmongering backed with nothing. If you aren't interested in SV without tera, cool. But saying a tera ban would "Kill SV immediately!" lol.
I want every pro-tera player to look at this replay and just look at the preview. If you're familiar with this game, you know that the baxcalibur is dd tera blast fire, a tech used to get around common bax counterplay such as balloon kingambit/gholdengo. So can somebody explain to me, using words and arguments NOT intuition, how Luthier could've pieced together that the baxcalibur was tera blast fire? Specifically what about MichaelderBeste2's team gives away the hint that it is tera blast fire?
Ok fine maybe preview isn't enough information. Can you point out which turn in particular, which play gave you solid information that you could use to reason that baxcalibur was tera blast fire? It's easier to create explanations in hindsight but I really want you to put yourself in Luthier's shoes, pretend you only know about team preview and the information gathered from turns 1-3.
If, for whatever reason, you cannot use your skill, experience, or metagame knowledge to explain to me how you could've known or even had a strong hunch that baxcalibur was going to be tera blast fire...maybe deducing tera from team structure isn't a skill? The people who dislike preview claim that it is removing skill by showing that information, but I think it's not a skill to begin with. You can get familiar with team structures but your opponent's tera types are ambiguous at best and random at worst.
"But top players are consistent" see part 1.
"But the random tera didn't immediately win!" I agree, that's not the point I'm trying to make.
"That set is bad it just loses to tusk anyway!" That's a fair opinion, but not what I'm trying to argue.
"You can guess almost all of them!" Alright, let's have a little wager. Take a look at this pastebin, which contains the full team of my Arboliva Sun. This team almost hit 1900s, its not a complete meme. The pokemon are torkoal, great tusk, arboliva, walking wake, ceruledge, and corviknight. PM me your tera type guesses and I'll give you the password to unlock the pastebin and check. This way, I can't change the tera types after you guess. Arboliva on sun isn't even bad bro, sun just sucks because fighting Chilly Reception Glowking all the time is an uphill battle.
I bet you can't get all of them.
Anyway, if top players are using their skill to know the tera types of 95% of mons with certainty, then what would preview change? Wouldn't helping the rest of us and showing that last 5% make the tier more accessible and feel more fair? Either guessing tera types isn't that difficult and preview doesn't change much, or tera types are ambiguous and showing that information brings the guessing game from 1/3-4 viable types to a 1/2 guess of whether they'll tera or not, which is an improvement.
If your teams are relying on blind tera to succeed and would fail if tera types are known, you are building inconsistent teams. The difference between a consistent and inconsistent team is that a consistent team can succeed even if your opponent knows all your sets. If tera preview can encourage consistent teams and discourage inconsistent matchup fishing, isn't this a good thing for meta health? Won't skill expression still remain in teambuilding?
I hear "skill issue" all the time. I put this in the "weak argument" section but it's really just ad-hominem, and not even "the truth hurts" kind! I don't want to speak too much for others, but I know xavgb isn't happy with a tera meta, and they are at least top 3 SV players rn. At the time I am typing this xavgb has the best record in wcop, 5-0 (vert, who called them unviable, is 2-2) (CTC, who called them microbrained, is 0-0). Remember that ladder screenshot I posted up in Part 2A? My man Pinkacross just got back from like a month long vacation and hit #22 on ladder within days of getting back what a goat. He also isn't a fan of the current meta. I can say similar things about Pinecoishot, high ladder hero who doesn't enjoy the tera meta (Nat shouted out my man too). I've heard tons of players from teams uk and canada share the sentiment as well shoutouts BALOOR.
"Post elo"
View attachment 537518
I hope top 50 is good enough for now. I have another high ladder alt with 85+ GXE.
Good and bad players exist on both sides (and in between), but more importantly: you can adapt to tera and still hate it. So often I have seen arguments like this View attachment 536399
This is complete nonsense. All the players I've talked about prove this opinion wrong. I hope we can move on from this.
Closing thoughts in the next post because I hit the fucking 65000 character limit.
You can make a super long post all you want but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t take a snippet from one of my posts and twist it into something it’s not - makes it seem like you did that for a lot of things and so most of your post is hard to find credible.
I didn’t say a full ban should be off the table because I “disagree” with it. I said it was pretty clear it wouldn’t win so it was a useless option to have since it will just be a dead option that less than 35% support, when a 60% majority is needed. But hey go off - posts like this are why it’s more likely no action wins out and nothing is done about tera instead of trying to adjust or restrict it in a way that most people can get on board with.
Sorry pearl the gloves are off for this one.
