Metagame Terastallization Tiering Discussion, Part II [CLOSED FOR DLC]

[DaddyBuzzwole]

I oppose terastal ban because I hold the philosophy that anything broken by tera should be treated as a broken pokemon. Pro tera-ban people always bring up the same few examples (Volcarona, Regieleki, Kingambit) which to me shows that the Pokemon are the problem, not terastal and the broken Pokemon should be banned instead.

i agree with this, but i have to point out that gambit is bullshit independently of tera (and so is volc, arguably, depending on how you view matchup-based mons—i personally don't consider it competitive when a mon can effectively decide the outcome of a battle before it starts). the effect of tera on some pokemon's brokenness has been heavily overstated—a lot of people seem to believe that annihilape, espathra, and even chien-pao would be just fine and dandy without tera, which is false

 

[RoyalDispenser]

I want to get this out of the way early, Finchinator are lower tiers safe to talk about for tera consideration or no?

I distinctively remember last tera test, especially towards the end, arguments were made that tera was fine in UU and more manageable, the ban/restriction on tera for OU equally affects the tiers below it, resulting in those tiers getting involved to either swing a vote or post their thoughts on a tier they otherwise do not participate in.

I know the obvious answer is going to be this is primarily for OU and we can't stop lower tiers from influencing a vote even if the priorities aren't faithful to OU, but it makes me wonder if tera needs to be special cased as an OU isolated intervention where tiers can act independently or we rip the bandaid off and say lower tier consideration is moderated and not of any value. I still show support to the lower tiers that something in PR needs to be discussed there on policy updating how major mechanics transfer between tiers, similar to how uber's can test tera themselves but the result has no impact on OU and below.

 

[Return to Zero]

I oppose terastal ban because I hold the philosophy that anything broken by tera should be treated as a broken pokemon. Pro tera-ban people always bring up the same few examples (Volcarona, Regieleki, Kingambit) which to me shows that the Pokemon are the problem, not terastal and the broken Pokemon should be banned instead.

Regardles of where you stand on the issue of if you want Tera around or not or how you want it around, it's a little silly to act as if Tera isn't a pretty big component in some of the bans we've had thus far. Volcarona was banned in large part because of how much Tera did for it, and Regieleki was banned almost solely because of Tera. Annihilape and Espathra should definitely stay in Ubers, but Tera was also cited as a major reason for both as to why they got there in the first place. Chien-Pao gets an honorable mention because Tera Dark Crunch let it blow past anything that had the audacity to call itself a resist. Even Magearna got rebanned because it ended up being a great Tera abuser. Even Kingambit, who isn't in Ubers but has a good amount of support to put it there, is in consideration for that at least partially because of its ability to Tera out of its 4x weakness.

Really, you kinda contradict yourself in your own post. Would Regieleki be in Ubers without Tera? Obviously not, right? Then it's not a clean-cut issue of it just being broken Pokemon.

 

[veti]

Regardles of where you stand on the issue of if you want Tera around or not or how you want it around, it's a little silly to act as if Tera isn't a pretty big component in some of the bans we've had thus far. Volcarona was banned in large part because of how much Tera did for it, and Regieleki was banned almost solely because of Tera.

I'm not arguing for a tera restriction (I'd also be fine with ban but prefer preview) to make any pokemon balanced in OU, I want a tera restriction to remove the guessing games. I could care less if we could unban any pokemon from restricting or banning tera.

 

[Return to Zero]

I'm not arguing for a tera restriction (I'd also be fine with ban but prefer preview) to make any pokemon balanced in OU, I want a tera restriction to remove the guessing games. I could care less if we could unban any pokemon from restricting or banning tera.

I have no issue with your position, only the point you use to make it. The fact is, Tera is making broken mons more broken, and in a few cases like Volc/Eleki/Gambit there's a serious discussion that can be had about whether or not they'd be fine without Tera.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Really, you kinda contradict yourself in your own post. Would Regieleki be in Ubers without Tera? Obviously not, right? Then it's not a clean-cut issue of it just being broken Pokemon.

would espathra be ubers without speed boost? volcarona without quiver dance? obviously not, but there are plenty of other mons that have historically functioned just fine with those things

 

[Link loyan]

would espathra be ubers without speed boost? volcarona without quiver dance? obviously not, but there are plenty of other mons that have historically functioned just fine with those things

Yeah but are houndstone and basculegion Ubers with last respect? Yeah so we should ban the move and not keep the move while banning fine mon bacause we ban a move from white striped basculin

Stupid example but basically what you said for tera (in a bit exaggarated

 

[RoyalDispenser]

I oppose terastal ban because I hold the philosophy that anything broken by tera should be treated as a broken pokemon. Pro tera-ban people always bring up the same few examples (Volcarona, Regieleki, Kingambit) which to me shows that the Pokemon are the problem, not terastal and the broken Pokemon should be banned instead.

This doesn't paint the full picture.

currently has a majority survey vote for a retest to potentially drop back down from ubers, playerbase isn't entirely sold its broken enough to be ubers in the first place with tera. Tera pushes it over the edge, and frankly wouldn't ever be considered for a ban if it wasn't for tera, especially with how controversial the ban is even now.

Is only broken because tera fixes its coverage issues. You could theoretically stone wall espathra and kill it with dark types like tyranitar and kingambit as even if its running dazzling gleam, it doesn't have enough power to actually kill them with dazzling gleam and it would require a lot of calm minds to OHKO

+6 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Tyranitar in Sand: 224-264 (55.4 - 65.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+6 252 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Tyranitar in Sand: 282-332 (69.8 - 82.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+6 252+ SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Tyranitar in Sand: 308-364 (76.2 - 90%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Espathra only 2HKOs at max calm minds even, now if you throw tera into the mix;

+3 0 SpA Tera Fairy Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Tyranitar in Sand: 210-248 (51.9 - 61.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
vs.
+5 0 SpA Espathra Dazzling Gleam vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Tyranitar in Sand: 194-230 (48 - 56.9%) -- 90.2% chance to 2HKO

You need two free extra turns of calm minds to even get a chance of a 2HKO without tera fairy, removing it significantly nerfs espathra's setup and sweeping capabilities.

This doesn't factor in tera fighting, cause we all can figure that out, but it goes to show just how even tera fairy espathra for the STAB dazzling gleam gets significantly more power than what basic psychic espathra can do with dazzling gleam coverage.

Banning tera blast does not change this, and neither does preview, the concept of getting the STAB boost from changing typing alone is what pushes espathra over the edge.

Mostly broken because was removed 6 months later, but its basically next in line of tera mind games now with volc gone, as it is less restricted to what teras it needs defensively. It isn't nearly as bad when forced to run 1 tera for common threats, but as the threats vanish it gets more free to run any tera and that really boost its unpredictability in the meta. Without tera its not too bad, with tera there is heavy consideration for a suspect test at the very least.

Would literally be useless outside of maybe fast screens cause of its poor coverage, tera blast ice basically was a wet dream to this mon.

I would argue Chien-Pao would be a good canidate for dropping when tera is gone, primarily because a lot of what pushed it over the edge is dark stab crunch just nuking anything that would even call itself a check. Chien-pao survived the first suspect test, and was later banned so I think it does have a chance to survive in a no-tera meta especially given that it can't defensive tera itself from revenge killers like breloom and scizor. Not a large chance to drop, but a chance. EDIT: I stand corrected, for some reason I thought it had 2 test happen for it.

The rest I do not have much to comment on. is as far of a stretch I can go, thinking maybe, just maybe it won't nuke your special walls without tera fire boosting its already crazy overheats, but that's a debate no one is ready for and I personally ain't sure enough in to advocate myself.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Yeah but are houndstone and basculegion Ubers with last respect? Yeah so we should ban the move and not keep the move while banning fine mon bacause we ban a move from white striped basculin

Stupid example but basically what you said for tera (in a bit exaggarated

that's because last respects is broken on its own, which speed boost and quiver dance are not. neither is tera blast, which is the actual common factor in breaking a lot of the mons people are pointing out as "mons that are broken by tera". even though it played a large part in the banning of volc, espathra, and eleki, no one is calling for a ban of, say, sandy shocks, which is very strong and frequently runs tera blast. so tera blast itself definitely doesn't break every mon it's on, or even every fast offensive mon, or whatever. the other mons people claim are "broken by tera" would still be broken without it—annihilape still has cheater fist, chien-pao is still chien-pao, etc. tera by itself hasn't broken anything and is not broken as a mechanic. tera blast is solely responsible for one uber and heavily responsible for two more, but it's also not broken.

 

[veti]

Chien-pao survived the first suspect test

I don't know what you're talking about, Chien Pao never failed to be banned? It was suspected only once and got banned, and in home it was retested and quickbanned.

 

[Rootb]

Really, you kinda contradict yourself in your own post. Would Regieleki be in Ubers without Tera? Obviously not, right? Then it's not a clean-cut issue of it just being broken Pokemon.

Regieleki was always destined to be one of those mons that will be broken if Gamefreak tries anything funny. It's an extremely overpowered concept, held back by an intentionally goofy moveset. While it's true that it's banned because of Tera, it's very much Eleki, rather than Tera, that's the problematic half of the interaction.

 

[Loginator]

I want to get this out of the way early, Finchinator are lower tiers safe to talk about for tera consideration or no?

I distinctively remember last tera test, especially towards the end, arguments were made that tera was fine in UU and more manageable, the ban/restriction on tera for OU equally affects the tiers below it, resulting in those tiers getting involved to either swing a vote or post their thoughts on a tier they otherwise do not participate in.

I know the obvious answer is going to be this is primarily for OU and we can't stop lower tiers from influencing a vote even if the priorities aren't faithful to OU, but it makes me wonder if tera needs to be special cased as an OU isolated intervention where tiers can act independently or we rip the bandaid off and say lower tier consideration is moderated and not of any value. I still show support to the lower tiers that something in PR needs to be discussed there on policy updating how major mechanics transfer between tiers, similar to how uber's can test tera themselves but the result has no impact on OU and below.

I agree with this a lot. Tera isn’t exactly the healthiest mechanic in the world but banning it also causes a lot of harm, especially to lower tiers. While there are some lot of Pokémon that are already very viable that are simply pushed over the edge by Tera such as Volcarona and Kingambit, it also kills the viability a lot of mons gained. Garganacal and Skeledirge are big examples that are relevant in OU, as Tera is the main reason as for why they’re viable, despite having a load of other positive aspects including their movepools and abilities. Lower tiers it’s even worse because the mechanic isn’t even that unhealthy there. Even the craziest Tera abusers just move up a tier. Mons like Wo-Chien, the Orocorios, Frosmoth, Revavaroom, and Iron Thorns aren’t broken as a result of Tera, but are much more viable. Frosmoth would still be in PU if it weren’t for Tera fixing its terrible defensive typing and poor coverage. Oricorio still got buffed but a lot of the Pokémon revolves around Tera and getting rid of it negatively affects the kind of Pokémon it is. Nuking Tera in OU will most likely result in the same for lower tiers, kicking many mons down and making them lose their viability.

I think the best solution is to try to find a compromise where we still keep the mechanic but find some way to balance it, because Tera isn’t like Dyanamax. Dyanamax was a very stupid mechanic that made every Pokémon insanely broken. Tera on the other hand isn’t especially absurd outside of a few great abusers which were rightfully banned. And honestly, it’s not even that much of a huge jump into brokenness for a lot of mons, with Regieleki probably being the only main exception. Sure some would stay OU like Volcarona, but they’re still excellent Pokémon, so it’s not that much of a change. It seems more like people just want as many OU viable Pokémon as possible and hate that their favorites got banned to Ubers because of it. If a handful of Pokémon being banned from OU is reason enough for a Tera ban, then I also think an even bigger of Pokémon becoming unviable and dropping tiers due to lacking Tera is reason enough to be against a full ban.

I will mention that I haven’t played many official formats in a while, so nobody can really take my word for granted on Tera being balanced since I barely dealt with it. However, I did try to be objective as possible and mentions mons that are legitimately unviable without Tera in their respective tiers, which anyone should agree with. I can agree Tera tends to warp games heavily around it, and there are legitimately broken Pokémon as a result of the mechanic, but that’s not reason enough for a complete ban when it also had positive impact on a lot of mons and lower tiers. Or at the very least we should allow separate tiers for those who want the mechanic.

 

[Return to Zero]

would espathra be ubers without speed boost? volcarona without quiver dance? obviously not, but there are plenty of other mons that have historically functioned just fine with those things

This is sort of missing the point. It is a literal true statement that just like Tera, the ability Speed Boost and the move Quiver Dance do not inherently break mons, instead just pushing ones with the potential to be problematic over the edge. However, Abilities and moves are not universal. Tera is. It's not like banning a signature move, where distribution is limited intentionally and therefore it's a very rare case where you'd look at the move and not the mon. Any mon can use Tera, and therefore with every addition to the metagame there's always a metaphysical d20 being rolled on whether or not its specific combination of traits and place in the metagame make it poised to abuse Tera too well for OU. Sure, you can say the same thing happens to every mon who comes in because they have some crazy Ability/stats/moves, but in this case, that d20 is being rolled for every mon for the same reason.

Regieleki was always destined to be one of those mons that will be broken if Gamefreak tries anything funny. It's an extremely overpowered concept, held back by an intentionally goofy moveset. While it's true that it's banned because of Tera, it's very much Eleki, rather than Tera, that's the problematic half of the interaction.

Isn't that sort of an issue in itself? That mons are often made with these weaknesses in mind, like Eleki's awful movepool, Kingambit's 4x Fighting weakness, that sort of thing, but Tera can give them a wild amount of power by allowing them to sidestep this weakness?

 

[Yippie]

I read lots of qualified player's posts. Let me be clear i am not criticising anyone and just want to hear the thought.

I have just one question to which i want the answer too , the easiest example i can come up with rn is gambit vs tusk endgame 1v1 , gambit has two options either tera or predict oppo to click ice spinner and not tera , the gambit on other hand has two options (say tusk is at a hp from which gambit koes with iron head , but if u click ice spinner and they tera fly you win) how would one as a player deal with this 50-50. I myself have lost matches for predicting tera on gambit and also not predicting tera and going for eq.

The statement tera is predictable is kinda iffy to me. While predicting tera type is one thing. Predicting WHEN someone will tera is absolutely diff. Often people can expect someone to predict their tera and not tera at all catching you offguard. And such a situation is not nice in 1v1 situations cuz the mons rn are super strong , i am talking abt threats like gambit etc. Again this is not a criticism.

 

[Rootb]

Isn't that sort of an issue in itself? That mons are often made with these weaknesses in mind, like Eleki's awful movepool, Kingambit's 4x Fighting weakness, that sort of thing, but Tera can give them a wild amount of power by allowing them to sidestep this weakness?

It is, but it's in a class of its own -- or more accurately, in a class with "bad ability" mons like Regigigas or Slaking. Some mons are inherently not balanced, and relatively small tweaks to items, abilities or moveset availability can significantly change how dangerous they are to a tier.

Volcarona being able to slap on some timbs and not take 50% from Stealth Rock is actually a really good example of this. Even with Tera, if Volc was going to take 50% on the switch-in, it almost certainly wouldn't be in Ubers looking down right now.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

I agree with this a lot. Tera isn’t exactly the healthiest mechanic in the world but banning it also causes a lot of harm, especially to lower tiers.

i think that lower tiers should be able to decide for themselves what happens with tera. if the mechanic is banned from ou, it should be banned from only ou, because from what i've heard, it doesn't seem like tera is as much an issue in lower tiers (gee, wonder why). on the other hand, if tera preview gets passed (which it should), it would be nice for that to affect everything, except maybe ubers and ag because people there already like punishing themselves. ideally, tera preview would be a clause that every meta could decide whether or not to implement. (well, ideally, tera preview would have been implemented since the first suspect ended, but i wasn't invested enough to git gud and make that happen.)

 

[PragaSV]

My stance on Tera : I am in favor of it staying unrestricted, and consider banning tera blast as the only viable alternative if we were to restrict it.

No pro-tera arguments I could think of which hasn't been said before; anyone that has played the metagame has already formed an opinion, and given the core importance of the mechanic to the way the metagame functions, I doubt anyone's going to change their opinion based on anything they read.

With respect to the way the test needs to be conducted, these are my thoughts-

1. Unless there is significant evidence to the contrary, the status quo must remain as such. Tiering policy makes it clear that the burden of proof rests with the side that wants a change ie Pro-Ban/Pro-Restriction.
2. The argument "Action vs No Action should NOT be a vote at all, it is clear 65% of people want to see a change" is absurd, tiering surveys are unofficial and carry little to no weight in the discussion.
3. "If we were to have a binary vote, tera will stay, and the whole retest is pointless" - Well, the reason we are having this test in the first place is to merely reconfirm what the first vote decided but in a Post-Home metagame; nothing else has changed to warrant a tiering decision in the metagame without having the majority to support it.

Having said this, I think the best way to go about the suspect is in two phases - the first to merely vote on the same question posed in the survey, ie Action vs No Action, and only if the required majority of 60% is achieved for Action, do we need to go about the second phase of the suspect where restrictions be discussed. This way, there are no complexities and vagueness that could arise if all questions are posed in the same test and ranking systems are included.

 

[Dan Dan]

Tera raises the skill cap of the game more than any other generation mechanic previously released, giving more dimensions for plays to be made on both the offensive and defensive side as well as encouraging more creative team building and increasing the pool of usable pokemon.

I don't see how a full tera test can come before any of the other suggestions of tera preview and banning tera blast , because banning tera outright also bans all of these.

 

[Return to Zero]

"If we were to have a binary vote, tera will stay, and the whole retest is pointless" - Well, the reason we are having this test in the first place is to merely reconfirm what the first vote decided but in a Post-Home metagame; nothing else has changed to warrant a tiering decision in the metagame without having the majority to support it.

There is a majority, though. The recent survey results have shown that over 60% of both the entire and the qualified playerbase who responded want some sort of tiering action on Tera, whether it's to ban it outright or just implement a restriction. You can say that those results aren't representative of the entire playerbase, and that's technically true, but it doesn't mean nothing. The issue is why people would vote a certain way. Most of these people want a restriction, not a ban, and so if the options are simply to ban it or not to ban it, they will pick the latter. Setting up the vote like this puts any action, banning or otherwise, in a really bad position from the start. It's the simplest option, but it's far from the fairest one. Put simply, a binary vote where the only options are "action" versus "no action" is presenting people the options of A: Maybe the small change you want most but also several other small changes and one really big one you don't want, and B: Things as they are now. I don't see how a shift in the metagame is required to have a voting process that allows voters to more accurately indicate what they want to happen. Pro-unrestricted Tera voters are exactly as welcome to pick that option with ranked choices or similar as they are in a binary vote.

 

[Vrin]

So, I want to talk about Tera Team Preview. I'm pro-ban on Tera (and still am), but in the previous suspect test, I decided I favoured Tera Team Preview to No Action. "Even a mild restriction on Tera is better than nothing", I thought to myself.

But having played and watched the metagame for a few more months, and seen Tera's impact on high-level play, I no longer believe Tera Team Preview is a good restriction. On the contrary, I earnestly believe it would be significantly worse than No Action.

First, let me go over the merits of No Action. Though I do think Tera's existence lowers the skill cap along some axes, it also undeniably raises it in other ways. CBB gives a fantastic defense of this viewpoint in this post, and while I disagree with the balance of the final calculus coming up in favour of Tera, it would be erroneous to discount this aspect entirely. The existence of Terastallize adds multiple axes for skill expression, like:

1. needing to predict your opponent's Tera types based on team structure and how they're playing,
2. needing to account for ambiguity in whether a given situation is capable of being a win condition (e.g. you might not be able to guarantee an endgame Baxcalibur sweep if there's a Tera Water Tusk in there),
3. needing to answer threats proactively,
4. being unable to rely on a single Pokemon or a straightforward counterplay as a foolproof bulwark against a given threat (e.g. you can't just smack a Dondozo on your team and be 100% safe vs physical Valiant, you need to have contingencies in place for Tera Electric),
5. rewarding creative teambuilding using well-tailored sets (e.g. decisions about Garganacl's Tera type), unusual sets, and targeted lures,
6. allowing contingencies for the neutralization of bad matchups through a niche Tera option (say, maybe there's a Pokemon that would sweep you if not for a super niche choice like Tera Ground on your Rotom-W or something),
7. rewarding picking good moments in the match to Tera, and
8. creating a new form of skill expression in how effectively you pressure your opponent to Tera preemptively.

Now, you can dispute many of these individual points. For example, I would argue that the ability of Tera (or at least Tera with Tera Blast in existence) to create devastating matchup-fishes like Tera Water/Fairy/Rock/Fighting Volcarona or Tera Electric/Water Valiant or Tera Fire Baxcalibur outweighs the positive matchup-negation of #6, or that #4 is just a fancy way of saying "you can't be sure what counters what anymore and have to rely on your team 'accidentally' checking offbeat sets". But I think it's undeniable that Tera facilitates and promotes at least some level of skill, and that if we are to vote to keep Tera in the tier, we should prioritize preserving that skill aspect.

And this is why I think Tera Team Preview is a terrible option.

Though I dislike Tera, I do concede that just because something "makes Tera 5% less powerful" does not mean it makes the metagame better as a whole. If we decide to not ban Tera, we ought to instead try and create a metagame that nurtures and celebrates the skill that Tera does promote, rather than actively suppressing it. So if that "make Tera 5% less powerful" actively removes a large chunk of the skill expression from Tera, it is worse than the status quo; it preserves the problematic parts of the mechanic while neutering the positives. And I believe Tera Team Preview does this.

I do not claim the list I provided above is at all exhaustive, but it can still serve as a good rhetorical heuristic for determining the potential negative consequences of restrictions on Tera's skill expression. Let me go through point-by-point and assess the impact of Tera on each access of skill expression I outlined (which is, again, not exhaustive).

1. needing to predict your opponent's Tera types based on team structure and how they're playing — Tera Team Preview eliminates this.
2. needing to account for ambiguity in whether a given situation is capable of being a win condition — Tera Team Preview vastly reduces this by making it far more clear what a win condition looks like (though the presence or absence of Tera Blast as well as ambiguity about what will Tera and when still plays a role).
3. needing to answer threats proactively — Tera Team Preview does allow for less "ambiguity" in whether something needs to be answered proactively, but also makes it more straightforward how to do so. You could argue this makes for more strategic and specific gameplay, but I think on net we can say that Tera Team Preview slightly reduces this as it means that you only need to answer threats proactively under certain restrictions.
4. being unable to rely on a single Pokemon or a straightforward counterplay as a foolproof bulwark against a given threat — Tera Team Preview barely affects this except perhaps in generally nerfing offbeat forms of Tera and thereby reducing the full range of options to account for (see the next point).
5. rewarding creative teambuilding using well-tailored sets, unusual sets, and targeted lures — Tera Team Preview vastly reduces this, particularly by strongly disincentivizing more niche options and making lures essentially ineffective.
6. allowing contingencies for the neutralization of bad matchups through a niche Tera option — Tera Team Preview somewhat reduces this as the way many of these options work is via the element of surprise suddenly stopping a sweep or crippling an opposing Pokemon.
7. rewarding picking good moments in the match to Tera — Tera Team Preview significantly increases this by giving a skillful player more information to use in making the decision, but also somewhat decreases this by removing ambiguities in the decision-making process. On net, I would be inclined to think Team Preview's effects on this point are overall positive.
8. creating a new form of skill expression in how effectively you pressure your opponent to Tera preemptively — Tera team preview increases this by allowing you to identify under what situations a Pokemon might want to Tera and being able to bait it out, but also slightly decreases this by discouraging preemptive Teras (for example, your opponent might Tera a Pokemon and go for a strong neutral Tera Blast as a midground between your Kingambit Tera'ing or staying unTera'd — Nat mentions in this post not losing to a Tera Kingambit even once in recent memory, and I think being able to make midgrounds like this is a large part of that). Again, on net I think Tera Team Preview is positive towards this point, but it's unclear to me.

Going through my list (which is, of course, imperfect — it's incomplete, some aspects of Tera are effectively repeated in multiple options, and different points ought to have different weights — so don't take it as gospel, just as a rough heuristic to think about the different positive effects of Tera on the metagame), we find that, for most points, Tera Team Preview seems to lower skill expression. The two points I found where Tera could arguably increase skill expression (#7 and #8) were both somewhat ambiguous, with positive and negative effects, and in fact I only included #8 on the list in the first place out of a good-faith attempt to find situations that justify Tera Team Preview (I think most players would agree that #8 is the weakest point in the list).

Ultimately, I think Tera Team Preview comes at significant costs to the positive aspects of keeping Tera in the tier, while being unclear as to what extent it addresses the negative aspects. For this reason, I think Tera Team Preview would be a terrible choice, and favour No Action over it.

By point of comparison, allow me to look at an option I originally clowned on — banning Tera Blast. I originally did not like this, and while I still don't think it addresses many problematic points of Tera, it does reduce a significant amount of the mechanic's potential for matchup-fishing which is, in my experience and from what I've read of other players, the most unambiguously uncompetitive part of Tera (it led to Volcarona's ban, for example).

1. needing to predict your opponent's Tera types based on team structure and how they're playing — banning Tera Blast affects this by reducing the amount of viable offensive Teras, but it's unclear to me whether that affect on skill expression is positive or negative. I think it's overall positive, since looking at Volcarona for example, there were a lot of situations where Volcarona's potential Tera choice given the matchup was, like, 6 options long, and this would reduce the overall delta of choices and make it more feasible to account for the full gamut of possibilities. Unclear, but I lean banning Tera Blast having a slight positive effect.
2. needing to account for ambiguity in whether a given situation is capable of being a win condition — banning Tera Blast does not affect this "on your side" (i.e. you still know whether your own mon is a win condition) but somewhat reduces this "on the other side" (eliminating Tera Blast as an option makes it easier to rule out a lot of potential sweeps).
3. needing to answer threats proactively — banning Tera Blast likely does not significantly affect this (at least not disproportionately — when I say "does not affect", of course there are knock-on effects from its impacts on overall gameplay and on the overall metagame, but those are largely accounted for in the other points I list, and the impacts not addressed are very hard to predict from a tiering perspective).
4. being unable to rely on a single Pokemon or a straightforward counterplay as a foolproof bulwark against a given threat — banning Tera Blast reduces this.
5. rewarding creative teambuilding using well-tailored sets, unusual sets, and targeted lures — banning Tera Blast mostly reduces this, though it does slightly increase creativity by encouraging players to scour the movepools of Pokemon to find coverage options that gain STAB with Tera, rather than relying on Tera Blast every time (think of how people ran weird coverage just to use it as a lure with Z-Moves).
6. allowing contingencies for the neutralization of bad matchups through a niche Tera option — banning Tera Blast likely does not significantly affect this since most bad-matchup neutralization relied on the defensive profile of Tera users rather than their offensive potential.
7. rewarding picking good moments in the match to Tera — banning Tera Blast likely does not significantly affect this, or might even have a slight increase in effective skill expression due to an emphasis in Tera being done for general utility rather than "see Pokemon Tera Blast hits SE, click Tera Blast".
8. creating a new form of skill expression in how effectively you pressure your opponent to Tera preemptively — banning Tera Blast likely does not significantly affect this, though this particular point is very unclear to me and I could see it going both ways.

As we can see, the impacts of banning Tera Blast on Tera's created opportunities for skill expression, though existent, are far less severe. Of course, banning Tera Blast's effects on the negative aspects of Tera are also much subdued compared to more aggressive action. Obviously, it only affects Tera Blast users, which slightly reduces the power level of the mechanic and might salvage a couple Pokemon from getting banned, but really is mostly an attempt to reduce the MU-fishing nature of Tera. Still, even if I personally believe it to be inadequate at addressing most of the problems with Tera, it does seem that banning Tera Blast comes out favourably in comparison to both Tera Team Preview and to No Action. This post isn't meant to be a defense of banning Tera Blast so I won't hammer this point too much — I just wanted to mention it for comparison.

My current "preference" list of the options that currently have nonnegligible support is Ban Tera > Ban Tera Blast > No Action > Tera Team Preview. None of the other options proposed so far seem feasible to me, neither in terms of effectiveness nor in terms of conformance towards tiering policy (even Tera Team Preview is on shaky ground in this regard, as that VGC "precedent" isn't really much precedent at all — it's transparently meant to be an anti-cheating measure, not a balancing measure, as evidenced by it only applying to tournament play rather than online play).

 

[PragaSV]

Put simply, a binary vote where the only options are "action" versus "no action" is presenting people the options of A: Maybe the small change you want most but also several other small changes and one really big one you don't want, and B: Things as they are now.

I understand where you are coming from, however to accommodate what a potential voter is going to think or interpret of an option is theorycrafting and baseless. To you perhaps, voting for "Action" would indicate one desirable scenario pitted against several other undesirable ones, but to others it could simply mean voting on the first question at hand without considering the consequences of the next one. If a qualified voter swayed towards voting for No Action because he wouldn't want to risk the possibility of "Tera Preview" coming into fruition, it isn't a problem with the voting structure, but rather that the thought process of the voter.

Furthermore, if we were to assume that the tiering survey does hold some nominal value, the respondents did NOT in fact consider the unfavorable alternatives of "Action" while voting, judging by the result of close to 65% for pro-action. If you want to consider the results of the survey, why do you have a problem if the exact same question posed by the survey is voted on by qualified voters?

"The issue is why people would vote a certain way." - This quote, idk man. Seems to me you are worrying more about how to tweak the question to influence the answer, rather than the problem at hand. Pro-Action will always get the pointier end of the stick, but that's just how the policy is set up.

 

[Return to Zero]

I understand where you are coming from, however to accommodate what a potential voter is going to think or interpret of an option is theorycrafting and baseless. To you perhaps, voting for "Action" would indicate one desirable scenario pitted against several other undesirable ones, but to others it could simply mean voting on the first question at hand without considering the consequences of the next one. If a qualified voter swayed towards voting for No Action because he wouldn't want to risk the possibility of "Tera Preview" coming into fruition, it isn't a problem with the voting structure, but rather that the thought process of the voter.

You're right that this is entirely a result of the thought process of the voter, but whereas you call it a "problem", I call it a "fact". What I mean is that this isn't an inherently wrong way to think, and I'd actually consider it pretty reasonable. Back during the initial Tera suspect, I was firmly on the side of DNB because we only had two options and I preferred unrestricted Tera to banned Tera (I no longer feel this way, but I did and I advocated accordingly is my point). This is just a disadvantage that only exists in a binary vote. Like I said, people in favor of unrestricted Tera can still vote in favor of that with ranked choices or similar, and people who want action against Tera can vote for which option they prefer without feeling that their vote might contribute to action they don't want. You can even see here in this thread, people have expressed sentiments like "I want Tera Preview but if the options are ban or unrestricted Tera I'm voting for the latter" or "I want Tera banned but I would prefer unrestricted Tera over Tera Preview". Ranked choices allow for all of these opinions to be expressed without being constrained by an arbitrarily set system.

Furthermore, if we were to assume that the tiering survey does hold some nominal value, the respondents did NOT in fact consider the unfavorable alternatives of "Action" while voting, judging by the result of close to 65% for pro-action. If you want to consider the results of the survey, why do you have a problem if the exact same question posed by the survey is voted on by qualified voters?

Well for one, a tiering survey meant to gather community feedback is a lot different from a suspect test where your vote counts for a pretty huge metagame shift. There's no pressure to answer any way but truthfully because there's absolutely no chance of accidentally throwing your lot in with an outcome you don't want, unless that outcome is getting clowned on in the metagame thread for having a weird opinion. Whereas in a suspect test, there's going to be some extra hesitation to vote for restriction, since if that vote passes there's a chance you're going to inadvertently help set up the restriction you didn't want by clearing that vote. Not a pressure that would exist with ranked options.

"The issue is why people would vote a certain way." - This quote, idk man. Seems to me you are worrying more about how to tweak the question to influence the answer, rather than the problem at hand. Pro-Action will always get the pointier end of the stick, but that's just how the policy is set up.

You are absolutely correct. I want to change how the question is asked to get a different answer. This is because I think the way the question is being asked is leading to inaccurate answers. Got me in one. Precedent shouldn't get in the way of a better method of doing things that simply lacks disadvantages the old method had.

 

[PragaSV]

You're right that this is entirely a result of the thought process of the voter, but whereas you call it a "problem", I call it a "fact".

Nothing is a "Fact" when it comes to a subjective matter like voter thought process, but I am splitting hairs here.

Like I said, people in favor of unrestricted Tera can still vote in favor of that with ranked choices or similar, and people who want action against Tera can vote for which option they prefer without feeling that their vote might contribute to action they don't want.

I concede that Pro-Unrestricted tera doesn't get impacted by a ranking vote, and honestly I don't have a problem with a ranked system of votes either, I just believe that a sequential vote with a binary question first makes more sense but that's just my opinion. My initial post was intended to address those that proposed "Black and White vote should be off the table", or "Since survey wants action, Unrestricted Tera should not be given as an option at all"

You are absolutely correct. I want to change how the question is asked to get a different answer. This is because I think the way the question is being asked is leading to inaccurate answers. Got me in one. Precedent shouldn't get in the way of a better method of doing things that simply lacks disadvantages the old method had.

Fair enough, everyone has a different view on what's a representational question or what is not.

 

[Yippie]

I read lots of qualified player's posts. Let me be clear i am not criticising anyone and just want to hear the thought.

I have just one question to which i want the answer too , the easiest example i can come up with rn is gambit vs tusk endgame 1v1 , gambit has two options either tera or predict oppo to click ice spinner and not tera , the gambit on other hand has two options (say tusk is at a hp from which gambit koes with iron head , but if u click ice spinner and they tera fly you win) how would one as a player deal with this 50-50. I myself have lost matches for predicting tera on gambit and also not predicting tera and going for eq.

The statement tera is predictable is kinda iffy to me. While predicting tera type is one thing. Predicting WHEN someone will tera is absolutely diff. Often people can expect someone to predict their tera and not tera at all catching you offguard. And such a situation is not nice in 1v1 situations cuz the mons rn are super strong , i am talking abt threats like gambit etc. Again this is not a criticism.

EDIT: i also want to mention this fact that tera types makes team building much more innovative fun , and less restrictive unlike ss. Example , you can make a team that looks kinda more weak to a certain type of teams or mons , but is overall good aka most balance teams , if i compare them to the most common rain teams you know running a dondonzo always is not a option , thats where tera type comes into game , you can tera a grt tusk to water type and easily live the strong wave crashes in rain and get momentum to your side. So in this way tera kinda becomes your backdoor in emergency situations. Unlike ss where a bad matchup is a bad matchup from start , this variability in tera gives the players a better chance , else its just very tough to make a team with 0 flaws. I AM NOT SAYING with tera there will be 0 flaws , BUT its certainly bit friendlier towards the players with bad matchup , matchup is not something we really have a lot of control in , we might know wht our oppo's usual styles are , but its not easy to say that they will 'not' change styles. Thus imo tera as a DEFENSIVE tool is really really life saving for a player . I would say Defensive tera > Offensive tera , thats just my opinion.

but again the point i said earlier abt 50-50 in gambit vs tusk 1v1 , thats more of a 50-50 situation now that i think abt it , and its the very nature of mons . Sometimes you win sometimes you lose but yh that in my opinion is the downside of tera , cuz it adds a new dimension of mindgames itself in some cases.

so i guess i am more inclined towards a complex sort of ban ? i cant explain wht i think as the ideal teratype metagame in sv ou , i will think abt it and post again later. tera to me is both good and bad a double edged sword.

peace , pls let me know your opinions.

if possible i would like to hear wht the goats of SV OU have to say cuz i think there might be something i forgot to add or i am getting wrong , i would really like to improve myself in this tier , so Vert (sry for the tag bro i love u as a player) and others if you would pls reply to me. I also want to tag other goats (but idk they might get annoyed lol) like blunderr and ctc aim and people like mindgaming, MDB etc etc people who have a much better knowledge of the meta to counter my points as that will help me to understand wht i am missing or getting wrong.

PEACE (for real now)

 

[Alternator]

Countering one of the common claims against terastalization, that it "got a bunch of mons banned to Ubers," this is both inaccurate/dishonest (depending on the exact claim) and completely irrelevant going forward, because those mons aren't coming back anyway.

If a mon is banned 'because' of tera, whether it was the sole problem (unquestionably the case with Regieleki) or a major factor (Volcarona), then it'd come back down to OU if the mechanic is banned: to phrase it another way, if it doesn't stand ready to return with a full ban, then it wasn't a reason for the ban. Yes, tera might have been mentioned in the suspect or ban posts, but that's because those posts cover everything; nobody is going to claim that Substitute is a problem even though it was a major factor in Espathra's power after the Shed Tail ban.

To give an example of what I mean, Palafin was banned because the Bulk Up sets had minimal counterplay for defensive teams; they couldn't status it due to a fast Taunt or Substitute, nor chip it down due to Drain Punch, nor easily wall it due to Bulk Up. It was also packing a BST of 650 and had every tool it needs - the STABmons sample set is running the same four moves as the former OU standard, even - and probably would have eaten a ban due to general power in time, but it was the oppressive matchup into defensive counterplay that led to the early ban.

In a metagame where tera is fully banned, Palafin...has exactly the same problems. He's still able to set up on most defensive mons and muscle his way through, has strong priority to contribute versus HO, a great defensive typing and good bulk to match up respectably into balanced teams, and has a respectable enough movepool to adapt to defensive counterplay. Acrobatics, Zen Headbutt, even Wave Crash or a cheeky mixed set (106 SpA isn't amazing, but a STAB Surf will 2HKO PhysDef Great Tusk or Landorus-T) never had a chance to be explored, but they're available techs. Palafin isn't coming back, and thus he isn't a casualty of terastalization.

Really, we get three mons back from Ubers if we ban tera: Regieleki, Espathra, and Volcarona. Regieleki isn't even good in that scenario, with eight freaking Ground types in OU proper ready to wall it forever, and Espathra might get booted again since it'll still do unkind things to stall under screens, with nothing able to take Stored Power if it has a chance to set up.

===

On a side note, it's notable how the go-to example for undesirable 50-50s is Kingambit versus Great Tusk, which does make sense since those are two of the most dominant mons in the tier, but I have to ask: is the problem there tera, or is the problem how few mons can even theoretically check a healthy last-mon Kingambit? You can have a healthy tier that's centralized entirely around one mon, we've seen that with both Primal Groudon and Snorlax, but most players still consider it a problem.