That's why a suspect should be good, leaving the choice to the community. We did see Dragonite making too much progress recently. Even if we ban a potential banworthy sweeper, a new one will emerge because of Tera and especially Tblast
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 ( NEW SURVEY UP, POST 20,700 )
- Thread starter TPP
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That's why a suspect should be good, leaving the choice to the community. We did see Dragonite making too much progress recently. Even if we ban a potential banworthy sweeper, a new one will emerge because of Tera and especially Tblast
i'm inclined to agree based on previous survey results and the relative lack of people speaking up about tera blast in particular compared to the number of complaints i've historically seen about stuff that's ended up banned. whatever your opinion on tera blast is (personally i could go either way but i don't think policy justifies a ban, and i don't think the case is bad enough to be worth changing policy), all evidence points to it not having the community support for even a suspect, much less a ban. like tera itself, we're pretty much stuck with it, so if we want to get anything done we should focus on its problematic abusers
I'm confused why opening the policy thread would really speed up the process as opposed to a survey: the last time it was opened, the response was incredibly lackluster and took around a month for a final decision to be made. Even if we assume that support has drastically gone up, I doubt that we would get any concrete results before at least a time period of two weeks.
Meanwhile, if the tiering survey comes out in a week or two, it would only take a couple of days for the results to be released, which would give the council a far more concrete overview of how the playerbase is feeling, and if Tera Blast is truly the biggest issue in the tier, or if there is some other threat they should be targeting.
Tera Blast shouldn't be banned without a discussion in all SV official metagames. For some reason it's much more contentious in OU than in lower tiers. Besides I'm generally against banning offense tools, unless they're like Terrakion in NU which probably deserves a ban, so Tera Blast deserves to stay and I'm glad the council made the decision to leave it untouched while cg.
OU should never (and I don't think has) tier out of consideration for lower tiers. The whole point of lower tiers is that they are subject to the whims of higher tiers, and we shouldn't have to consider the ramifications of how, for example, the sleep ban would impact a Pokemon's niche in NU.
Backtracking a tad, while we’re talking about webs, have any of you been able to find success with alternate webbers? While araq is old reliable, I’ve found charjabug of all things (you’ll never guess why) to be an unironically good one, and I’ve known a few other scattered cases of people trying out the less viable webbers. I think some are beyond saving (sorry kricketune), but there could be a kernel of heat there
i fw smeargle a lot, has a lot of cool shit to get webs up reliably (court change for hatterene, silk trap + disable for spin/fog), it’s def passive but pairing with red card mimi for example makes it a uniquely strong webber vs hatterene that can fit a lot of other util asw (bulwark, ceaseless, etc.) i’ve even run conversion + dbond to turn ghost vs rapid spin and then dbond to trade w the spinner
my tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory is that masquerain has some tiny iota of viability as a webber that no one will find until midway through gen 11 when this is an oldgen that has about 3 people playing it still. tera blast will probably be involved
Tera blast in gen 11 would be some certified crazy shit. Masq is that Mon who I think a lot of webs players have theorycrafted for the meme, but it isn’t really good even at being a meme Mon, just at being mid. Depending on the speed tier it may be able to do smth with intimidate, though
ok so my guess for charjabug is something to do with thunder wave and the eviolite bulk maybe? i can't figure out how it does anything against the common leads like how araq found its niche though. mud-slap?
It probably says something about my reputation that your first thought was mud slap… Anyway, the use case for Charja is simple. The araq takeover got me interested in the idea of a bulky Webber as opposed to the more frail offensive ones like bee and most others. Honestly, a good portion of araqs issues, that cause it to falter in this bulky Webber role, are because of its typing. Things like raging bolt, rillaboom, and Tera specs kyu are able to take advantage of its generally useful water typing to seriously hinder it. Charjabug is the future. Not because it’s particularly strong, or has a particularly large movepool (though both of those aren’t huge issues in Charja case) but because it has BULK. If their plan for webs is just to kill the Webber before it can get them up, they will find themselves befuddled by the frankly stupendous bulk Charja possesses, thanks, of course, to eviolite. In particular, what got me to start using it was when I was looking up (non ribombee) anti bolt webbers, and ran the calcs with this guy as a joke. He takes two proto pulses, he takes specs Draco, and he even tanks max attack jolly rockpon cudgel (it will NOT be critting). “But what of the moves?” I hear you cry. Well, Charja is not extremely blessed in that department, but nor is it destitute. In particular, it has the oft forgotten skitter smack, which takes advantage of the fact it’s a physical attacker for some reason to make the aforementioned bolt calc more notable. Webs and thunder wave are both obvious slot ins, and the last slot was volt switch for a long time, until I had a brain blast: grounds wall anyway, so why not pretend to be lokix with double bug stab. Thus, lunge skitter twave webs with mixed bulk is the epitome of a bulky Webber, if not a strong one. Now, this obviously needs a little bit of removal, and a solid spinblocker since you can’t get webs up too often, but with the right support, it can shine like a diamond. Dont ask me for replays with it because I haven’t loaded it in months!
not gonna fully reply bc i wanna save a longer response for a policy thread. the other threat in question would absolutely be dragonite, i doubt its a contentious point whatsoever that what its doing in the tier rn is pretty absurd. thing is, dragonite will absolutely score significantly higher than tera blast considering yenno, its a physical pokemon. problem is if you look at the surveys as purely data and not a wider picture in this scenario, you are suspecting dragonite first. the tera blast "problem" is a wider issue that you can't get a proper conclusion on from a survey, hence a policy thread. the move has been pushing strong sweepers over the edge pretty much the entire gen; volcarona, moon, goug, whether they are still broken without isnt relevant, the variety of sets the move has provided to these have pretty much been the nail in coffin for all them. the last survey was before dnite really started to become the "i lose if its the right set i just lose here" mon it has been since OLT. suspecting dragonite first because it scored significantly more than tera blast without establishing what the plan is with tera blast first is absolutely a mistake, its not unlikely that something(s) similarly annoying will take its place anyway, nor does it acknowledge the root of the problem properly since you have to make a decision on if its banworthy in the current meta and not theoretical situations (which if we ban tera blast later its going to be even more of a pain in the ass going back and re-suspecting since theres no content drops for this generation left that can act as soft resets). reading data alone from a survey doesn't fully give context to this particular situation, especially given the variaty of people we poll, unclecharizard83 may think dragonite is too much for the tier but also not understand what the problem is on a deeper level.
the last thread also suffered from "how can we fit this into our current policy" opposed to looking at the moves history and adapting the current policy to give a better conclusion on how to move forward. the beauty of being a non official competitive scene for a game is our ruleset can and should be adaptive and given how gen9 pushed the goal post in several regards, we've been trying to apply a older concept of tiering framework to something much more complicated that it was initially intended for.
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I agree with this a lot. Tera Blast has been problematic on Espathra (Tera Blast let it beat Steel-type Pokemon), Regieleki, Volcarona, Kyurem (which resulted in two very close suspect tests one of which woulf have been a ban if one player hadn't troll voted DNB, and Roaring Moon (Tera Blast Fairy pushed it overboard). And even outside of these core five abusers, it significantly increases the volatility in SV OU by giving many mons, especially top mons, access to powerful coverage they otherwise wouldn't have.
For this reason, I believe it was reductive to frame the discussion in the Policy Review thread on Tera Blast as whether it met the definition of broken as Tera Blast can have an unhealthy effect to warrant getting banned by making many top mons harder to beat while also giving mons not quite as strong similar strong coverage, all of which increases the volatility of the tier and makes it harder to prep for threats and is a big reason why the meta in SV OU is quite cyclical, arguably to an unhealthy degree.
Comparisons with Hidden Power aren't great 'cause Tera Blast has higher Base Power and it gets a STAB boost upon Terastalizing, making it far more impactful of a move. Sure, you can argue that dedicating your Tera to a particular mon is a significant opportunity cost, but such teams often use Tera Blast sweepers to cleave big holes through the opposing team or outright sweep with them, something rarely seen with Hidden Power when it was available since it was mainly used to lure very specific Pokemon.
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some slight caveats here:
- espathra could, and can, beat steel-types and dark-types without tera blast given the proper setup opportunities, which it has historically been able to find very easily (admittedly with help from cheater shed tail but it did well enough in the period between the cyclizar ban and the rise of orthworm). people insisting espathra would be balanced or reasonable without tera blast or tera are going to get a nasty shock the next time espathra is introduced to an ou environment
- i don't remember tera blast being a point of contention in the first kyurem suspect at all and it was really not a major point in the second one, just a drop in the endless sea of busted ass sets that nobody could get around at the time
- i personally think roaring moon never stopped being broken, dropping it was a mistake in the first place, and tera blast just made people wake up to what should have already been known
Idk if talking a discussion about this is pushing "theorymonning" and if that's the case, I know it's forbidden and I will stop talking about this. But if Tera Blast gets banned, it's not that Eleki will be dropping. It's that it's gonna be straight up bad.
60% - 70% of teams have either Lando, Tusk or Gliscor (probably more, tbh. On ladder you feel that it's like 90%). That means every team has a member you have to hit with... Swift? Regieleki has 0 setup, it's predictable, it's worse at getting screens than Deoxys since Deo has a lot more coverage, hazards AND Taunt, and even if you find the pivot to hit... It's not that strong man. Transistor being x1.3 makes it even worse
Why are you using that electric type when you can just trade with Raging Bolt?
As for TBlast itself, I think it would make Dragonite bearable for the moment. I don't think that the move actually adds anything positive to the tier. You're not using TBlast on Gyarados to have coverage and giving it a niche, or on a low tier pokémon to have a shot at killing a top tier. 90% of the time is your mickey mouse answer with Kingambit, Kyurem and Dragonite to clean up tusk, Gholdengo or Zamazenta. It's even fishier than Veil or Psychic terrain teams imo
Seeing as that is the policy that exists, I don’t know why you would expect any different.
You can argue a thread on changing tiering policy would be more productive than one on Tera Blast, but given the context and topic at hand, playing this off as a bad thing is misleading. If someone wants to make that thread, that’s between them and tiering admins — while I wouldn’t personally support it, it would then go beyond just OU at that point.
The point of that thread is to discuss tiering of Tera Blast, not how to bend the rules to cover to someone’s agenda pertaining to Tera Blast. This was made clear in the OP and done so purposefully.
The relevant tiering policy was updated/modernized this past Summer. It is quite literally the most recently amended tiering policy on the entire website…It’s not like we are dealing with ancient, generations old framework. This was done in direct response to some moves released this generation and how leadership/tiering admins (very much not OU specific) believes they are best handled. See: banning Last Respects or Shed Tail once they had numerous users and clearly broke the majority of them. This was not previously applicable to the same extent and, therefore, not fully litigated.
If you end up banning moves like Tera Blast, which at best contribute to a ban of a handful of Pokemon, then you are going to have to accept some uncomfortable ripples as a byproduct. There are other moves that exist as the common thread between multiple bans. You cannot just draw an arbitrary line in the sand. This is why we focus on tiering Pokemon first and foremost. It’s not like you can strictly divorce Tera Blast from Dragonite either — Tera Blast doesn’t cause the vast majority of users to be broken, so if it’s broken on Dragonite, then you would be hard-pressed to argue without overwhelming counters that it has to be the target, not the Pokemon. That’s just the surface level of it, but yea
I agree with this for the most part but I do want to discuss the specific pokemon (as well as Espathra) that you mentioned above and if/why they were problematic because of tera blast.
Regieleki: No problems with this one. This is a prime example of a pokemon being broken because of tera blast though it is arguable whether it was because of tera blast itself or the flaws of Regieleki that tera blast helped fix.
Espathra: This is a pokemon that would be broken in my opinion without tera blast but was definitely banned because of it imo. If it was allowed back in OU, it would still probably run over the tier but there is a chance that both steel types and the plentiful amount of priority users would be able to keep it at bay.
Volcarona: It is even more contentious whether Volcarona would have been banned without tera blast than Espathra. Tera blast was definitely what pushed it over the edge, but it is possible tera on its own was what made it so broken in the first place. I personally think that without tera blast Volcarona would be a relatively balanced pokemon in OU.
Gouging Fire: While tera blast certainly helped, this pokemon was already broken due to its insane set variety and snowballing potential thanks to Protosynthesis.
Roaring Moon: Whether it is broken without tera blast is up for debate but no matter what anyone says this pokemon was banned because of TB Fairy. Before the "discovery" of the TB Fairy set there was little discussion on the idea of Roaring Moon being broken as it was usually pretty predictable. It was simply another powerful dragon dance sweeper that would face competition from others such as Dragonite and Kyurem. However, at some point (I want to say a month but I can't remember the exact time) before the suspect and eventual ban, a huge wave of experimentation happened that resulted in a lot of new Roaring Moon sets being discovered with easily the most controversial one being TB Fairy. Once people realized this set was as dangerous as it was people immediately began to call for a suspect test. I personally believe that we should have waited another month to see if this set was just another flavor of the month set or not, but I digress. What is important is that tera blast was an incredibly important factor in the ban of Roaring Moon and I will come back to TB Fairy specifically later. It is possible that Roaring Moon would have been broken anyway as people started to realize you could sacrifice speed on Roaring Moon for more bulk but either way the main reason it was suspected and banned was because TB Fairy was so powerful.
Kyurem: This pokemon was suspected mainly because of its set variety but tera blast was a big reason for this variety in the first place. Without tera blast, dragon dance sets would be far less powerful as there are plenty of steel types in the tier that easily switch in and beat it. However, tera blast gave it the coverage needed to run some truly scary combos such as TB Ground who's only counter was Corviknight and TB Fire who's only counter was the (at the time) rare Heatran. I do not think Kyurem would have been nearly as scary if it didn't have access to tera blast and it already feels way less scary now that its role as a dragon dance sweeper has been more or less outclassed by Dragonite. Even with Dragonite being better in most cases though, Kyurem still has reason to be used as a dragon dance sweeper and while I don't personally see it very often I am sure it is used in tournaments enough to be a threat. Without tera blast, Kyurem would probably not be nearly as broken even if it would still be quite good thanks to its special sets.
Dragonite: After Roaring Moon was banned, people quickly figured out that Dragonite could do a lot of the same things that Roaring Moon did and in some cases it could do them more effectively thanks to extreme speed and multiscale. However, while it also uses tera effectively in general, some of its most polarizing sets use tera blast, with the most common ones being TB Flying to finally get a STAB flying move, and TB Fairy to give it some great neutral coverage and a solid defensive type. Dragonite is particularly scary because it can also utilize many defensive moves such as encore and roost to make sweeping even easier. Dragonite is already very good without tera blast but it is hard not to argue that it would be tera blast that pushes Dragonite over the edge in a suspect.
For every pokemon mentioned here (except Gouging Fire) there is a clear pattern of tera blast either being the main reason or a major cause of a pokemon being broken. While I am not sure myself if tera blast is broken or not, there is enough evidence from all of the pokemon I have mentioned as well as the other controversial tera blast users not on this list to warrant a suspect in my opinion. If not that, the policy thread should at least be reopened for discussion and allowed to be a bit more flexible with the discussion. Thank you for reading and please don't be too harsh with any replies.
Just ban
There's also the common pattern of "(Offense boost + Speed Boost) + TeraBlast = Broken" like almost all of the mons mentioned use some form of DD/QD to sweep games with the Tera Mechanic. Another thing with these Pokemon is that they all have high BST's with the just right investment in speed and bulk that allows them to not be glass cannons while also not being so slow as to not be out sped my much. Not to mention bulk investment means the ability to get multiple boosts. Like seriously look at this list, and realize that almost every single one of these mons have had/used a bulky set to great effect. These type of Pokemon are just not compatible with Tera imo. Meaning suspect Dragonite you cowards.
Man…this is why people think smogon is full of elitist nerds. What makes you such an enlightened thinker that you know better than the unclecharizard83’s on what “the deeper problem” is?? People can have different opinions on the nature of things (or if there’s even a problem at all!) without being ignorant.
Things don’t go your way and then you want to change the rules or backdoor some unpopular change through restricted-access forums. Cmon! In the absence of certainty, there is data, process, and dialogue; hunches are not a way to steer a community of more than one.
I respect whatever your opinions may be on Tera blast, but bespoke policy changes are not the way to go.
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How did you deal with Pecharunt here? Just Garg? It seems like it has a lot of opportunities to come in and pivot.
It has a great switch in on everything but Bolt and terrain helps it against Lando.
Honestly while I'm not too much involved in this particular discussion about Tera Blast, I've seen various previous discussions and threads and wanted to give my thoughts.
Personally I don't understand how people think a Tera Blast suspect is even possible. Tera Blast is not even close to the level that a problematic move should be like Shed Tail or Last Respects. Sure, Tera Blast has definitely broken a few mons, I think Eleki is the undisputed case but there are other high profile ones like Espratha, and Volcarona but the thing is, Tera Blast is not anywhere near broken enough to be banned as a whole.
For example, look at OU currently, Serperior uses it just fine as does Enamorus with their Contrary sets. Ghold and Pult are also strong users of Tera Blast that aren't viewed as broken (or if you hate ghold like me, broken because of it). Even mons like Iron Moth and Kyurem can run Tera Blast and I never hear of those mons being a problem specifically because of it.
Tera Blast isn't something where its basically broken on everything like Baton Pass (Shout-out to Eevee for helping with that in Gen7 Ubers) and I feel that alone prevents it from being suspect worthy, there are just too many users of the move that are balanced with it. It feels close to level of arguing Dragon Dance is broken since we have just as many mons banned with it that used it (Bax, Moon and Gouging) as the number that currently use it (Pult, Dnite and Kyurem) and banning DD would make Moon and Gouging drop (not advocating for a DD ban lmao, just trying to prove a point). Also it doesn't help with how tied Tera Blast is to Tera as a whole. Like when people say Tera Blast is a problem, they don't mean Tera Blast as a whole when Tera'd is an issue, just using Tera Blast in combination with a different type (so not stellar or stab) for additional coverage is broken. So you can argue its one part of a move, when a specific mechanic limited to one mon is used and only when used to change type. (The only possible exception to this is Dragonite, and it really is the only case with Tera Blast Flying)
And while I do get that, no-one likes being caught off-guard by an unsuspecting Tera type + blast and then proceed to lose the game, I do think if anything was to happen, it should be Tera as a whole. Now as a disclaimer I don't want Tera suspected, but the point i'm trying to make, is that the type change is often just as advantageous as Tera Blast. Changing your type allows you to take less damage or in some cases no damage/status at all depending on the type, and in some cases that's just game ending. Like for example, sure Tera Ground Volc could do heavy damage to Clod and make life difficult, but so did running Tera Grass Sub so Clod can't do anything as you wear it down between Fiery Dances and boosted Giga Drains without the need for Tera Blast. Giving a setup sweeper even one extra turn due to it changing type can really change a battle and I think that certain mons like Moon, Gouging or Espratha could still abuse that to do what they did before they were banned. Like Moon and Gouging didn't need to run Tera Blast to be broken enough to be banned, they had multiple sets that were very good.
So for the people on the pro-ban train, how many users need to be broken before you think its too much, and what about the mons in the tier that can use it without issues, do you think that makes any difference at all? Also what makes you more resistant to banning the problematic tera blast users over the move itself, when banning tera blast will let some very debatable mons possibly back into the tier which can wound up being rebanned anyways?
Personally I don't understand how people think a Tera Blast suspect is even possible. Tera Blast is not even close to the level that a problematic move should be like Shed Tail or Last Respects. Sure, Tera Blast has definitely broken a few mons, I think Eleki is the undisputed case but there are other high profile ones like Espratha, and Volcarona but the thing is, Tera Blast is not anywhere near broken enough to be banned as a whole.
For example, look at OU currently, Serperior uses it just fine as does Enamorus with their Contrary sets. Ghold and Pult are also strong users of Tera Blast that aren't viewed as broken (or if you hate ghold like me, broken because of it). Even mons like Iron Moth and Kyurem can run Tera Blast and I never hear of those mons being a problem specifically because of it.
Tera Blast isn't something where its basically broken on everything like Baton Pass (Shout-out to Eevee for helping with that in Gen7 Ubers) and I feel that alone prevents it from being suspect worthy, there are just too many users of the move that are balanced with it. It feels close to level of arguing Dragon Dance is broken since we have just as many mons banned with it that used it (Bax, Moon and Gouging) as the number that currently use it (Pult, Dnite and Kyurem) and banning DD would make Moon and Gouging drop (not advocating for a DD ban lmao, just trying to prove a point). Also it doesn't help with how tied Tera Blast is to Tera as a whole. Like when people say Tera Blast is a problem, they don't mean Tera Blast as a whole when Tera'd is an issue, just using Tera Blast in combination with a different type (so not stellar or stab) for additional coverage is broken. So you can argue its one part of a move, when a specific mechanic limited to one mon is used and only when used to change type. (The only possible exception to this is Dragonite, and it really is the only case with Tera Blast Flying)
And while I do get that, no-one likes being caught off-guard by an unsuspecting Tera type + blast and then proceed to lose the game, I do think if anything was to happen, it should be Tera as a whole. Now as a disclaimer I don't want Tera suspected, but the point i'm trying to make, is that the type change is often just as advantageous as Tera Blast. Changing your type allows you to take less damage or in some cases no damage/status at all depending on the type, and in some cases that's just game ending. Like for example, sure Tera Ground Volc could do heavy damage to Clod and make life difficult, but so did running Tera Grass Sub so Clod can't do anything as you wear it down between Fiery Dances and boosted Giga Drains without the need for Tera Blast. Giving a setup sweeper even one extra turn due to it changing type can really change a battle and I think that certain mons like Moon, Gouging or Espratha could still abuse that to do what they did before they were banned. Like Moon and Gouging didn't need to run Tera Blast to be broken enough to be banned, they had multiple sets that were very good.
So for the people on the pro-ban train, how many users need to be broken before you think its too much, and what about the mons in the tier that can use it without issues, do you think that makes any difference at all? Also what makes you more resistant to banning the problematic tera blast users over the move itself, when banning tera blast will let some very debatable mons possibly back into the tier which can wound up being rebanned anyways?
I just want to ask; how long ago was the last suspect test and inbetween then and now what have we done?
I'm just pointing out tera/tera blast has been a controversial topic for the past fucking 4 years and you could pick any 2 weeks to chisel it in stone with a suspect test that "the result is official now we put it behind us". Why is it harder to pass a suspect on single most controversial topic than the big beautiful bill just to lay it to rest already? Worst result; turns out it actually needed to be banned, best result: you get to post a meme about how dumb pro banners are, imagine how glorious the image could be and how good it would feel to be right.
That thread on tera blast did not feel like it ended on a definitive no, it felt like it ended in favor of a suspect, nothing happened, thread went silent and got closed. Reactions on post certainly felt like they favored some opinions more than others. I would not suggest that thread was a proper case closed at all if we're truly treating it that way.
I do think the tier would be healthier without it. Every suspect, and strong pokemon never suspected yet but finger pointed at, has had tera be a common denominator towards them with like 1 exception.. usually being "but I can never know if it has TB!" as half the problem (the other being just type switching itself). I will say TB looks unappealing to ban to some because like in the original tera test, it doesn't sit right to 'nerf tera' over outright pick a side on tera as a whole, but tera blast itself has proven a sizable portion can make it work... and it can keep shitmons afloat in a tier that don't offer much in (iron moth easily drops, a lot of broken pokemon become balanced enough to never spark discussion, there's been instances of random low tier garbage getting boosted like frosmoth being playable at one point).
If game health is the goal then I have to ask what exactly tera blast does to keep the game healthy cause I don't see downsides if it was snapped. You could pluck out gholdengo and see the entire tier burst into chaos but what exactly is tera blast keeping at bay that it improves the quality of the game beyond 'it got some mons banned and makes less bannable ones egregious to check".
I'm just pointing out tera/tera blast has been a controversial topic for the past fucking 4 years and you could pick any 2 weeks to chisel it in stone with a suspect test that "the result is official now we put it behind us". Why is it harder to pass a suspect on single most controversial topic than the big beautiful bill just to lay it to rest already? Worst result; turns out it actually needed to be banned, best result: you get to post a meme about how dumb pro banners are, imagine how glorious the image could be and how good it would feel to be right.
That thread on tera blast did not feel like it ended on a definitive no, it felt like it ended in favor of a suspect, nothing happened, thread went silent and got closed. Reactions on post certainly felt like they favored some opinions more than others. I would not suggest that thread was a proper case closed at all if we're truly treating it that way.
I do think the tier would be healthier without it. Every suspect, and strong pokemon never suspected yet but finger pointed at, has had tera be a common denominator towards them with like 1 exception.. usually being "but I can never know if it has TB!" as half the problem (the other being just type switching itself). I will say TB looks unappealing to ban to some because like in the original tera test, it doesn't sit right to 'nerf tera' over outright pick a side on tera as a whole, but tera blast itself has proven a sizable portion can make it work... and it can keep shitmons afloat in a tier that don't offer much in (iron moth easily drops, a lot of broken pokemon become balanced enough to never spark discussion, there's been instances of random low tier garbage getting boosted like frosmoth being playable at one point).
If game health is the goal then I have to ask what exactly tera blast does to keep the game healthy cause I don't see downsides if it was snapped. You could pluck out gholdengo and see the entire tier burst into chaos but what exactly is tera blast keeping at bay that it improves the quality of the game beyond 'it got some mons banned and makes less bannable ones egregious to check".
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The last suspect was Roaring Moon, 6 months and half ago. After this, in June, Acupressure was included in the Evasion Clause. No mention in this thread. I don't disagree with the action, it was just a slip-up because we're more accustomed to more transparency in this generation, at least until the middle of this year. In July, We had a discussion in the policy review about Tera Blast, it is temporarily off the table.
Apparently, we can still discuss the pieces, but not the board. Nothing prevents us from being vocal in the next survey, should it still occur. I still think people weigh the costs over the benefits. And an action on this Move would trigger a domino effect of complaints about previous bans.
I still think it's the best course of action, but if it's off the table, I won't hesitate to support an action on Dragonite, and the next best Tera Blast abuser, and the next... Leaks aside, we still have over a year with SV as the Current Gen, plenty of time to improve the tier.
The buzz around Wellspring has calmed down a bit since Rillaboom's rise, but it's still my personal top 1. Other things like Gliscor and Kyurem will apparently never reach the top priority again. I'm curious about the community's thoughts on Kingambit, though.
Just so as not to miss the joke.
It's been three weeks since the survey was extended for the second time. No one is calling for a quick ban, some people are calling for action on some Pokémon (or Tera Blast), but most just want their opinions heard, and we're not even sure if the community will agree on anything.
I understand the POV for stability in tournaments, but these are Current Gen tournaments, and players should be willing to adapt to changes that may occur in the tier. Adapting is also part of striving to be the best, or the champion.
A Tera suspect outright has been off the table for many months. There was a public announcement made on this that is still visible.
A Tera Blast suspect is not currently on the table per the PR thread above and I do not see how it jives with tiering policy at all. If you wish for tiering policy to change, I personally disagree, but that also goes above my head and to the general policy arena. I have been very transparent about this.
Wellspring, Dragonite, and others will be on the survey that I just put the finishing touches on yesterday. I do not personally support a ban on anything right now I don’t think, but I can totally get where people are coming from on Dragonite (and Kyurem/Wellspring to a slightly lesser extent). The survey will have an open ended question for other topics and even include a retest candidate people brought to my attention.
Obviously the results of the survey are not the sole decider of anything — the council had the final call and I will be in regular talks with them once we proceed here. Hope this paints a more clear picture.
No clue why people care about the timeline since the last suspect — there is not a constant or even necessarily regular schedule or need for tiering change or suspect tests. They happen on an as-needed basis after all.
A Tera Blast suspect is not currently on the table per the PR thread above and I do not see how it jives with tiering policy at all. If you wish for tiering policy to change, I personally disagree, but that also goes above my head and to the general policy arena. I have been very transparent about this.
Wellspring, Dragonite, and others will be on the survey that I just put the finishing touches on yesterday. I do not personally support a ban on anything right now I don’t think, but I can totally get where people are coming from on Dragonite (and Kyurem/Wellspring to a slightly lesser extent). The survey will have an open ended question for other topics and even include a retest candidate people brought to my attention.
Obviously the results of the survey are not the sole decider of anything — the council had the final call and I will be in regular talks with them once we proceed here. Hope this paints a more clear picture.
No clue why people care about the timeline since the last suspect — there is not a constant or even necessarily regular schedule or need for tiering change or suspect tests. They happen on an as-needed basis after all.
Finally, I want to make a separate post on this logic — we do not tier this way. The onus is always on the side opposite the status quo to prove their point. “Why is Tera Blast broken?” would be the probing question, not “What do we even gain by keeping Tera Blast?” and so on.
How you define “health” or how I define “skill” or how the next person defines “reasonable” and so on are largely arbitrary, falling within the confines of individual opinion. This is why we work within more proven, defined terminology and we do not play the “but why not” game.
Otherwise, we would litter the banlist with undesirable Pokemon. Toxapex and Clefable would’ve been banned from prior generations, the crusade against Booster Energy from earlier this generation may have come to fruition, and so on. It’s not a popularity contest or a “I dislike this so we can do without it” game so much as it’s an assessment of what is or isn’t banworthy.
And as an aside, it’s not possible to argue Tera Blast as unhealthy without taking major characteristics of its most prominent abusers into account. Tera Blast is not unhealthy on Enamorus, Iron Moth, Serperior, Zapdos, etc. — the vast majority of users are well within acceptable confines.