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Pokemon Scarlet & Violet - 18th Nov 2022! **OFFICIAL INFO ONLY**
- Thread starter DHR-107
- Start date
I think water type volcarona is much better than ground volcarona. You don't need the 4x super effective hit on Heatran. STAB Tera Blast will do plenty of damage already. Volcarona is going to be amazing on rain teams. You can compliment tera blast with hurricane. So quiver dance roost tera blast and hurricane will be all it needs. Going to be fun spamming volc once the meta begins.
I was just thinking how mew will be so good too. it can turn steel type and run cosmic power stored power body press and roost. a lot of peoples way of handling mew is trough toxic timers but now the steel type completely negates that.
or it can also run iron defense calm mind roost and flash cannon or move of your choice. A mono attack set up sweeper. you're going to pray for crits against it
I was just thinking how mew will be so good too. it can turn steel type and run cosmic power stored power body press and roost. a lot of peoples way of handling mew is trough toxic timers but now the steel type completely negates that.
or it can also run iron defense calm mind roost and flash cannon or move of your choice. A mono attack set up sweeper. you're going to pray for crits against it
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All this speculation got me thinking... Is there any pokemon that would like to Terastal to Posion/Ice/Bug?
Right now, the only two pure poison types tiered are Garbodor and Weezing, in PU, and there are no Pure Bugs tiered. For Ice there are Galarian-Darmanitan banned to Ubers, Vanilluxe lost at PUBL and Glastrier beeing C-Rank in PU.
Of course there will be new pokemon, but right now i can't see any making good use of these tera types.
Right now, the only two pure poison types tiered are Garbodor and Weezing, in PU, and there are no Pure Bugs tiered. For Ice there are Galarian-Darmanitan banned to Ubers, Vanilluxe lost at PUBL and Glastrier beeing C-Rank in PU.
Of course there will be new pokemon, but right now i can't see any making good use of these tera types.
Eleki for BoltBeam with Tera Blast
As someone pointed earlier, defensively teralyzing a levitater like into poison type may be actually better than into steel in some scenarios, you do give up some resists but you keep the immunity to Toxic while only having 1 immunity vs Psychic instead of two toward Fire and Fighting (which you now resist)
Fairy Tera Pixie Plate Pixilate Sylveon Hyper Voice goes brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Besides that stuff like Steel Hydreigon, Moxie Gyarados into either Ground (most likely since you can just lure in Electrics and EQ) or Flying, (less likely since Tera Blast is potentially a conditionally available better STAB than Bounce, otherwise you're down a move slot) Fire Arcanine, Steel Garchomp if it gets in maybe. Electric Eelektross is gonna be fun, even if it kinda sucks.
Stuff that's good on their own will shine more, imo, since Terastal is a once per battle thing and having more options on what you want to click Terastallize on is a good thing.
The best looking Pokemon at first glance are the ones that can use Terastallize Offensively and Defensively at the same time by losing a type that hurts more than it helps and buffing the STAB you actually want. Volcarona and Stakataka were already pointed out, but Zygarde mostly spams Thousand Arrows and sometimes likes not dying to any Ice Attack more than the resists its Dragon Type gives. Another good example is almost every Bug type with good secondary STAB that isn't part Steel.
I've said before that Clawitzer looks good for lower tiers because Mega Launcher makes it so Aura Sphere and Dark Pulse are practically secondary STAB moves, so you could give them STAB on top of that. You can't take as much advantage with Mega Launcher as a Water Type, so why not go nuts with Fighting, Dark, or Dragon if you really want to use Dragon Pulse?
Purely Defensively, as Worldie said that I said, Cresselia gets improved matchups against 6 types and a Toxic Immunity as the cost of only gaining a Psychic weakness by turning into a Poison type. She's probably the biggest winner from Tera Poison any Levitate Pokemon, but Dark/Poison's only weakness is Ground, so it would make sense if a Dark Type with Levitate would be a good Tera Poison too. Coincidently, the one Dark Type with Levitate, Hydreigon, has been talked as being able to use Tera Steel to lure Fairy Types. Poison could do the same thing, but Tera Steel is more tempting for Hydreigon because of wanting to still have offensive power and being able to use Flash Cannon instead of Belch or Tera Blast. There's also the whole Steel is Steel thing for any Defensive Pokemon, but Tera Steel might be a trap because of Maganzone. (One I'd still gladdly fall for though! :p) Speaking of, does anyone think Non-Body Press Magenzone could win against a Steel Blissey? >:D I'm repeating myself again with this too, but Avalugg is viable in SwSh OU even though it's a Defensive Ice Type. Needless to say, being able to change type is a massive buff. (Hisuian Avalugg gains even more from changing type than Original Avalugg does, but that's because Ice/Rock sucks. Stick with the original unless the increased Speed and Attack is somehow worth the lower Special Defense.)
Depends on what new mons arise, and depends on tblast power and how much you value your volc getting taunted or toxicd before killing tran.
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just heard aims opinion on type changing regarding setup sweepers and yep, exactly my thoughts. I'd be surprised if it ends up not being broken. in shofus words "setup sweepers are only hindered by the counters that come in to stop them", what i've been saying since i knew about trizing. The moment a setup sweeper changes its typing it stops being the same Pokémon. A water volc is not a water volc, is a 85 60 65 125 105 100 +1spa +1 spd +1 vel pure water type; if your desired counter for it stops being so, the team falls apart.
There are a few problems with this idea.
A. Aside from shifting typings around, changing to special for special attackers, and possibly being stronger, this isn’t really different from Hidden Power. Besides Power, this wouldn’t be that different from Volcarona running HP Water or Ground besides resisting Magma Storm now.
B. Unlike Hidden Power, Terastalling means Volcarona would lose out on one of its STABs and you also will just have a useless move in non-Terastallized Terablast.
Now I don’t doubt sweepers will use this mechanic and Terablast, I think that all archetypes of Pokemon will use it, but the mechanic isn’t too busted and the move Terablast won’t be too broken either if HP wasn’t.
It is completely different. Hidden Power is a move; a change of typing is effectively changing the very nature of the Pokémon and what can or cannot counter it.
You may teach Scale Shot Garchomp Hidden Power Ice (this is a trash example, but to keep things coherent), it doesn't change the fact that said Garchomp can terastalize into Ice Type Garchomp in Weaviles ice shard and demolish Weavile and the rest of your team (say lando-t and friends) because, well, let's say you weren't prepared for a Garchomp that is not a Garchomp, but a pure ice type with the stats of Garchomp a +1 in speed and a spammable physical ice stab. I used the same example too to keep things coherent again.
It's more broken than you think because of all of its implication in the grand scheme of the game, but we will see.
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I'm expecting Tera Blast to be a 80 BP Normal move until terastalized. I initially was against this BP, but the tradeoffs for having widespread STAB for every Tera Type are:
- Tera Blast has absolutely no utility. It's probably still better to make a Dark Terastal of a mon with Knock Off than of a mon with Tera Blast, for instance. Tera Blast is most likely just a very basic move with no secondary effects or added tags, which makes room for other moves to stand out or have potential synergy with an ability or something like that. This is essentially what would make some Terastal mons benefit more from their species' learnpool imo, you'd sooner want a mon with Shadow Ball for even the slightest chance to lower Sp Def compared to Tera Blast.
- More relevantly, though, through movepool flexbility you can have more than one mon designed around Terastal per team. If a mon is already using something such as Earthquake for coverage, it could be your Ground terastal, but doesn't necessarily need to be your dedicated Terastal for every match, leaving a lot of room for your other 5 mons to potentially do the same thing. With Tera Blast, you pretty much dedicate on slot to Terastal, having more or less a dead moveslot before the mechanic activates. This is a huge cost imo as it removes any flexbility your team could have when facing another team.
So far Terastal has me a lot more intrigued than past gimmicks, personally. I feel its going to add a lot more layers to teambuilding than Z-moves used to and that its going to be a lot more balanced than Dynamax. Will probably take some getting used to, but I'm a lot more optimistic that this one might be actually interesting for once
- Tera Blast has absolutely no utility. It's probably still better to make a Dark Terastal of a mon with Knock Off than of a mon with Tera Blast, for instance. Tera Blast is most likely just a very basic move with no secondary effects or added tags, which makes room for other moves to stand out or have potential synergy with an ability or something like that. This is essentially what would make some Terastal mons benefit more from their species' learnpool imo, you'd sooner want a mon with Shadow Ball for even the slightest chance to lower Sp Def compared to Tera Blast.
- More relevantly, though, through movepool flexbility you can have more than one mon designed around Terastal per team. If a mon is already using something such as Earthquake for coverage, it could be your Ground terastal, but doesn't necessarily need to be your dedicated Terastal for every match, leaving a lot of room for your other 5 mons to potentially do the same thing. With Tera Blast, you pretty much dedicate on slot to Terastal, having more or less a dead moveslot before the mechanic activates. This is a huge cost imo as it removes any flexbility your team could have when facing another team.
So far Terastal has me a lot more intrigued than past gimmicks, personally. I feel its going to add a lot more layers to teambuilding than Z-moves used to and that its going to be a lot more balanced than Dynamax. Will probably take some getting used to, but I'm a lot more optimistic that this one might be actually interesting for once
Pure Rock-type DD Tyranitar's gonna go crazy. Still gains the SpDef boost from Sand Stream, but turns the 4x Fighting weakness into just 2x, as well as removing the weaknesses to Bug and Fairy, to find much better setup opportunities. Depending on how strong Tera Blast is, I can see it going for this move over the unreliable Stone Edge, although the latter will still be an option for the raw power. I can see Tyranitar kind of struggling to turn into any other type that isn't immune to Sand Stream if it aims to stick around, because turning into Ghost-type like in the trailer, for example, will make it vulnerable to its own Sandstorm chip. Won't be a problem for pure offensive sets, but for bulkier support sets, it might want to keep Rock or turn to Steel or Ground if it aims to Tera.
Electric-type Cresselia being immune to Super Effective attacks outside of Mold Breaker sounds unfair as hell. Steel-type is possible, as well, to avoid Toxic and become resistant to Stealth Rock while still avoiding Spikes.
Fairy-type Blissey and Chansey both sound like demonic options for stall teams.
Conceivably, a TTar set intending to use a non-sandstorm type could run Unnerve instead. Rock with Sand Stream is probably still optimal, though.
You're thinking in terms of countering individual mons. This shifts things to trying to counter types. You don't have a Garchomp counter which dies when it swaps to Ice, you run a Dragon counter, then swap to your anti-Ice mon when Garchomp turns out to be Ice this time. And maybe there's too many threats to deal with, but the flexibility for defensive mons this brings is also pretty good. I just think you're overly concerned when we don't have full information. Z moves were another "overwhelm counters" button and they turned out mostly fine.
I was thinking about this, because the -Ate abilities raise a lot of questions with Terablast and Tera in general. Presumably, T-Ghost Sylveon's Shadow Ball, Moonblast, and Hyper Voice all work normally. How does Pixilate Ghost Sylveon's Tera Blast work? Or Pixilate Fairy Sylveon Terablast?
If TeraBlast works BEFORE Pixilate, then it changes type and Pixilate doesn't matter at all. If it works after Pixilate, then Terablast becomes Fairy, gets 20% boost, THEN changes to the Tera type. That could be a really weird way of getting a power boost on an unusual type, while keeping Pixilate Hyper Voice as coverage.
There's basically 3 things mons can do with Tera:
Super-STAB
Coverage+
Actual defenses
The Super Stab mons will be stuff that's already monotype or where their secondary type isn't a big deal. Stacking multipliers is nice too. Barraskewda, Sylveon, Salamence, lots of stuff that has one "I win" button they click a lot and want to make even better.
Coverage+ is mons that don't really like either STAB, but want to either be able to lure a counter or to be able to bop literally anything. Gyarados could go basically any type and destroy things, Zerarora runs wild with more coverage, Hydreigon with STAB Poison/Steel+Fire Blast+Draco overwhelms a lot of traditional options, Rapid Spin+Tera Blast on a mon that becomes Dark to handle hazard stacking.
Defenses are interesting, because they could be stall or bulky offense. People have already mentioned stuff like Ghost Chansey, but that feels very bad vs Knock Off. But a Bulky Water that's no longer water, that's scary. Steel Pelipper helps out Rain teams a lot. Or something with an immunity ability and the right type could be scary, specifically Poison/Steel Hydreigon on a Dragon-spam team.
One thing is that I definitely expect to see all of those as possibilities on the same team at once. Say, Rain. You have a Pelipper with a Tera type that lets it win weather wars, a Rain sweeper with Water-Tera to blow holes in any wall, and a Rain Sweeper with a coverage tera type and Tera Beam to lure in their water-counter and bop it. Pick as needed for the situation.
Stakataka is one thing, but neither Arctozolt or Volcanion want to get rid of one of their types.
And on that note, Alakazam would nake a pretty good ice tera candidate thanks to offensove stats and magic guard as well as nasty plot.
This is actually quite creative and makes me wonder what other pokemon may alter their types to become a fit on weather teams. Obviously there is Chlorophyll sun sweepers becoming fire type, but I wonder if there are other possibilities like Stoutland becoming rock type for sand teams
Or DeoD. Turn it into a steel type with pressure, and then laugh as it never dies while boosting to a game winning state. That's a fun thought.
I think steel is honestly the best choice for Cress. Immunity to all hazards but rocks which it would resist, and only two weaknesses. Plus reliable recovery.
Other pokemon I'm curious about are Jirachi, Metagross and Coalossal. Jirachi I think has merit with calm mind sets with Moonblast, Metagross has a lot of possibilities with pure steel and i think Coallosal may have some merit in lower tiees defensively as a spiker and spinner.
For Volcarona specifically, I think Ground is going to be its go-to since it will be able to beat Heatran, Toxapex, and Tyranitar in one fell swoop. However, I do see Water being pretty good to get more setup opportunities against stuff like Tapu Fini, while also maintaining the advantage vs Heatran and Tyranitar. I could also see it using several other types like Ice, Fairy, etc. to handle some of its other problem matchups like Dragonite, Garchomp, etc. It definitely will be a scary threat to watch out for.
A lot of lower tier Pokemon will probably benefit from an 80 - 100 BP normal move than their standard coverage now that Hidden Power / Return are gone. Klingklang, Lilligant, and Jolteon are some pokemon that would probably run an 80 BP normal move over some of their current options (Lilligant already does actually). That being said, in higher tiers, Tera Blast will likely be a dead slot, yeah.
Because of this, I think Zeraora will be one of if not the best user of Tera Types since it can do all 3 and often combining Coverage with Defense. You get to Super STAB Plasma Fist, STAB Grass Knot while getting the Grass type, Ice type Terablast for Grounds like Landorus-T, STAB Acrobatics (and being Flying while having Volt Absorb), STAB Play Rough, STAB Close Combat, Water Terablast if you don’t want to use Ice just to beat Landorus-T, and all these types also add to its surprisingly good defensive utility (besides Ice and Electric for obvious reasons).
I feel similarly for Dragapult since it’s a lot like Zeraora, but would compromise more and doesn’t have an ability like Volt Absorb to mix with defensive typings like Flying Zeraora and Grass Heatran would.
True, a Ground-Type Dragonite firing off STAB EQs is definitely something great. I could still see Tera Blast being used if Dragonite decides to go Rock or Ice-Type to defeat Zapdos without the nasty thirty-percent chance of getting Paralyzed, as it can't do that otherwise. Still, overall, I think it'd be better off going for better STAB.
And yeah, I don't think Pelipper will care much about losing its Water-Typing when it's not a Scarf set, and going something like Steel would provide a great Steel-Type defensive pivot that neuters its Fire-Type weakness with Drizzle.
I forgot about that, that would be both a terrifying set-up sweeper and defensive monster. While it doesn't seem to care much for Steel STAB, I don't see that as an issue since it doesn't really run STAB anyways.
I do agree that Tera Blast would be only on niche sets, but I still see potential in being able to blast away certain checks for your team. But yeah, most of the best Pokemon don't really need Tera Blast honestly. However, Fire-Type Magnezone sounds like a nightmare to face for Steel-Types. Even Heatran can't reliably beat it if it invests in surviving Earth Power to Mirror Coat the damage back.
The possibility of a Super STAB already puts strain on the check to the Pokemon's base typing (since they need to stay out of KO range of Adaptability-boosted attacks). If you need to also make sure the check to the possible swapped type stays healthy, it'll be even harder to stay afloat, especially when there are multiple potential users on the opponent's team.
Even if your defensive Pokemon changes type to resist an opposing sweeper's attacks, it still needs to be able to damage, status, or (p)haze them or else you'll just get set up on/hit with a coverage move. Decently bulky setup sweepers (especially those with recovery) might not be brought down with non-STAB attacks from defensive Pokemon, and many Teras can be used for status immunities. Dragonite can Tera to Steel or Ground in order to avoid Toxic/TWave, and as a Steel type it'll avoid many of the supereffective hits that would ordinarily be used to bring it down (namely Fairy and Ice attacks). And if the Pokemon you just brought in to check it no longer has the ability to threaten it, you just give it multiple turns of free setup.
Edit: Steel Dragonite on Screens HO just seems plain unfair. It'll be super easy to get free setup turns with the midgame typeswap and it's so bulky that you'll have to Haze it or burn it or you just lose.
Edit 2: It'd be a really bad time for them to block past-gen moves from being sent to current gen games, because a lot of these Pokemon get a lot harder to check with universal Toxic gone.
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A Pokemon I'd wanna try if/when it's added would be Regieleki as an Ice-Type. I'm not sure how good it would be as it loses power to its Electric-Type moves, but being that fast with Volt Switch + BoltBeam coverage sounds like fun to play around with, especially since I wouldn't have to care about Weaviles revenge killing it.
I'm also curious, do you guys see Landorus-Therian utilizing any different types? Groud and Flying is already such powerful typing and I think it'd be better to utilize the Tera on something else that really wants the type change.
I'm also curious, do you guys see Landorus-Therian utilizing any different types? Groud and Flying is already such powerful typing and I think it'd be better to utilize the Tera on something else that really wants the type change.
If you use Tera on Magnezone, it would be best to use a Body Press set.
An issue with Terastallizing Magnezone for coverage is that you use up a move for Terablast and your Magnezone doesn’t maximize its Terastallize usage just so it might get a KO (key word “might” since counterplay to Magnet Pull is literally a button).
Becoming Fighting for STAB, a complimentary type like Flying or Water, or Dark to beat Ghost types would let it Maximize its Terastallizing more than becoming Fire just to beat Ferrothorn, which it already would do. It could have a decent chance at sweeping after dealing with Ferrothorn, Heatran, and Skarmory without an exploitable weakness and being surprisingly threatening.
An issue with Terastallizing Magnezone for coverage is that you use up a move for Terablast and your Magnezone doesn’t maximize its Terastallize usage just so it might get a KO (key word “might” since counterplay to Magnet Pull is literally a button).
Becoming Fighting for STAB, a complimentary type like Flying or Water, or Dark to beat Ghost types would let it Maximize its Terastallizing more than becoming Fire just to beat Ferrothorn, which it already would do. It could have a decent chance at sweeping after dealing with Ferrothorn, Heatran, and Skarmory without an exploitable weakness and being surprisingly threatening.
Just a thought, if Terastal is broken because of Tera Blast granting unpredictable coverage, would it be better to ban Terastal completely or just ban Tera Blast? I feel like Tera Blast is a part of Terastal, so I'd probably want to ban Terastal completly, even if the Defensive part is cool.
Maybe we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves. Remember, Tera Blast may be practically useless without Terastal and Terastallising to a different type makes you lose STAB on your main moves, so stuff you threatened before may be able to counter you.
If you're using Tera Blast, you might as well have a Tera Type that helps with their coverage. All of Klinklang's Non-Normal Attacks other than Assurance, Power Gem, and Rock Smash are resisted by Electric and Lilligant's Non-Normal Attacks are either used by Nature Power with Terrain up or are resisted by Fire and Steel... Holy crap, their movesets SUCK! They're going to Tera most of the time just to change into Types that have coverage. They really need Terastal to not be broken just so they can rise from terrible to merely being bad.
If Terablast ended being broken (depends on the BP if it were broken or not), it would just make sense to ban Terablast instead of the whole mechanic.
It would be like banning Weather or Terrains if Weather Ball or Terrain Pulse ended up being broken.
It's not a "might" it's a "it will unless they run shed shell". A steel is not going to give up the typing that makes it so valuable and good for a team just to escape Magnezone. If they do they are making themselves much worse and neutered in effectiveness. They no longer check what they're put on a team to check and thus Zone still did its job.
There won't be an issue for Zone and it will likely be the most consistent at trapping steels it's ever been, since now even Heatran can be reliably trapped.
The trade off is more in favor of the trapped Pokemon than the trapper in this case.
If you do Terastallize Magnezone, you can’t Terastallize any of your teammates (which if you think about makes it so Magnezone is kind of obsolete. Why Terastallize Magnezone to beat Steel types when any offensive Pokemon can do that?). The same can be said for Terastallizing Ferrothorn, but Terastallizing Ferrothorn is much better than having a dead Ferrothorn, even if the typing is worse on a general basis.
However, there is still the silver lining in that Magnezone teams use Magnezone to break past Steel types that otherwise wall that Pokemon. You don’t have to Terastallize your Steel types every game, just only when you need to. Like if you are facing a Sun team, there is no reason to have Ferrothorn remain Grass/Steel. You might as well make it resistant to Sun boosted Fire attacks so it’s more impactful.
Also Body Press sets would still be better because they are useful afterwards.