i don't like showing tera types on team preview because i think it ignores that tera is fundamentally obnoxious even when you know what tera types to expect. being able to stop revenge killing opportunities, get boosted stab, get boosted coverage, or gain access to coverage thanks to tera blast are all really powerful and will likely cause a lot of mons to be problematic. you will still have a meta where basically any offensive mon can beat its checks with a bit of set adjustment. it's probably a fine idea to try out a restriction of some sort for a few months but i think ultimately it will have to go. i hope it's a viable option to have some kind of OM with tera legal, seems like there's plenty of interest and the mechanic is pretty fun to use at times.
-
The moderators of this forum are Finchinator, Ruft, ausma, 658Greninja, kd458, FayaWizard, Srn, TPP, and viivian.
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
Metagame Terastallization Tiering Discussion [ UPDATE POST #1293]
- Thread starter Finchinator
- Start date
- Status
So I’ll preface all of this by saying I’m not the best player ever, more like a 1600-1700 sort of player once the meta settles. Despite that, I do enjoy OU and 6v6 singles Pokémon immensely. I have also played at least 200 games of SV OU. I have played OU regularly since XY.
I am of the opinion that tera is not uncompetitive, I know that is unpopular, but I will dig into my thoughts below.
I personally do not feel like I am losing any more games than I usually would or for any worse reasons. Yes, I do get randomly blown up by a tera user using some unexpected stab coverage or defensively resisting my revenge kill. I do think that is not as common as people make it seem though. I genuinely find most setup scenarios pretty predictable at this point and they are accounted for by me in the teambuilder. Losing to an unexpected tera doesn’t feel any more common or uncompetitive to me than losing to a random matchup fishing setup sweeper I never would have prepped for in the first place.
as far as the super stab tera option goes I really haven’t found anything that makes up the different of a 3hko becoming a 2hko on my undamaged check. Something like this would feel uncompetitive to me and I look forward to seeing calcs in this thread that represent this.
Most of all, this paragraph will represent the reason I enjoy tera as a mainstay. I greatly enjoy the extra layer tera adds to teambuilding. Let’s use a 3 mon defensive core on a standard sort of balance as an example. In the teambuilder, I not only can prep a strong 3 mon core that I believe covers many popular threats, but I have the option to add 3 defensive tera types that can be used to cover more fringe threats. This makes my defensive cores feel more robust than they ever have. Not only do they cover the primary threats, but I can see a fringe threat on team preview and know who I have to tera to deal with it. This carries over to the offensive options too, where I can cover for mons I have difficulty breaking. Something like this makes the teambuilder feel higher skill cap than it has ever been, rewarding those who put careful consideration into even the more fringe aspects of the meta. I personally feel my teambuilding creativity being far more rewarded and satisfying than I’ve experienced in the past.
Overall, I am also a reasonable person lol, so I lean towards testing a restriction to see if it satisfies the common complaints. My favorite scenario is the tera type on team preview clause. This solution will likely work if the uncompetitive aspect of tera is in fact the unpredictability.
I am not even slightly in favor of the clause limiting it to same type tera as that also removes all the fun aspect of tera to leave the most boring part behind that has potential to be uncompetitive anyway. I don’t love the tera blast ban either, but I’m not against trying it.
I do think it would be a grave misstep to outright ban tera without testing a restriction first. A restriction suspect test is no drawback. The only potential drawback is time and I think we can all agree exercising a bit of patience here is beneficial to the tier as a whole, no matter what the outcome ends up being. I see an outright ban as nothing more than a defeatist and very impatient act.
I am of the opinion that tera is not uncompetitive, I know that is unpopular, but I will dig into my thoughts below.
I personally do not feel like I am losing any more games than I usually would or for any worse reasons. Yes, I do get randomly blown up by a tera user using some unexpected stab coverage or defensively resisting my revenge kill. I do think that is not as common as people make it seem though. I genuinely find most setup scenarios pretty predictable at this point and they are accounted for by me in the teambuilder. Losing to an unexpected tera doesn’t feel any more common or uncompetitive to me than losing to a random matchup fishing setup sweeper I never would have prepped for in the first place.
as far as the super stab tera option goes I really haven’t found anything that makes up the different of a 3hko becoming a 2hko on my undamaged check. Something like this would feel uncompetitive to me and I look forward to seeing calcs in this thread that represent this.
Most of all, this paragraph will represent the reason I enjoy tera as a mainstay. I greatly enjoy the extra layer tera adds to teambuilding. Let’s use a 3 mon defensive core on a standard sort of balance as an example. In the teambuilder, I not only can prep a strong 3 mon core that I believe covers many popular threats, but I have the option to add 3 defensive tera types that can be used to cover more fringe threats. This makes my defensive cores feel more robust than they ever have. Not only do they cover the primary threats, but I can see a fringe threat on team preview and know who I have to tera to deal with it. This carries over to the offensive options too, where I can cover for mons I have difficulty breaking. Something like this makes the teambuilder feel higher skill cap than it has ever been, rewarding those who put careful consideration into even the more fringe aspects of the meta. I personally feel my teambuilding creativity being far more rewarded and satisfying than I’ve experienced in the past.
Overall, I am also a reasonable person lol, so I lean towards testing a restriction to see if it satisfies the common complaints. My favorite scenario is the tera type on team preview clause. This solution will likely work if the uncompetitive aspect of tera is in fact the unpredictability.
I am not even slightly in favor of the clause limiting it to same type tera as that also removes all the fun aspect of tera to leave the most boring part behind that has potential to be uncompetitive anyway. I don’t love the tera blast ban either, but I’m not against trying it.
I do think it would be a grave misstep to outright ban tera without testing a restriction first. A restriction suspect test is no drawback. The only potential drawback is time and I think we can all agree exercising a bit of patience here is beneficial to the tier as a whole, no matter what the outcome ends up being. I see an outright ban as nothing more than a defeatist and very impatient act.
One thing has to be completely clear: tera is an uncompetitive mechanic and will eventually be banned. 108. There is 108 additional things to play around while tera is in the game. While on the ladder, it doesn't really effect anything drastically, good players will climb over time despite losing to a BS tera here and there. However once tours start happening and people start doing some crazy s*** you better believe the community will be calling for a tera ban. It GREATLY diminishes demonstration of skill over a small sample size, despite a smaller impact over larger sample sizes.
Tera allows checks/counters to become set up fodder, revenge killers to become the next victim, and its way too unpredictable. Here's an example from one of my games today: I double on a predicted annihilape switch to my specs valiant. Neither of us have terra'd. Consider this ridiculous situation
1) I could predict nothing and specs moonblast for the kill. He could, however, be terra steel and now I'm setup fodder.
2) I could predict a terra steel and focus blast, although tera steel IS less common then tera water atm. and if he just stays in i may as well forfeit
3) I could thunderbolt predicting a tera water, but he could just eat that up by not tera'ing and use me as rage fist fodder.
So from an advantageous position, threatening an OHKO on my opponents win con, the simple threat of tera makes it arguably a misplay to attack the ape at all. This is ignoring the possibility of him even switching, and I'm only considering the two most common tera types. In the end, I did moonblast, it was terra steel, and I lost the game. As a player who relies on long term game plan, risk/benefit, and tries to minimize prediction; I despise that situation. Its simply impossible to make an informed decision.
Now I get that I didn't make the best play in the above scenario, seeing as I knew the possibilities, and maybe the best play was to scout, but letting ape get a free +1/+1 is already so threatening... its just hard to play around anything reliably right now. This is why we're seeing so much offense, hazard stack, and unaware and a relative absence of what I would consider traditional balance.
Furthermore the long tera is kept the the game the more we destroy the future meta and have to waste time resolving it. Ape WILL be banned if tera doesn't go as tera defensive type+rage fist is way too good, but is that mon broken without that? Possibly not. Are we going to end up banning roaring moon for its destructive acro set? Dnite with its ekiller set? Set up mons will continue to run rampant as its impossible to offensively check them with tera running around; so are we going to subject ourselves to this unaware meta forever? Of course not, eventually the toxicity of tera will boil over.
Pull the bandaid off now. Tera is fun, but it has no place in a competitive metagame.
Now in terms of the proposed restrictions:
Banning terablast does next to nothing. Tera's most potent use is as a defensive mechanism to eliminate a win con's counter. While tera blast does allow for some mons to access that utility in a more streamlined way, it does not solve the main problem at all.
Limiting tera to only stab moves is just silly in my opinion. We're essentially saying 'heres a Z move but its permanent and doesn't require an item, oh and occasionally it can be used to beneficially change your typing'. Basically its removing the soul of tera and not replacing it with anything healthy or interesting for the meta
Allowing players to see the tera type is the only solution I think would work. While this still taxes team building quite heavily, at least the actual games can be played with more reasonable game plans.
Tera allows checks/counters to become set up fodder, revenge killers to become the next victim, and its way too unpredictable. Here's an example from one of my games today: I double on a predicted annihilape switch to my specs valiant. Neither of us have terra'd. Consider this ridiculous situation
1) I could predict nothing and specs moonblast for the kill. He could, however, be terra steel and now I'm setup fodder.
2) I could predict a terra steel and focus blast, although tera steel IS less common then tera water atm. and if he just stays in i may as well forfeit
3) I could thunderbolt predicting a tera water, but he could just eat that up by not tera'ing and use me as rage fist fodder.
So from an advantageous position, threatening an OHKO on my opponents win con, the simple threat of tera makes it arguably a misplay to attack the ape at all. This is ignoring the possibility of him even switching, and I'm only considering the two most common tera types. In the end, I did moonblast, it was terra steel, and I lost the game. As a player who relies on long term game plan, risk/benefit, and tries to minimize prediction; I despise that situation. Its simply impossible to make an informed decision.
Now I get that I didn't make the best play in the above scenario, seeing as I knew the possibilities, and maybe the best play was to scout, but letting ape get a free +1/+1 is already so threatening... its just hard to play around anything reliably right now. This is why we're seeing so much offense, hazard stack, and unaware and a relative absence of what I would consider traditional balance.
Furthermore the long tera is kept the the game the more we destroy the future meta and have to waste time resolving it. Ape WILL be banned if tera doesn't go as tera defensive type+rage fist is way too good, but is that mon broken without that? Possibly not. Are we going to end up banning roaring moon for its destructive acro set? Dnite with its ekiller set? Set up mons will continue to run rampant as its impossible to offensively check them with tera running around; so are we going to subject ourselves to this unaware meta forever? Of course not, eventually the toxicity of tera will boil over.
Pull the bandaid off now. Tera is fun, but it has no place in a competitive metagame.
Now in terms of the proposed restrictions:
Banning terablast does next to nothing. Tera's most potent use is as a defensive mechanism to eliminate a win con's counter. While tera blast does allow for some mons to access that utility in a more streamlined way, it does not solve the main problem at all.
Limiting tera to only stab moves is just silly in my opinion. We're essentially saying 'heres a Z move but its permanent and doesn't require an item, oh and occasionally it can be used to beneficially change your typing'. Basically its removing the soul of tera and not replacing it with anything healthy or interesting for the meta
Allowing players to see the tera type is the only solution I think would work. While this still taxes team building quite heavily, at least the actual games can be played with more reasonable game plans.
Last edited:
As a proponent of terra on preview, I am not ignoring that terrastrialization is an extremely powerful and influential mechanic that fundamentally adjusts how the game is played, more than Z crystals because of the limited opportunity cost. I still think it's worth trying a middle ground solution before we jump to banning it, even if it ends up being banned anyway.
I'm gonna try to reply to this thread less, I usually hover around 1500 ELO and people with more experience and expertise should have a bigger voice here.
Haven't played much so take my feelings with a grain of salt but if the mechanic absolutely needs addressed in some ways I like Terra Type in Team Preview the most out of all the options. I feel like this gives us the best balance of keeping said mechanic around and allows for tons of teambuilding options while also reducing the ammount of surprise factor that people seem to take the most issue with. If however that still proves to be too much I'd prefer an outright ban since none of the other options really do much to limit it or just overly complicate the rule.
Does showing tera type on preview actually solve anything? It still allows the user to tera anytime which can change the tide of the match. Also most of the viable pokemon have multiple tera typings available, so preview doesn't really help with that. You would still have to prepare for 2-3 different tera versions of each pokemon, which is practically infeasible.
The best solution to me is banning it outright, as Tera is inherently an uncompetitive mechanic that nullifies the ability to prepare and plan against an opponent entirely due to its very nature, aside from making many pokemon far stronger than they would be otherwise.
The best solution to me is banning it outright, as Tera is inherently an uncompetitive mechanic that nullifies the ability to prepare and plan against an opponent entirely due to its very nature, aside from making many pokemon far stronger than they would be otherwise.
I'm not one of those people that claims that Smogon is biased towards stall, but I think we are generally biased towards a Bulky Offense metagame in which the gimmick of the generation doesn't really get in the way of that. I don't see a real improvement between Pokemon HOME Gen 8 OU and current Gen 8 OU in terms of matchup wars and how it really plays, but people are generally happier with a Bulky Offense rule.
In that way, I think Terastilization goes against many principals of Bulky Offense. Usually Bulky Offense is much less risky than HO, and a Bulky Offense vs Bulky Offense match is generally about "who makes the best middleground plays", which is where Terastilization raises eyebrows I think. Bulky Offense is neither offensive enough where losing one Pokemon to a well-timed Terastilized Pokemon just means you can revenge and hope you still have enough gas, or defensive as Balance/Stall to likely be able to take the initial "Surprise" hit regardless.
Maybe I'm just talking out of my ass, but I think that this is the crux of the problem. Bulky Offense is generally considered the standard of competitive matches frankly, with Hyper Offense, Stall and Balance ruling a meta getting low marks among tournament players. And we have to come to terms with the fact that Bulky Offense is, at least to my analysis, the teamstyle most impacted.
Tera Blast ban would only prevent like 5 pokemon to be dangerous.
Tera on display (or only when the pokemon comes onto the field, which is almost the same) is the best "we actually do something" solution, to me. Also, 50/50s will definitely will be "kept" by this option, since you'll never know anyway if your opponent will Tera or not. And maybe you click the coverage move for the Tera type and puff, the opponent does not Tera and you do 5% damage LMAO. Well, it's "kind" of like if the opponent switched to something else and you guessed wrong. Or, maybe, it's 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 (stay, tera, switch) and not 50/50 which might be seen as a 2/3 bad scenario for you.
Limiting Tera to a mon (i guess in the same you only use one Z user and do not waste item slots with a second Z crystal) is... meh, it really destroys one of the ideas of the mechanic, the possiblity of Teraing the mon that is needed during each specific battle.
---
Personally, I'm having so much fun with Tera that i'd like to not see tiering action.
If you do it too early, probably it's not the best idea. If you do it much later during the battle, either it can be understood, or you're in danger and just went for it.
The times my opponent used the Tera transformation and just won because of it 1) weren't that many (genuinely, a lot of battle came and went without any player Terastalizing because it wasn't needed) and 2) I never felt "cheated". It felt more like a coverage reveal, or a different set reveal. Not a fun situation, but mundane.
In the end, I am still going to play OU no matter what (well, almost) even if Tera goes, but as a bad player that apparently can't learn how to play properly and win a decent amount of battles, I'm having the time of my life with all the possibilities that Tera offers (that are never 18 possibilities for each mon, to be honest. Not even 7 or 10 for each mon, more like 3, 5 in some RARE cases.)
---
EDIT: Also, if we end up banning Tera, we could always test pokemon that were banned MAINLY for Tera reasons (which, for now, are literally none, literally anywhere.)
Tera on display (or only when the pokemon comes onto the field, which is almost the same) is the best "we actually do something" solution, to me. Also, 50/50s will definitely will be "kept" by this option, since you'll never know anyway if your opponent will Tera or not. And maybe you click the coverage move for the Tera type and puff, the opponent does not Tera and you do 5% damage LMAO. Well, it's "kind" of like if the opponent switched to something else and you guessed wrong. Or, maybe, it's 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 (stay, tera, switch) and not 50/50 which might be seen as a 2/3 bad scenario for you.
Limiting Tera to a mon (i guess in the same you only use one Z user and do not waste item slots with a second Z crystal) is... meh, it really destroys one of the ideas of the mechanic, the possiblity of Teraing the mon that is needed during each specific battle.
---
Personally, I'm having so much fun with Tera that i'd like to not see tiering action.
If you do it too early, probably it's not the best idea. If you do it much later during the battle, either it can be understood, or you're in danger and just went for it.
The times my opponent used the Tera transformation and just won because of it 1) weren't that many (genuinely, a lot of battle came and went without any player Terastalizing because it wasn't needed) and 2) I never felt "cheated". It felt more like a coverage reveal, or a different set reveal. Not a fun situation, but mundane.
In the end, I am still going to play OU no matter what (well, almost) even if Tera goes, but as a bad player that apparently can't learn how to play properly and win a decent amount of battles, I'm having the time of my life with all the possibilities that Tera offers (that are never 18 possibilities for each mon, to be honest. Not even 7 or 10 for each mon, more like 3, 5 in some RARE cases.)
---
EDIT: Also, if we end up banning Tera, we could always test pokemon that were banned MAINLY for Tera reasons (which, for now, are literally none, literally anywhere.)
Okay so after some consideration, in my honest opinion, Tera Should be completly banned, but not for now
While it is a certainty that HOME will bring a lot of mons, and enough power creep and chaos to deem the gimmick as a detrimental part of the generation, in the situation that we have ourselfs in, the limited dex, the unfully implemented changes and the infinite potential of changing your types to change the course of the battle, leave this gen as a something that even tho its fully understandable, it feels rushed and like everything was in damage control
Everyone can use tera, sure, some mons do better than other, but that does not mean these worse mons cant surprise you with it, in my opinion, a tier that can have a ton of viable pokemon will always be a good healthy tier, and this new gimmick is a breath of fresh air that opens multiple cute and whacky yet still efficient team building, especially with terra blast being literally hidden power but better, all those mons who got nerfed hard with it can now regain some of its former tools, sure, sometimes your way to counter that specific mon gets fucked because tera, but since its only 1 mon affected, its not that bad, and you almost should never have a sole answer to something
Now, the most controversial part of this is by far the adaptability boost, that mons gain to brute force themselves into winning, and honestly yeah thats kind of a bummer, deffensive teams can probably play around him and stall him out with toxic and chips, but offensive teams eiter die, or tera to stop that mon, but then your tera mon cant check the mon its supposed to (if its still alive) but as far as i can see, theres just enough room for strategy for everyone to do something about it
I really like this new gimmick, its way better than dinamax, and it was almost this close to be good, but i can see why people want to ban it, still, i belive this is a manageable problem by now and its upsides are good enough to let it be for a moment
TLDR: Read the fucking post and give me likes
While it is a certainty that HOME will bring a lot of mons, and enough power creep and chaos to deem the gimmick as a detrimental part of the generation, in the situation that we have ourselfs in, the limited dex, the unfully implemented changes and the infinite potential of changing your types to change the course of the battle, leave this gen as a something that even tho its fully understandable, it feels rushed and like everything was in damage control
Everyone can use tera, sure, some mons do better than other, but that does not mean these worse mons cant surprise you with it, in my opinion, a tier that can have a ton of viable pokemon will always be a good healthy tier, and this new gimmick is a breath of fresh air that opens multiple cute and whacky yet still efficient team building, especially with terra blast being literally hidden power but better, all those mons who got nerfed hard with it can now regain some of its former tools, sure, sometimes your way to counter that specific mon gets fucked because tera, but since its only 1 mon affected, its not that bad, and you almost should never have a sole answer to something
Now, the most controversial part of this is by far the adaptability boost, that mons gain to brute force themselves into winning, and honestly yeah thats kind of a bummer, deffensive teams can probably play around him and stall him out with toxic and chips, but offensive teams eiter die, or tera to stop that mon, but then your tera mon cant check the mon its supposed to (if its still alive) but as far as i can see, theres just enough room for strategy for everyone to do something about it
I really like this new gimmick, its way better than dinamax, and it was almost this close to be good, but i can see why people want to ban it, still, i belive this is a manageable problem by now and its upsides are good enough to let it be for a moment
TLDR: Read the fucking post and give me likes
Only having one Pokemon bring able to Tera is a bad idea because you don't know which Pokémon you might need to Tera before the match. It's only during the match that you might decide on it.
I will say banning Tera Blast is the silliest of these options. Just doesn’t solve a lot of fundamental problems with the mechanic.
I’d like to see Tera Team Preview TRIED so it’s not instantly giving up. It may work out better in practice than I think it would on paper.
Ultimately I do think Terastalizing will get banned. As I said in a very long post in the OU thread, however, I very much think it deserves its own side “Tera OU” ala DW OU in BW. It’s an unabashedly fun mechanic, I think even if it’s uncompetitive it’s still playable in a way Dynamax wasn’t, and it has room to grow and evolve and constantly shift in its own right. I don’t like the idea of solely banishing it to Ubers or even AG, I think it deserves its own petri dish where by the time Home or DLC drop we can see if it ultimately stabilizes or not.
I’d like to see Tera Team Preview TRIED so it’s not instantly giving up. It may work out better in practice than I think it would on paper.
Ultimately I do think Terastalizing will get banned. As I said in a very long post in the OU thread, however, I very much think it deserves its own side “Tera OU” ala DW OU in BW. It’s an unabashedly fun mechanic, I think even if it’s uncompetitive it’s still playable in a way Dynamax wasn’t, and it has room to grow and evolve and constantly shift in its own right. I don’t like the idea of solely banishing it to Ubers or even AG, I think it deserves its own petri dish where by the time Home or DLC drop we can see if it ultimately stabilizes or not.
I haven't played too much since gen 7 or so. But I came back around the start of S/V and I've been really enjoying terastalization. I haven't found it overwhelming to play against. The fact that it is a 1/match thing helps keep it in check a lot. It's a mix-up/trump card you use to sway the match in your favor at a key moment or to reinforce a lead. It's not something you can just blow on every mon. You need to carefully evaluate when to use your tera for maximum effect, and this works both ways. I've found I can oftentimes predict when a mon will tera based on how they have positioned themselves and the current state of the match.
I feel people are confusing competitive with meta altering. Yes, terastalizing alters how the meta plays out and encourages you to try to stop threats with raw bulk as opposed to resists. That alters the meta and usual teambuilding strategies, but that doesn't make something uncompetitive. Z-moves and mega evolutions were quite strong, definitely altered the meta, and at times could be quite unpredictable (especially with z-moves). Yet they remained competitive. I don't think terrastalization has been different from my experience and I don't think it deserves to be banned.
Also personally if we want to alter tera, I feel like same type tera is more problematic than different type tera. I see people complaining about the bonus stab all the time and I feel like if restricting it to STAB tera is on the board then the opposite should be on the board too. I think changing types is more interesting than just reinforcing your existing type, so I feel restricting STAB tera as opposed to different type tera would do more to preserve the spirit of the mechanic
I feel people are confusing competitive with meta altering. Yes, terastalizing alters how the meta plays out and encourages you to try to stop threats with raw bulk as opposed to resists. That alters the meta and usual teambuilding strategies, but that doesn't make something uncompetitive. Z-moves and mega evolutions were quite strong, definitely altered the meta, and at times could be quite unpredictable (especially with z-moves). Yet they remained competitive. I don't think terrastalization has been different from my experience and I don't think it deserves to be banned.
Also personally if we want to alter tera, I feel like same type tera is more problematic than different type tera. I see people complaining about the bonus stab all the time and I feel like if restricting it to STAB tera is on the board then the opposite should be on the board too. I think changing types is more interesting than just reinforcing your existing type, so I feel restricting STAB tera as opposed to different type tera would do more to preserve the spirit of the mechanic
This is a very respectable take. Frankly, I see Terastilization as not just another mechanic to remove, but an entirely new way of competitive Pokemon to be played. It'd be a HUGE shame to see it just wiped off the most played website for competitive Pokemon.
And yes, I know technically custom rulesets, but no. I genuinely believe this deserves an entire ladder and metagame, rather than just another thing to wipe away.
Maybe it's uncompetitive for what the Official format is going for, but there are way crazier OMs that still have competitive metagames. Why not Tera as well?
I'm a believer in showing tera type in TP as there's a clear way you could accomplish it on cart: have the players write their tera types and give it to the opponent when they sit down to battle. I think if this still proves to be uncompetitive then sure, just ban it altogether, but I find value in keeping the regional gimmick around as long as it's in a way that doesn't turn games into coinflips.
Another point I had in favor of the Petri dish, actually: I think giving Tera time on its own will let it inspire some crazy-fun OMs! Would love to see what people could come up with by tweaking the mechanic.
I am in camp of banning the mechanic altogether because I believe every suggested way to restrict this mechanic has its own flaws and the mechanic remains problematic. The problems tera causes is many, and none of the points do a well enough job to mitigate it.
Showing Tera type at Team Preview
This is just additional information you receive at the start so you will get to see the planned defensive applications of it. You will see a Flying Roaring Moon and you will think to not send out Breloom. You still dont know when the mechanic will be used though, the unpredictability factor stays. Moreover, this does very little in terms of terastalizing into existing STAB types. Imagine I have 3 hard hitting Pokemon that all vastly benefit from self STAB terrastalization. (Because come on now, this is just free Adaptability button) When do I click it, who do I click it with? Those questions remain unanswered.
Limiting the amount of Pokemon on any given team that have access to possibly Terastallize during a battle
I believe this is how Tera works for the most part anyway. Any Pokemon at any given time can turn into one of 18 types. What happens when you limit it to one in teambuilder or by other means? Well, any Pokemon at any given time can turn into one of 18 types still for your opponent & vice versa. This one still comes down with a massive unpredictability as long as we dont know for sure that which Pokemon is allowed to terrastalize.
Limiting Tera typing to previously existing STAB types
This is how Monotype started this generation off, as the Tera changing type permanently thru the match it was violating the tiering policy. In a sense, some of us (including me) experienced a metagame where you could only Terra into your STABs (Was even worse since you also couldnt go to your secondary typings to not break team's type). This only resulted in strong Pokemon getting even stronger (Adaptability boost?). This still doesnt restrict the amount of Pokemon who can run this mechanic so unpredictability factor is still relevant. This will keep causing problems as you get rid of suprise revenge kill attempts to some degree but we are not preventing strong stuff getting even stronger.
Banning Tera Blast
This doesnt address anything I believe. Hardly any Pokemon uses Tera Blast as they already have existing coverage that is stronger or they are using Terastalize for defensive properties. (ie, getting rid of weaknesses for easier setup) We've seen plenty of sets centralized around Dragon types using Tera around Steel without running a Steel move, or people just Teraing into their own types to boost STABs.
Showing Tera type at Team Preview
This is just additional information you receive at the start so you will get to see the planned defensive applications of it. You will see a Flying Roaring Moon and you will think to not send out Breloom. You still dont know when the mechanic will be used though, the unpredictability factor stays. Moreover, this does very little in terms of terastalizing into existing STAB types. Imagine I have 3 hard hitting Pokemon that all vastly benefit from self STAB terrastalization. (Because come on now, this is just free Adaptability button) When do I click it, who do I click it with? Those questions remain unanswered.
Limiting the amount of Pokemon on any given team that have access to possibly Terastallize during a battle
I believe this is how Tera works for the most part anyway. Any Pokemon at any given time can turn into one of 18 types. What happens when you limit it to one in teambuilder or by other means? Well, any Pokemon at any given time can turn into one of 18 types still for your opponent & vice versa. This one still comes down with a massive unpredictability as long as we dont know for sure that which Pokemon is allowed to terrastalize.
Limiting Tera typing to previously existing STAB types
This is how Monotype started this generation off, as the Tera changing type permanently thru the match it was violating the tiering policy. In a sense, some of us (including me) experienced a metagame where you could only Terra into your STABs (Was even worse since you also couldnt go to your secondary typings to not break team's type). This only resulted in strong Pokemon getting even stronger (Adaptability boost?). This still doesnt restrict the amount of Pokemon who can run this mechanic so unpredictability factor is still relevant. This will keep causing problems as you get rid of suprise revenge kill attempts to some degree but we are not preventing strong stuff getting even stronger.
Banning Tera Blast
This doesnt address anything I believe. Hardly any Pokemon uses Tera Blast as they already have existing coverage that is stronger or they are using Terastalize for defensive properties. (ie, getting rid of weaknesses for easier setup) We've seen plenty of sets centralized around Dragon types using Tera around Steel without running a Steel move, or people just Teraing into their own types to boost STABs.
I wrote this in the metagame discussion thread, I want to discuss why I don't think half-measure restrictions will ultimately be enough to fix the problem, and will lead to same issue I bolded above.
Showing Tera type at Team Preview
While useful for actual in-game piloting, it does not solve the problem of the stress pokemon that can abuse Tera to it's extreme put on the builder. We saw it with Palafin, where Tera Water was a catch all for most matchups and nuke any potential Jet Punch resisting offensive check, but Tera Steel could be use to get around it's one solid defensive answer, Amoonguss. This isn't just a Palafin problem though, Flying Tera Roaring Moon is going to have to different counterplay than if it uses defensive Tera typings like Fairy or Steel. Volcarona could use a number of different Tera types to resist priorty or hit it's various hypothetical counters with Tera Blast or STAB Giga Drain. I'm wouldn't be surprised if Tera Ghost became a thing as a way to manuever around Blissey. So while it would improve the gameplay experience, I don't think this would be an effective solution in preventing a chunk of bans of pokemon that just abuse the mechanic too well. I'll probably be reiterating this point a lot, but it also doesn't solve the BW gems issue of many games coming down to the guess work of whether you should attack their current or hypothetical typing on crucial turns.
Limiting the amount of Pokemon on any given team that have access to possibly Terastallize during a battle
I think this solution only works if the one pokemon that can Tera is identified at preview as well. I think there's a chance the opportunity cost would lead to more centralized usage what specific pokemon use Tera and what types those are. This seems like it would probably be the most advantageous restriction when it's comes to actually developing a meta around Tera and putting much less strain on the builder. However, it doesn't really change that there are a bunch of pokemon that are just way too good at abusing the mechanic. You're still going to have your Dragonites, Volcaronas, Roaring Moons, etc. whose numerous applications of the mechanic seem too far gone to ever have them exist in a healthy metagame. While this solution would probably have less of a BW gems because there wouldn't be the possibility of having to play that guessing game with multiple pokemon, it's more like Z Moves on steroids. You had a lot of information about Z Moves based on the pokemon, as it was limited to their viable movepool and any move they used within a battle reveals information that can be used to decipher what Z Move is likely. Even if Tera was limited to a single pokemon, it's best abusers could turn into a multitude of different types, gaining coverage they might not otherwise have had or defensively wall a would be check.
Limiting Tera typing to previously existing STAB types
Gives you a lot of info in the battle to work off of, which is a great thing. But there's still a bunch of stuff that have historically relied on their 4x weaknesses (Volcarona, Dragonite, Garchomp, Landorus, potentially Roaring Moon) or their multidude of weaknesses to be kept in check (Toxapex, Dragapult come to mind) and this would additionally give them an 2x STAB bonus or eliminate weaknesses of their choice. I can't seem to articulate a good reason why, but this solution just seems like a weird one to me. Like, if I can change my Dragonite's type to take 35% from your move instead of 70%, does that fundamentally change what is a check or counter to a big enough degree than if I changed the typing to take 17% or 9%? So while I think this would definitely limit the amount of pokemon that end up needing to be banned because of their ability to abuse Tera, I think the question becomes is that number small enough to warrant using a handshake half measure rule simply to maintain a generation's gimmick. I also think we should keep in mind that it's probably best to think of solution that will apply to all pokemon that could be coming to game, and not just the limited ones that we have in the pool right now.
Banning Tera Blast
Tera Blast is mostly just okay. Obviously it does add a lot of randomness in that any pokemon can have any coverage on both the physical and special side, but it's mediocre base power keeps pretty well in check. If this was actually the crux of the problem it would be an easy choice to just get rid of it. Whether it's an offensive or defensive pokemon, changing your typing to avoid being KOd is what actually makes the mechanic so powerful.
No Tiering Action
Plz do something
i feel this is just to make people happy about being able to use the new gen mechanic, but isn't this in all cases (except banning Tera Blast) a case of deviating from the game's mechanics just to salvage a gimmick, which is usually not even considered as an option and (if i recall correctly) against Tiering Policy?
Idt there's room for any of those very arbitrary solutions without creating a dangerous tiering precedent; either you ban the mechanic, the move, or nothing (not suggesting which to apply here because I have not touched SV so far)
I’ll preface this post by saying that I don’t currently have an opinion on which route we should go when dealing with tera (ban, restrict, no restrict). However, if we end up going the restriction route, I believe that limiting tera types to only STABs is the best option out of the restriction methods said in the original post.
From my understanding, there are 3 core problems that Tera could be causing:
1. Makes the opponent’s team inherently unpredictable
2. Allows certain Pokémon to flip matchups on their head (e.g. ghost tera Chien Pao)
3. increased power STABs can make certain offensive Pokémon too strong.
Limiting tera types to only STAB heavily mitigates problems 1 and 2. Prediction will become much more reliable as instead of each Pokémon having 18 possible tera types, they’ll have 2 or fewer. Additionally, flipping matchups becomes much more difficult when you have to retain one of your previous types, so there will still be a decent chunk of Pokémon who still have a type advantage after the opponent teras.
The great thing about mitigating 2/3 of the issues is that we can isolate one of the specific issues with tera, and in this case arguably the least likely to be problematic. If tera is still problematic when only one of the issues is isolated, that means we can determine that the mechanic as a whole is uncompetitive and we can get rid of it.
I don’t think the team preview idea works as well because it still gives you the opportunity to flip matchups, which would likely end up being more uncompetitive than the extra STAB boost
Limiting tera to one Pokémon doesn’t solve any of its problems, only slightly mitigating them. This is not a good way to tell if tera is completely broken or if only a few aspects of it are.
A tera blast ban is just dumb. Bringing tera blast on a Pokémon is an inherent risk because if the Pokémon with the move doesn’t tera you will essentially only have 3 moveslots. If you want to go this route it might just be better to keep tera intact.
Theoretically if you wanted to keep the mechanic you could also combine multiple restrictions but at that point it just wouldn’t be in the spirit of how it was originally designed. At that point, banning it would be better.
From my understanding, there are 3 core problems that Tera could be causing:
1. Makes the opponent’s team inherently unpredictable
2. Allows certain Pokémon to flip matchups on their head (e.g. ghost tera Chien Pao)
3. increased power STABs can make certain offensive Pokémon too strong.
Limiting tera types to only STAB heavily mitigates problems 1 and 2. Prediction will become much more reliable as instead of each Pokémon having 18 possible tera types, they’ll have 2 or fewer. Additionally, flipping matchups becomes much more difficult when you have to retain one of your previous types, so there will still be a decent chunk of Pokémon who still have a type advantage after the opponent teras.
The great thing about mitigating 2/3 of the issues is that we can isolate one of the specific issues with tera, and in this case arguably the least likely to be problematic. If tera is still problematic when only one of the issues is isolated, that means we can determine that the mechanic as a whole is uncompetitive and we can get rid of it.
I don’t think the team preview idea works as well because it still gives you the opportunity to flip matchups, which would likely end up being more uncompetitive than the extra STAB boost
Limiting tera to one Pokémon doesn’t solve any of its problems, only slightly mitigating them. This is not a good way to tell if tera is completely broken or if only a few aspects of it are.
A tera blast ban is just dumb. Bringing tera blast on a Pokémon is an inherent risk because if the Pokémon with the move doesn’t tera you will essentially only have 3 moveslots. If you want to go this route it might just be better to keep tera intact.
Theoretically if you wanted to keep the mechanic you could also combine multiple restrictions but at that point it just wouldn’t be in the spirit of how it was originally designed. At that point, banning it would be better.
Banning the move does not actually do anything. The move is pretty mid, to put it bluntly.
You can certainly argue that something akin to a handshake agreement before the game can just be something we enforce without modifying game code or display, imo. Obviously specifics are up in the air and some of the things listed are not feasible, but this list was vetted and discussed and we all understand the pros and cons and what may or may not be possible.
I'm of the opinion that Showing Tera type at Team Preview has the potential to create a balanced/competitive metagame and that it is worth trying before just outright banning it.
Just as we cannot predict exactly how the meta will shift after every tiering action, and that each suspect test truly is just trying to take away an uncompetitive aspect of the meta, one at a time, I believe the most prudent action would be to allow tera at team preview. Later, if we still decide that revealing this info still creates an unbalanced meta, then we can ban it.
I do see how tera has the potential to be meta warping in the team builder, but adding the assumption that you will see each tera at preview allows players to worry less about guessing which type it is mid game and then being shit-out-of-luck for having your educated guess be wrong. I think that the argument that you can't prep adequately for it since it is too unpredictable does not quite hold-up as much if you take away the fact that you need to guess 6 terra types at preview. Instead when you know it, you may face a worse match up, but each play-style is matchup dependent anyways.
The most skilled players generally have an idea of what sets a mon will use at team preview, based on the apparent play-style of the preview (e.g. when you see a hazard stack mon + 5 offensive mons, you can surmise they are HO and further imply what sets they may have). In a similar aspect, showing tera at preview gives some idea to skilled players about the potential sets, which helps you not get blindsided by something that is out of your hands. Showing tera type at preview helps prevent punishment of someone making good predictions that incorrectly guesses on the tera type mid-battle, and could then result in you losing, despite playing better.
Just as we cannot predict exactly how the meta will shift after every tiering action, and that each suspect test truly is just trying to take away an uncompetitive aspect of the meta, one at a time, I believe the most prudent action would be to allow tera at team preview. Later, if we still decide that revealing this info still creates an unbalanced meta, then we can ban it.
I do see how tera has the potential to be meta warping in the team builder, but adding the assumption that you will see each tera at preview allows players to worry less about guessing which type it is mid game and then being shit-out-of-luck for having your educated guess be wrong. I think that the argument that you can't prep adequately for it since it is too unpredictable does not quite hold-up as much if you take away the fact that you need to guess 6 terra types at preview. Instead when you know it, you may face a worse match up, but each play-style is matchup dependent anyways.
The most skilled players generally have an idea of what sets a mon will use at team preview, based on the apparent play-style of the preview (e.g. when you see a hazard stack mon + 5 offensive mons, you can surmise they are HO and further imply what sets they may have). In a similar aspect, showing tera at preview gives some idea to skilled players about the potential sets, which helps you not get blindsided by something that is out of your hands. Showing tera type at preview helps prevent punishment of someone making good predictions that incorrectly guesses on the tera type mid-battle, and could then result in you losing, despite playing better.
On that topic, if it doesn't already exist, I think an OM where every pokemon can Tera would be an interesting one. Probably would be unbalanced as fuck, but it would still be interesting.
Outright ban is the simplest solution and would save much tiering action in the future. The unpredictability is not the real issue since we have already started to seen standardized types used, the problem is that some mons are still tough to deal with even when you know what type they are. Terra grass Volcarona, and terra normal Dragonite take already good offensive treats and limits their counter play further. Sure these mons have had these moves but never stab that allows them to easily blow past their potential checks after a boost. They could even have more options to set up with terra, changing type when whenever they want. Of course these are just a couple examples but it's to give a general idea on the threats that befit not to undermine Roaring Moon, Annihilape, Chein-pao, Chi-yu, Dragapult, etc. TBF some of the set up sweepers could be held back by mons with unware but it wouldn't stop those that just use choice items+terra to brute force through whatever is in front of them (i.e Chi-yu). Of course you could revenge kill a mon with terra but you could revenge almost anything so that doesn't make terra healthy. My biggest concern is that in the future we will have to ban good mons because terra made them too strong for the meta, or later down the line(when this gen is no longer current) people will still be arguing that terra is not healthy or competitive because it was decided it was just fine when the meta was current. Any of comprises proposed do not fix all the issues. Being limited to stacking STABS is still strong, terra blast is not necessary for all abusers, seeing what terra the mons are before battle still doesn't tell you when the opponent will terra, and limiting what mons can terra would be tedious process that would likely end in the mechanic being banned anyway. I'm not saying quick ban it since the meta is still less than a month old, so a suspect test would be fine.
Upon reading, I think I’d be in the camp of showing Tera-types in team preview. I think preserving the mechanic would make for a really outside-the-box meta that brings the excitement that SwSd lacked imo. However, I’m confused how that would fundamentally work.
What I mean is, Showdown is trying its best to replicate in-game battles as much as possible, but obviously there isn’t a method to show Tera-types in team preview in SV (unless you’re physically with someone playing with Smogon rule set). To what point would that be detracting too far from the actual games?
What I mean is, Showdown is trying its best to replicate in-game battles as much as possible, but obviously there isn’t a method to show Tera-types in team preview in SV (unless you’re physically with someone playing with Smogon rule set). To what point would that be detracting too far from the actual games?
If this were to be implemented on cartridge, it would probably just be a gentleman's agreement that each player reveals their tera types before the match. While it's technically not implemented in the actual game, neither is OHKO clause, which is resolved by a gentleman's agreement as well.
- Status