Hello,
I'm not a good player, the best ELO i got was around 1300 and it was many years ago, but i still enjoy watching competitive pokemon matches. I'm more often on the quiet side of discussion, and i know i'm not qualified to say what's overpowered and what's not. I've seen a lot of discussion about Terracrystalisation, should it be banned or not, how should it be nerfed. Seeing the opinion of the best players (which are often right, when it comes to balancing a competitive game), Terra is obviously overpowered as it is. But there's one solution I haven't seen anywhere i've looked and which could be good :
Ban Terracrystal+Item on the same Pokemon.
I may seems like a complexe ban at first but it's not. What it means is only Pokemon who don't carry an Item can terra. It doesn't break the game as it's something your could play on a Switch in S/V, and it's not that much more complexe that revealing every terratype to the adverse player before the match for example.
There are 3 issues with Terra from what i could read (in that order) : unpredictability, defensive utility, offensive utility.
→ unpredictability : if terra is only avalable without an Item, then terra isn't a « trump card » anymore, it's a « set », you would run terra like you run choice scarf, specs, leftovers, etc... So if you encounter let's say a Dragapult
you can check if he isn't boots, cause it tooked your hazards, neither leftovers cause they didn't activated, nore Band/Specs cause of the damages dealt → so you know it's probably terra and you can play around it. If you see an Item on the mon, you know it's not gonna terra and you're safe. With this, Terra loses a lot of unpredictability. There would still be the terra type unknown but i think it's much more manageable.
→ Defensive utility : The most obvious : terra would means, no boots, no lefto, no eviolite, no AV etc... so the benefice of changing typing now comes with a price. No Lefto when almost every recovery moves were nerfed, and no Boots when hazard stacking is that powerful etc...
→ Offensive utility : Well same as defensive utility, if you terra for double stab then you don't get Specs/Band/Life orb on top of it, You can't boost both your speed with scarf AND your damage with terra. And if you terra for third stab, then you loose on potentials bonus on your main stab.
I've seens people complains that Terra wasn't an object you had to carry, like mega-stones or Z moves, and this solution basically makes it a pseudo-object. You obviously can't trick it or remove it with knock off but it was the same for mega-stone/Z moves. And there is almost no pokemon with knock off anyway in gen 9 (for now) so not that impacful overhall.
Maybe this solution is stupid and all, but I think it worth listening to. As i said, i'm not a very good player, but i heard and listened to what good player said. And i'm open to every criticisme