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Metagame Terastallization Tiering Discussion [ UPDATE POST #1293]
- Thread starter Finchinator
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Except that hidden info wouldn't cost you a match unless you were already losing. Tera enables that.
Woah woah woah take it easy, no need to be harsh. Hidden information isn't the problem with Tera, it's the mechanics that are overwhelming and game changing. Adding a STAB boost onto a random Pokémon type to give you that added boost seems uncompetitive since STAB historically is usually based on the Pokémon's natural type. Including if it's the same type of the Pokémon that's being Tera'd to, giving adaptability to any Pokemon seems to much to deal with and it has nothing to do with predicting (you can't predict for 18 types x 6 Pokemon per game). An example can be Chi-Yu, you give Chi-Yu Tera Type Fire / Dark (Choice Scarf / Choice Specs) and in conjunction with Beads of Ruin it hits like a brick and has the potential to sweep an entire team based on team build and if Chi-Yu is under the sun. If someone decides to switch into Tyranitar you can just Tera Type into Fighting and beat Tyranitar which is made to be a Chi-Yu counter. To say it's all about predicting is incorrect because it takes the skill out of the game, it brings to much unknown factors to account for. Tera literally puts constraints on team building, where even if you prepare for a Pokémon could still lose because of Tera.
I don’t think that having Tera type shown on team preview solves the unpredictability and guessing aspect of Tera that’s problematic. Imagine a situation where you know your opponent’s Gholdengo is Tera Fighting and you have an Iron Valiant out against it with Moonblast and Shadow Ball. Do you Shadow Ball or do you predict the Tera and Moonblast? Similarly, what do you click with Iron Hands against a Tera Flying Kingambit, Earthquake or Thunder Punch? I get that those dynamics still exist without Tera being revealed on team preview, but I think that players could leverage it more and it would feel almost harder, or at least still difficult, to play “correctly” against a team when you know all the ways that your opponent possibly could Tera. To me, if you’re going to try to restrict Tera, I think that other options like requiring a useless held item to Tera and/or limiting each team to only one potential Tera user seems more effective.
The other thing I want to say is that I don’t think that any VGC rules should be considered with Smogon tiering. I like VGC and have played a decent amount of it, but it’s an extremely different metagame. As other posters have said, other VGC rules like item clause and lack of sleep clause have never been consistent to Smogon, so I don’t understand why all of a sudden one particular rule that’s implemented at in-person VGC events is being overlayed onto Smogon’s meta. Unless I’m missing something, it kind of feels like cherry picking to me and it isn’t too far off from trying to argue that Dynamax should have remained in SS since it was allowed in VGC. And before people jump all over me for being a “Tera denier,” (posting in this thread is scary lol) I think Tera can be cool and I hope it’s able to remain in the tier in some form - I just don’t know if that’s really possible yet while still achieving a healthy, competitive meta, but we’ll see. I still kind of feel like some of the more polarizing Tera abusers are the chief problem, and sure, some of them like Chi-Yu likely need to go with or without Tera, but you could run into issues where things like Dragonite or Kingambit are problematic with Tera and fine without it, so you have to decide if you’re alright with sacrificing some mons from the tier to preserve the mechanic, and there isn’t an easy answer to that.
The other thing I want to say is that I don’t think that any VGC rules should be considered with Smogon tiering. I like VGC and have played a decent amount of it, but it’s an extremely different metagame. As other posters have said, other VGC rules like item clause and lack of sleep clause have never been consistent to Smogon, so I don’t understand why all of a sudden one particular rule that’s implemented at in-person VGC events is being overlayed onto Smogon’s meta. Unless I’m missing something, it kind of feels like cherry picking to me and it isn’t too far off from trying to argue that Dynamax should have remained in SS since it was allowed in VGC. And before people jump all over me for being a “Tera denier,” (posting in this thread is scary lol) I think Tera can be cool and I hope it’s able to remain in the tier in some form - I just don’t know if that’s really possible yet while still achieving a healthy, competitive meta, but we’ll see. I still kind of feel like some of the more polarizing Tera abusers are the chief problem, and sure, some of them like Chi-Yu likely need to go with or without Tera, but you could run into issues where things like Dragonite or Kingambit are problematic with Tera and fine without it, so you have to decide if you’re alright with sacrificing some mons from the tier to preserve the mechanic, and there isn’t an easy answer to that.
Completely agree with this, and I believe that problems beyond this are problems with individual Pokemon which can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.. If certain Pokemon are able to subvert their counters or just blast offense in ways that prove too powerful even with the team preview's ability to identify the threat, then that Pokemon should be moved to another tier, even if that ends up happening to something like 20 Pokemon, which I think is way, way higher than the real number that would suffer this fate. I think that all possible uses of tera should be considered part of a Pokemon's kit, and should be considered in their future suspect tests. I think the only problem here that stems from tera itself rather than individual abusers is the unpredictability issue that Team Preview solves. Even the so-called 50/50 of whether or not the opponent will press their tera button this turn is something that I do not consider damaging to the meta. It's an intimidating and valuable card in your opponents hand, yes, but once you know what their tera types are you can begin to predict how and when they will play that card, making it much less of a "random" "50/50".
As for the individual mons, if a good player knows that its coming and still can't stop it? That's a ban.
Something I've seen a little more of that I like but haven't seen enough discussion of, imo, is the idea of banning an item or forcing the Pokemon who teras to hold a tera shard. Wasn't that kinda what helped balance Z-moves and Megas? Rayquaza got to mega evolve and hold an item and ended up being banned from flippin Ubers. Taking away the ability to be more offensive (LO, Specs, Scarf, etc.) or defensive (lefties, HDB, RH) thanks to an item can help a lot. I can see Annhiliape, for example, being impacted by this. No leftovers to recover from the hits it needs to take to build up Rage Fist power, no boots to avoid the many hazards in the current meta, and no CB or LO to increase Rage Fist's power even more, in exchange for either defensive tera to take more hits or offensive to hit harder with Rage Fist. I can see this being balanced, and needing to hold a specific tera crystal could even give frisk pokemon, like noivern, more of a niche if we don't reveal tera types at TP.
That being said, I think Finch said somewhere that they've narrowed down the options already, so this could just be a waste of a post. Maybe something to consider for a future suspect. I wish I thought about this more before the tiering survey =(
That being said, I think Finch said somewhere that they've narrowed down the options already, so this could just be a waste of a post. Maybe something to consider for a future suspect. I wish I thought about this more before the tiering survey =(
I've been wishing from the start that they had tied both dynamax AND tera to hold items since the start. In the cases of Megas and Z-moves, that tradeoff was what made the mechanic work. In this case though, I think Smogon implementing such a thing would be too transformative to the mechanic's intended implementation.
Tera definitely seems to be intended as something that can be used by any Pokemon on a team, however the player decides is best in the course of that battle. That intention is lost when every Pokemon that can terastalize needs to make a major tradeoff in order to do it. It would fix it being broken, yes, but that's because at that point it would be a totally different thing, no longer representative of the original mechanic. That sounds like too drastic of a step to me for this point in time.
My personal opinion from play on the Switch is that Tera really isn't any worse than Z moves. Sure, Tera might catch you by surprise ONCE but it's neither entirely unpredictable (there's no reason to tera a Tyranitar into a fairy type, just as an example) and once it's revealed, you can take appropriate action. Sure, it might cost you the game, but so might an unusual move that turns a fight you can take into a fight you lose.
Z moves were kept and Tera should be too, with No tiering action. If democracy demands action be taken, then let it be banning the move Tera Blast. I can certainly see the argument that that removes a lot of pokemon's identity.
Edit: In fact, outside of tera blast which radically change's an opponent's damage output (eg. suddenly a 80 bp stab, super effective move rather than only resisted moves), it's no way near as bad Z moves were.
Z moves were kept and Tera should be too, with No tiering action. If democracy demands action be taken, then let it be banning the move Tera Blast. I can certainly see the argument that that removes a lot of pokemon's identity.
Edit: In fact, outside of tera blast which radically change's an opponent's damage output (eg. suddenly a 80 bp stab, super effective move rather than only resisted moves), it's no way near as bad Z moves were.
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Turning a 4x Fighting weakness and a U-Turn weakness into resistances seems like a pretty solid reason to me. Rock into Fairy and Dark into Fairy are pretty good Tera options. It’s got some use in edge cases. Your example really should have been something like “Corviknight into Ice” or “Great Tusk into Bug”.
Ok, fair there is a use case for it. But the point it's such an unlikely use case that you're basically never going to face it. It's like how Machamp (not an OU pokemon I know but it's just an example) can learn flamethrower and it might be able to use to overcome a 4x weak, physically defensive pokemon but it's so unlikely that you can realistically dismiss it.
Is it? If I was going to be using Tera on Tyranitar, I can’t really think of many better types than Fairy—Rock really only serves to give you the Sand boost. It’s not anywhere near as suboptimal as running a special move on Machamp and comparing the two is kind of absurd.
ngl, I think that z-moves are more broken than tera because you can't use z-moves defensively to answer an opponent's z-moves. And it has all of the other unpredictability problems that tera has. I legit think there needs to be discussion on banning z-moves in gen 7.
big disagree on no tiering action tho, I think revealing tera types on team preview or banning stab tera is the way to go.
That's honestly what I like about it. It has both offensive and defensive use. If it had purely offensive utility, becoming effectively Z move but more often, I'd advocate complete banning.
If we're to ban things because of surprise defensive utility, why are type resisting berries legal? Don't they pose the same issue that defensive tera does? Unpredictable resistance to a single attack. Now granted, they cost you your item, while Tera only costs you your Tera but the fact remains that your issue with an unpredicted defensive tera turning a fight is mirrored with type resisting berries. The reason you have an issue with Tera is the same as with type resisting berries. Are you advocating their ban as well?
Well, with a pokemon like Tyranitar, I'd think you'd want to boost your offense too but alright, let's assume because I can't be bothered to argue that it's a bad example and instead, take my argument as it was intended: You can have a reasonable idea of an opponent's tera type, by looking at what it might want to counter and what it might use offensively. You can eliminate certain types for the same reason as you can eliminate certain moves in a pokemon's movepool by looking at that pokemon's strengths and weaknesses.
The intent (as made obvious by it's usage) of the Machamp example was not to draw a direct comparison between a particular tera type on a particular and flamethrower on Machamp, but to demonstrate that you didn't have to consider all possibilities, only the ones that any sane person would run.
I don't want to be "that guy" but this is a pretty commonly misunderstood aspect of Tera so I thought it's worth mentioning. When you same type TERA you're going from 1.5x power to 2x power so its not a 50% boost to the overall power, its a 33% one. That's still a hefty boost, but its not quite as much as most people assume and can matter a lot for hitting ohko and 2hko threshholds. You can give breloom adaptability to replicate the effects and see that the minimum damage is 68%, not 75%.
252 Atk Adaptability Choice Band Breloom Close Combat vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Corviknight: 272-322 (68.1 - 80.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
I mean, 68 minimum is still a pretty hefty damage output against a Pokémon that’s supposed to beat it.
Yeah, imagine complaining so much about Tera and ending up taking all the positives and leaving it mostly as adaptability boost.
Also i think everything has been said and some discussions are either weird weird or circle jerk so i think ill leave until future updates on this
This has less to do with your actual points, but I'm not sure about using this as an example. A Fighting type Gholdengo isn't blocking any spinners, which would seem like a major win for the opponent. Wouldn't you risk that nearly every time?
That said, Shadow Ball seems like the play here outside of that because it does at least neutral damage no matter what. And if you force the Tera, that's probably a win. The Meta is so hyper offensive now that trading or preventing even a single kill for Tera generally isn't good enough.
As for the rest, I agree with you that Tera team preview doesn't completely eliminate all guessing and unpredictability. But it makes it much more manageable from both team building and decision making perspectives. It's not a complete solution because Tera is very multi-faceted. We are unlikely to get that in the first suspect, though.
To further what I said earlier, one of the issues talked about with tera is it allows a pokemon to counter anything that comes into it. Now, in isolation this is untrue as any given pokemon can only tera into once type and thus can only react to one group of counters. However, without team preview the opponent has to play as if that pokemon has any and all of the tera types, which is effectively like fighting a pokemon with no sure counters, but team preview means you know which one set of counters you can't use if they decide to tera that pokemon. It's no longer about a pokemon having no counters, but a pokemon having the ability to remove a group of counters, which can more reasonably be played around and involve prediction rather than guesswork.
Yeah, I agree that the examples weren’t perfect; I was just trying to quickly come up with some specific things I’ve seen in late game situations where losing your initial typing doesn’t matter as much. Regardless, everyone has lost to what feels like a Tera coin flip, even if they’re not always true 50/50s, and I was just trying to illustrate that preview doesn’t completely alleviate that. You already said that anyway so I guess overall I’m just agreeing with you lol.
One potential angle I could see for restricting Terastallization is if Tera Blast was used as the Terastalization button, essentially making it so on a turn when you want to do so, you're locking yourself into an 80 BP move of that type. Any mon hoping to Terastalize would be limiting their moveset to do so, and would be forced to use a move that's likely weaker than their other coverage options. For instance, Roaring Moon could go for Tera Flying, but couldn't immediately click Acrobatics at the same time.
That might be rather complex in terms of a restriction, but it would be something you could implement on a cartridge, where Terastallizing without using Tera Blast on the same turn would disqualify the player. I doubt this change would solve every issue either, as Roaring Moon with Steel Tera would still have something on par with Iron Head in terms of base power, though it does mean Roaring Moon would need to run both Iron Head and Tera Blast if it wants the Steel coverage in cases where it doesn't end up using your Tera.
That might be rather complex in terms of a restriction, but it would be something you could implement on a cartridge, where Terastallizing without using Tera Blast on the same turn would disqualify the player. I doubt this change would solve every issue either, as Roaring Moon with Steel Tera would still have something on par with Iron Head in terms of base power, though it does mean Roaring Moon would need to run both Iron Head and Tera Blast if it wants the Steel coverage in cases where it doesn't end up using your Tera.
As far as the suspect vote is concerned IMO the whole thing should be one big ranked choice vote, with all of the different restrictions as well as outright ban and no action in one prompt. The system Finchinator mentioned puts people who prefer no action to an outright ban but prefer some action to no action in an awkward position, since no action can effectively only be set as your most preferred or least preferred option.
I might be mistaken but I think ranked choice was the method being used, or is at least the plan.
National dex is suspect testing tera - asking the question of whether it should be banned or not. They are not complicating the matter by asking about numerous theoretical restrictions and requiring all voters, regardless of whether they support limiting tera at all, to provide their preferences for restrictions. I think OU should take the same approach. If the majority of qualified voters want it banned, then ban it. Possible limited reintroductions of tera can be voted on at a later date. I understand the appeal of a compromise, where tera is nerfed in such a way that preserves its essence while maintaining OU's competitive nature. In the long-term, I believe we will find that solution. But the most sensible immediate course of action is to follow national Dex's example by subjecting tera to a suspect test.
I do like this because it requires you to use up a moveslot on anything you want to Tera, which means that teams will most likely be running one or maybe two dedicated Tera mons instead of having their whole team potentially doing it, but it doesn’t really solve the entire issue. Dragapult and Espathra already run Tera Blast, Dragonite is fine with clicking an 80 BP Normal STAB because it does that every turn after it Teras anyway, Regieleki’s going to be running Tera Blast when it comes out, et cetera. This mainly hurts defensive Tera, which, as I’ve already said, is the least problematic thing about the mechanic.
We have the results of the responses to our first SV OU tiering survey up here!
It seems increasingly likely that we are approaching the first suspect of generation, and the subject of it is set to be Terastallization. As alluded to previously, the plan is to make it a two-prompt suspect (it will likely be a single-time vote, but in order to complete that vote, you have to respond to two simple questions rather than just one). We feel this creative and novel solution best captures the unique situation we are attempting to tier, but also acknowledge that there is no outright perfect solution either.
If the playerbase votes on taking action, which will likely require over 60% support to begin with, then the current options the council are considering for tiering action are as follows:
- Outright banning Terastallization
- Limiting Terastallization to a single user per team
- Showing Tera type at Team Preview
- Limiting Terastallization to previously held STAB types only
Please note that this is NOT set-in-stone and we continue to discuss matters so we can serve our community in the best way we know possible. Thank you.
From Finchinator in the Policy Review Thread, second bold is my own.
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