Announcement np: SV OU Suspect Process, Round 1 - Oops!...I Did It Again

[Vall]

Finch doesn’t think Full Ban will win and neither do I. I’m in support of a full ban and I think as many people as possible should be voting for it as their first choice, but almost all of the No Action camp is going to be putting it in third or last place in their votes. Unless the Action camp massively outnumbers the No Action camp, which isn’t the case if the qualified survey results are anything to go by, Full Ban will probably wind up in second or third place.

Ultimately though, we won't know until voting. I don't necessarily think no Ban is going to win, but I wouldn't discount it as a potential outcome. I'd give it maybe a 20% chance of being the final result - not likely, but not enough to not consider.

Honestly It's just one of the flaws of with this voting system that this has to be considered, as team preview is obviously the OP's preferred choice, but no system is flawless.

 

[TheSunIsADedlyLazr]

The more I glance back at this thread and see posts from those with more experience than myself, the less convinced I become that Tera is inherently problematic to the point of warranting a full ban.

From the off, the fact that members of the UU council have chipped in to say outright that Tera is working fine there is imo a smoking gun that the main problem OU has with the mechanic is the specific Pokemon that run over the line from the mechanic, and not so much the mechanic itself. The existence of a metagame where Tera isn't controversial in the least should be proof positive that it can be worked into a competitive game. There isn't a bottomless well of potential broken abusers. The bottom of the well is very evidently somewhere in the OU tier.

The amount of times I see Volcarona, and really any one specific Pokemon's "insane Tera feats," brought up in this thread is also just annoying. It is very clearly an example of a Pokemon that becomes broken with Tera, not evidence that Tera itself is broken. I would sooner ban Volcarona for moving past the benchmark of "literally stonewalled by any Bug resist with Flash Fire" than ban an entire mechanic given the choice between the two, and the remainder of the list of Pokemon in this category is mostly new Pokemon, which shouldn't be surprising. A selection of new Pokemon show themselves to be too much for OU every generation, whether immediately or not, and a lot of those in support of a full ban going on about how we'd have to ban "too many" Pokemon to keep Tera seem to be forgetting that a number of these Pokemon could wind up getting the boot anyway. Booster Energy Roaring Moon or Kingambit or Goldengho or whatever could easily wind up being broken at some point, Tera or no Tera. The number of Pokemon to ban should not be a consideration or viewed as being done "in service" to Tera as a mechanic. This is OU, Pokemon get banned, and if you're truly so concerned over it it's not like we couldn't retest Pokemon banned under Tera meta conditions in the event of a later full ban, whereas a full mechanic ban would pretty much guaranteed never get a retest.

If you're going to try to convince me that Tera as a whole deserves a ban, I need to see arguments that there are fully uncompetitive aspects that simply can't be addressed by any less severe action. To wit, I have not yet seen any such arguments in this thread.

 

[Levant Mir Celestia]

Is it fair that you can simply lose a game just because you can't break through mon you didn't predict would terra. Hell no. Or you get swept like four turns in. No. However what the alternative? You remove mechanic that just been introduce into the game. And several mons with the option to terra who aren't close to broken. Lose the option to.

So you admit it's unfair, and then turn around and expect others to bend over backwards to keep it despite that? What.

The game has always had matches that ended because of a lucky burn, para, or confuse. The random effects of some moves makes some RNG a constant and this talk of Tera being so 'random' (I personally think it's telegraphed fairly often), forget the effect gen 5 scald had. Scald alone elevated a lot of pokemon just over a 30% burn chance.

There's a big difference between terastallization and status effects. Also, how the heck is tera telegraphed? It ain't like you can tell who'll do it from team preview, let alone the tera types. You only realize that when it's actually happened, but then it's too late.

Tera is only 'random' because you don't know when they are going to tera, but it balances because your opponent doesn't know when you will tera either.

You could say the same of Dynamax. That didn't make it okay.

I think some people don't like tera because yeah, it is strong. That's the point.

Being "strong" isn't the problem. It's that it diminishes the effect of player skill, and allows for unfair turnabouts. Also, it forces people to run two checks to mons, and is overall a teambuilding nightmare. Like I said earlier, it's hard enough to build a good team that has outs in most matchups, but the presence of terastallization makes it pretty much impossible.

Hopefully people realize how much RNG and randomness is involved in every game, and tera isn't as insane as some seem to think. I doubt it will be banned, and hopefully we can find a good mid ground.

There is such a thing as too much randomness. I don't know about you, but when even situations that should be safe for me are not, something is very, VERY wrong. And the answer to that is terastallization, plain and simple.

 

[Flamer]

The game has always had matches that ended because of a lucky burn, para, or confuse. The random effects of some moves makes some RNG a constant and this talk of Tera being so 'random' (I personally think it's telegraphed fairly often), forget the effect gen 5 scald had. Scald alone elevated a lot of pokemon just over a 30% burn chance. Tera is only 'random' because you don't know when they are going to tera, but it balances because your opponent doesn't know when you will tera either.

I think some people don't like tera because yeah, it is strong. That's the point. Not everything has been explored yet in the meta though, and every day new ideas are being tested and the meta is still very fluid. Also new mons are slowly being introduced into the meta (Looking at you Cinderace) which should help the meta and tera feel more stable as the meta progresses. I've noticed most Meta games tend to start very fast paced and offensive, then slow down a bit.

Hopefully people realize how much RNG and randomness is involved in every game, and tera isn't as insane as some seem to think. I doubt it will be banned, and hopefully we can find a good mid ground.

It should be intuitively obvious that that when people refer to Tera as "random", they're not equating it with RNG. Its a pretty common colloquial shorthand to express that the outcome of something is not based on player agency.

Let me give you a simple example of the concept: There is a +1 Volcarona at ~50% health against a Supreme Overlord 5 Kingambit. In this situation there are several possible outcomes:

1. Volcarona clicks Morning Sun against the predicted Sucker Punch and wins next turn with Fiery Dance
2. Kingambit uses Kowtow Cleave predicting the Morning Sun and wins
3. Volcarona uses Fiery Dance predicting the Kowtow Cleave in anticipation of the Morning Sun and wins
4. Kingambit uses Sucker Punch predicting the Fiery Dance in anticipation of the prediction of the Kowtow Cleave and wins
5. Back to Step 1.

As each option is equally valid the actual decision you make is arbitrary, hence "random". I'm sure you can connect the dots and see how Tera creates similar game states.

Smogon has historically not liked these kinds of game states as they remove player agency (see the Aegislash ban). In isolated scenarios such as the example above, these are not problematic. The issue comes when their frequency increases. When every Pokemon can shift type at will it means that instances where a players agency is taken away from them is increased.

Any time you think "hey this tera is telegraphed" that is an instance where your agency has been limited/removed. Your opponent, assuming they are of similar skill to you, has every right to decide not to Tera in anticipation of your prediction and now you're right back at the start. This is the reason why many players tend to save their Tera as late as possible: if you are in a losing position you have the opportunity to try and trade resources until you're in a situation where the result is based on an arbitrary decision instead of a guaranteed loss. With the ubiquity of Tera, these game states happen FAR too often for my taste.

 

[mikebflattuba]

Personally, I love the unpredictability that is Terastallization, as a well timed or poorly timed Terastallization can swing the battle and allow for amazing and memorable plays. It is by far my favorite gimmick that Gamefreak has designed so far, and I'm thoroughly enjoying the mind games it brings to competitive. As such, I would be incredibly surprised and disappointed if it were to just be banned outright.

Therefore I vote "No Action"

However, I also understand the many complaints of those who don't want to have to predict an unknown Terastallization every turn, having the threat looming over them for much of the game. That's why I'm open to a restriction on Terastallization where each Pokemon's Tera-type is revealed, either during preview or when the Pokemon are in play.

• 1) Reveal Tera type at team preview (Any Pokemon can Terastallize, but the type they would do so into is disclosed at team preview prior to a battle)

These other "action" options really destroy the point of the mechanic in my opinion, but I've ranked them anyway.

• 2) 1 Tera user per team (Only the first member of your party will be allowed to Terastallize during the course of the battle)
• 3) Only STAB Tera types allowed (Any Pokemon can Terastallize, but they may only do so to types that match their initial STAB typings)
• 4) Outright ban (Terastallization will no longer be usable in SV OU)

 

[callforjudgement]

I've been laddering a lot on account after account in an attempt to get reqs, but with my own teams, and am going to concede that I'm probably not quite good enough – my "true" GXE is likely somewhere in the 70%–75% range, so in order to make reqs, I would need to either get lucky on one specific suspect run or to use a better team (and I'm not sure that there'd be enough time left now to learn ta new team). Still, it's given me a lot of insight into how Tera works, and I'm really conflicted about it, so I'm not sure how I'd vote if I did have the privilege. In case it's useful to the players who do have reqs, though, I'm going to put my thoughts down here.

First, Tera is obviously incredibly powerful. This is not in its own right a reason to ban a mechanic – for example, if Game Freak decided to increase the number of Pokémon allowed on a team to 7 rather than 6, that would obviously be a ridiculous power boost that every team would have to use, but it would be unlikely to make the game uncompetitive or otherwise be something that needed banning. Instead, we have to look at the effect that it's having on the metagame to see whether it would get better or worse with a ban.

Second, the metagame is obviously broken at the moment, and many bans are going to be required to fix it. It isn't broken solely because of Tera, though – the problems would still exist and require corrective action even after a Tera ban. For just about every broken situation that exists due to Tera, there's a comparable broken situation that has nothing to do with Tera (with the possible exception of Espathra). So to me, the question that we need to think about is really "we're going to have to ban a lot of things to make this metagame functional – is banning Tera along the way going to be the best way to do that?".

I think there are two main axes along which the metagame is broken. Tera interacts with both of these, but not in a direct "Tera makes this better" or "Tera makes this worse" sort of way, the interactions are more complex than that.


One is that the ability to do a "cleanup sweep" comes too early and is too easy. Something that happens in many Pokémon games, and is often (but not always) the primary strategy for one or both players, is that a player aims to knock out or wear down all the checks to one specific sweeper on their team, allowing them to deploy their sweeper and win the game on the spot (this can happen with both offensive and balance teams, and the designated sweeper can be planned from turn 1 or chosen during the game). That isn't a problem in its own right; the maneuvering to try to get into a position to win the game is a major part of competitive Pokémon and the reason that many of us play it, with the cleanup sweep itself being more of a victory lap at the end. The problem is that the "interesting part" of the game can be mostly obviated by the power of some of the sweepers; right now in OU we have Pokémon that have very few checks if given appropriate setup; this means that there might be no checks on the opponent's team (allowing a sweep from turn 1), and even if there are, they can be very vulnerable to being lured or being overloaded or simply being worn down by the rest of the team, meaning that the interesting part of the game is over quickly. And the problem with that is that the setup turns are far too easy to come by, meaning that the strategy of denying the setup turn (rather than checking the sweeper) doesn't really work – so teams need multiple checks to just about everything that the opponent could be running.

Tera makes this situation worse in some respects:

1. a sweeper can Tera into a radically different type in order to dodge a move that would prevent them setting up, giving a free turn to use a setup move;
2. a sweeper can Tera into a type with a difficult-to-stop defensive profile, invalidating some of their usual checks because those checks no longer have a way to do significant damage;
3. a Tera into your own type, or into the type of a coverage move that you need to get proper type coverage, or into the type of a priority move that you need in order to beat faster opponents, can make Pokémon significantly better at sweeping than they were beforehand.

Tera also makes this situation better in some respects:

1. On Pokémon that your team doesn't normally need to Tera, you generally have free reign to use their Tera type to make them a valid "emergency check" to a cleanup sweeper you'd otherwise struggle with, giving counter-play to the strategy of throwing everything into an early-game cleanup sweep without much of a team-building cost;
2. A successful defensive Tera generally gives more of a benefit than a successful offensive Tera, in that it does something that you couldn't do otherwise (the effect of an offensive Tera can generally be replicated with an additional turn or two of setup), so teams that aim to try to stop the brokenness get more of a boost from Tera's existence than teams that aim to exploit it, and removing Tera would tend to remove that balancing factor and make offense even harder to stop.

The problem of cleanup-sweeping being too strong is something that would exist with or without Tera and will likely need a number of bans to fix regardless. On the low end of the ladder (which I've played through quite a bit due to all my attempts to get reqs), doing a Tera sweep is easy and effective – but this falls off as you get higher up, with players knowing how to beat the usual suspects for this, and good sweepers for the purpose exist even without Tera needing to be involved at all. It's possible to beat an unprepared team with a Tera Normal Dragonite with 1 Dragon Dance boost. It's also possible to beat the same unprepared team with an un-Tera'd Dragonite with 2 or 3 Dragon Dance boosts, and by running a little extra bulk on Dragonite, you're likely to be able to get them. There's clearly something wrong with a metagame when I'm running Stealth Rock as bait: if I throw rocks up and switch to Dragonite, and the unprepared opponent tries to spin with their Great Tusk that doesn't know Ice Spinner, they have lost the game; the turn they spent clicking Rapid Spin gave me two turns of setup (one as they spin, and one as they switch out to something that can 2HKO Dragonite).

So this is a problem that I think is bad at the moment, and Tera contributes to the problem but also helps to fix it. In low ladder, the problem looks like a "Tera problem" because Tera is normally involved in it – but this is more of a case of "when the game's already won, I may as well use my Tera to make sure because it's safer than relying on extra boosts, or surviving hits, to make sure". In high ladder, the problem still exists but it's no longer particularly caused by Tera; the Tera will normally have a more important use elsewhere, and is probably better used to try to stop the sweep than set it up. There are still broken sweeps going on, but they're set up using lures, or by taking advantage of the opponent wasting time clearing hazards, or by Shed Tail, or by Pokémon that don't need Tera to sweep teams once their checks are dead (e.g. Chi-Yu).

It is also the case, though, that some specific Pokémon are much better at cleaning up a team because of Tera. Espathra is the most obvious example; Annihilape is also much better at cleaning up a team if it can Tera into something with fewer weaknesses. I'm expecting this to be a fairly short list, though, with most Pokémon either being broken even without Tera or reasonable even with Tera. That said, if we don't ban Tera, we can expect to need to ban more Pokémon from OU – it seems probable that we can create a less broken, more competitive, metagame in two different ways, either by banning Tera + some Pokémon or by not banning Tera and banning more Pokémon. For what it's worth, my preference here would be to ban the Pokémon rather than the mechanic – the Pokémon would still be usable in Ubers, and the mechanic would still be usable in lower tiers.


The metagame is also broken in a completely different way: the prevalence of "pure guess" turns, including the infamous "50-50"s. When an entire game comes down to outpredicting your opponent on one specific turn, the game is somewhat unsatisfying, and it's lead to a lot of unfun moments and feeling that the game isn't really competitive. Although this has always been a part of Pokémon, it's much worse than usual this generation.

The reason I'm conflicted about Tera with respect to these is that a) some of these guesses are due to Tera existing, but b) most of them aren't, and the ones that exist independent of Tera are more problematic than the ones caused by Tera. So there's a major problem here, but Tera is only a small portion of that problem. Banning Tera would help here – but it would only slightly alleviate the issue and it would still be a major problem, and I'm far from convinced that it would help enough to make a relevant difference.

"Tera 50-50s" are one of the main arguments I see in favour of banning Tera, so it makes sense to write down some ways in which they're less problematic than other 50-50s:

1. The cost of using your Tera is really, really high: if you use your Tera and the opponent doesn't, you are in effect choosing to lose all the Tera 50-50s for the rest of the match, and also giving your opponent information on what Tera your team will use. Additionally, you are giving up the right to Tera something else. The high cost for one of the two options means that it actually isn't a 50-50 at all; the options are weighted, with one being much more valuable than the other.
2. This means that a Tera 50-50 can only be close to a true 50-50 late in a match, and only if you haven't used your Tera yet. This is a rare situation, as sometimes it's correct to use your Tera earlier (e.g. against some teams, it's worth spending a Tera and a Pokémon in order to prevent the opponents removing Toxic Spikes for the rest of the match), and often by the time that "late in a match" happens one team is sufficiently far ahead that even losing the 50-50 wouldn't lose the match. So Tera 50-50s are very rare compared to more normal 50-50s.
3. Because the cost of picking the "I use my Tera" option of a 50-50 is so high, it often makes sense to simply predict the opponent to not Tera, because forcing them to spend their Tera is frequently worth sacrificing your Pokémon – after all, if the opponent can't Tera any more, it removes most of the counterplay they'd subsequently have to your sweeping attempts. In this situation, there isn't a guess involved at all.
4. Tera 50-50s are therefore the most problematic in situations where you aren't planning to switch out for the rest of the match (such as when you have a set-up Dragonite on the field already) – but those situations are problematic anyway because they're symptoms of a metagame that's broken in other ways. The process of fixing the metagame to make it harder to set up a sweeper and clean-sweep a team with it would also incidentally fix most of the situations in which Tera 50-50s occur.

This isn't to argue that Tera 50-50s are a good thing – they clearly aren't! It's just that they seem like such a minor problem compared to the following, much more common, scenarios (which have nothing to do with Tera):

• Sucker Punch 50-50s, in which you have to guess whether the opponent is planning to attack, or to boost/heal;
• "Which move will the Chi-Yu use" 50-50s, in which your current Pokémon resists neither Dark nor Fire and is slower than Chi-Yu and you have to guess whether to switch to a Dark resist or a Fire resist, or the same situation from the Chi-Yu player's point of view (I've actually resorted to actual randomization on this one before now: it's very frequent, often determines the game result, and it's quite common for the two options to be perfectly balanced)
• Make It Rain 50-50s, in which you have to guess whether to switch out of a Make It Rain or stay in on a Shadow Ball from Gholdengo (getting this guess right normally buys you a setup turn, which in this metagame, can often win the game)

…together with all the less finely balanced guesses that we're familiar with from competitive Pokémon, mostly related to switching in on predicted attacks, or guessing what moves or items an opposing Pokémon has (these guesses are worse than normal because scouting can be too risky in a metagame where setup turns have such impact – scouting can give your opponent a free setup turn, and thus lose you the game)

…together with randomness that isn't pure guesses, which is also more prevalent than usual this generation:

• Critical hits seem to have become more relevant as a game mechanic due to things like Dondozo and Garganacl, in which you often have a limited number of opportunities beat them with a critical hit, maybe 6-8 or so, which puts the chance of getting the crit you need uncomfortably (and uncompetitively) close to 50%;
• Sleep Talk picks moves randomly, which matters a lot on Dondozo (and I also saw someone using Sleep Talk + Revival Blessing which had a huge randomization effect on the game results);
• Misses are interesting, and one argument for banning Tera – significantly-below-100%-accuracy moves for a Pokémon's natural STABs aren't required as often as they used to be, but are often good choices for a STAB gained through Tera (e.g. special Tera Fighting Pokémon are rare but often use Focus Blast when they are used), so banning Tera would probably help with these

So, we have a couple of major problems in the metagame, and banning Tera would make one problem better in some ways but worse in other ways, and would have a very small positive impact on the other problem but not enough to significantly change things. It would also reduce the number of Pokémon bans required to make the metagame functional. Having written all this out, I think I lean towards not banning, but I'm still not sure what I think.


What about the partial-ban suggestions?:

• Banning Tera into a new type (i.e. restricting Tera to STAB only) is going to exacerbate the problem that cleanup-sweeps are too easy, and although it'll address many of the Tera 50-50s, I suspect that this would make things worse on average than either an unban or a total ban.
• Limiting Tera to one specific Pokémon limits the ability to use Tera defensively more than it limits the ability to use it offensively, and thus will likely exacerbate the first issue without fixing the second.
• Showing Tera types in team preview is likely to have only a minimal impact on the issues I've identified here. It takes some of the guesswork out of attempting to set up a sweep of the entire enemy team by meaning that you can do it on "thinner margins" – at present, attempting to do this means that you need a backup strategy in case your opponent has a Tera ready to stop you, whereas if Tera types were shown in team preview, you could safely "go for it" without needing that safety margin. Whether this makes the metagame more or less competitive will depend on player behaviour with Tera unbanned – if the players decide to go for it anyway, then we'll get the occasional Tera blowouts of attempted setup sweeps, whereas if they're more cautious, then the metagame with unrestricted Tera is definitely better. It also means that "Tera 50-50s" become true 50-50s more often: at present, you can sometimes win a 50-50 by concealing the fact that it exists from your opponent, so the situation is asymmetrical and thus not a pure guess; whereas if the Tera type is revealed in team preview, the opponent will know that the 50-50 exists and thus the situation becomes more of a guess than a case of trying to reason out the opponent's team.

As a consequence, none of these seem like a clear improvement over the present situation – I'm leaning towards considering the two best options to be no action and a full Tera ban, with the partial bans being worse than those. I guess that if I had the ability to vote, I'd vote for "no action", but "full ban" as my first choice in the second vote (with "Tera preview" as the next-best option) – but I'm still very unsure and could change my mind! This isn't a "no action" based on the metagame being functional, though – the metagame is very much broken, it's just that I don't think banning Tera will do enough to fix it, and might in fact make things worse. We're going to have to look to harder solutions to fix things, most likely banning quite a lot of Pokémon, and maybe some moves, from OU.

 

[Flash67]

Full disclosure: I am someone who probably cannot get the 80% GXE. My preference would be team reveal > no action > full ban and hope the other two aren't the outcome. Since this is not how the voting works, I would first vote No Action. If you are like me where two or three of the action outcomes are not desirable at all and three less desirable than no action, it makes sense to vote no action first.

 

[Storm Zone]

Ok so after playing a bit more in the tera metagame, ive turned into an aegislash.
I've had a change in my stance on tera, now i know i made good points about why it should be unrestricted in my last post, i've never dived into the penalties, now that i've modified my old stances, my point 1 stands from the first post as to why it shouldnt be fully banned:

1. The tradeoffs, keep in mind, if u terastallize a pokemon, even with terablast, you also change typing, which means you lose your initial typing, which means the resist that you had for the initial typing is now gone, unĺess u tera the same type which only gives u a 1.33x boost, and after gaining the new typing, u also gain new weaknesses and resistances, which can displace the balance of your team altogether, say you had kingambit for a ghost resist, and u tera into a flying type to counter fighting types like great tusk, you also gain a new weakness to rock and ice types, so stuff like banded chien pao can ice shard, and sd or ice spin on sucker if necessary.

now to the penalty:

2. You cannot predict the type of tera thats gonna come out at any turn in the game, out of over 20 types, making it almost impossible to avoid a huge difference maker, that likely will end the game if played correctly, forcing a surprise factor in every single game, and having a backbone does not solve this issue, having a backbone would only prepare u for the previous type of the terastallized pokemon, which ultimately ends in either a clean sweep, or an almost impossible position, to the ones saying having 1 dedicated tera type is the best outcome, this will make 0 difference and it does not make any sense since u already can only tera once per game, because even if you dedicate it, u still can only tera once, and u can still tera into any of the 20+ types on the pokemon you would like to terastallize anyway, since you rarely stray from a dedicated tera anyway, the game will still end on the right tera from their dedicated sweeper.

my point 3 stands from the first post aswell as to why it should not fully be banned:

3. My third point was that it neutralises the matchup concept, how many times have people lost a game and blamed it on mu? Or counter team?, tera factors this out and gives all well built teams a chance to win the game, despite the mu, so its now entirely luck and skill based and not mu based, tera introduces a new unpredictable fun dynamic which allows for exciting games and turnarounds for what seemed to be impossible or boring, it gives that momentum shift, so if say your team got leaked and your opponent cteamed u and he now has the mu, you can position your tera at x point in the game to allow for y core to have a chance to beat it, by full awareness of the sequences your opponent is making. So the matchup factor is neutralised, no one can call impossible matchup or blame it on that excuse.

now let's discuss more penalties to unrestricting tera:

4. u can apply tera on any of your 6 pokemon(including defensive ones), so on the defensive side, say u have such an uncompetitive wall like garganacl, that only has limited counters, and checked by those counters, it can easily terastallize and neutralise all of those counters and just salt cure protect spam, and all of a sudden your entire team is chipped to a game ending situation, example: garganacl vs kingambit, kingambit can iron head and kill it, but if it terastallizes into fighting or water, it can eat the hit easily and irondefense/body press, and just like that your breaker is down. example 2: garganacl vs iron treads, treads can eq right? kill garganacl maybe?, nope, terastallize into fairy. Tank eq, salt cure protect, and poof, garganacl has 1v1'd iron treads. so on offensive examples, if u dedicate a tera to dragonite, but you have chien pao on a team, dragonite doesnt need the tera, and now chien pao can use it vs a different matchup, and it will vary with matchup and give the scenario of forcing huge progress to a game ending position.

5: gameplan shifting/forces u to re-strategize: lets say u strategise vs a team on preview, and lets say u plan to spin on x turn, but what if u dont get the rapid spin off?, lets say one of their walls are tera ghost like great tusk, u wouldnt know until it teras and if it teras on your spin and kills you, your game plan is up in smokes. lets say u plan to chip this tusk with close combat into aqua jet range, but it clicks tera flying, and resists your cc and kills you, and now youre out of jet range, and all of a sudden you find yourself re-strategizing.

Let's now dive into my point on why it should NOT be outright banned:

6. The only 2 valid justifications for an outright ban is changing the outcome of games despite you knowing their tera, and changing the outcome of games due to stab tera types, addressing both we know that unpredictability is no longer an issue, since you know the effects and the tera types, now lets take a step back, what if held items came out in gen 9 and not in gen 2? There are hundreds of items that can drastically change the outcome of games just like there are many tera types that can change the outcome of games, now we know the effects, lets take some examples, we can use a team of 6 scarfers and auto win because of the surprise factor, same with 6 life orbs, and 6 assault vests, u can use any unexpected held item u want to surprise your opponent, and win because of it, does that mean this is also uncompetitive?, i did not think so, just remember a double standard is applied here, and we cannot say its because items are balanced because we did ban bright powder and king's rock didnt we?, right so, we can ban the very very few broken mons with the now visible tera types that are still pushed over the edge like chi-yu and garganacl. Concluding this point: if we want an outright ban on tera, we have to have an outright ban on ALL held items period because it is now the same impact given the best possible restriction which is show on preview.

My final point which is a modified version of point #4 in my first post, balancing the pros and cons of terastallization in a compound point:

7. (i) You have a new layer of preparation which can enable more strategising on preview on the possible outcomes of the game, now that you are aware of their teras u can begin analyzing which offensive mon can tera and plan against both those types, and which defensive mon can tera and plan against both those types aswell, for example if x pokemon is fire type, you usually would send a ground/water to check it, but if its tera is grass, u can have your ice/flying type on alert now that you know, which trains your awareness in games, because now you have to be ready for a terastal that you already know which removes the highly uncompetitive unpredictability of it, now games can only end on your lack of awareness, because you know the type beforehand, so this bends the proportions of preparation in tournaments, and gives a new light to prepping which people neglect, its always the boring part and the replay gathering, now u have this new layer of tera sheets, so u can scout what teras x person likes/dislikes, and what teras u can use to prepare against it effectively, lets see some great examples, lets take goat user giannis, he uses well structured teams and i would expect his teras to be structured too, say he likes ice teras alot for ice shard priority, u can build against it, and use resisting teras like steel and water on your ice weak pokemon, example #2, say he uses tera ghost rotom-w, there are instances where u can force that tera since it needs it so often lets say rotom-wash is the water resist on x side of the field, and u have a dragonite rain, you know rotom always tera steels/ghosts vs dragonite if it dds otherwise it loses, once you dd, you force it, now all of a sudden your water types look good since you forced their tera on the resist, now the water stab is looking good.


(ii) It twists and bends the proportions of teambuilding giving it a new layer which allows for your cognitive abilities to enhance even more, so now this layer is to balance the typings and weaknesses of your team post tera of all pokemon in the tier, lets take dragonite for example, we can take logic here lets use x vs y, x side has dragonite, you know its weaknesses, they gonna tera to neutralise it, fairy, ice, and dragon, which means teras on the sheet would be fire,steel normal, and water, you are y side now, you know what his dragonite can tera into, you can build against its tera forms now that you can see it on preview, so you have iron hands+ corv, iron hands successfully takes on dragonite's normal , water, fire and steel tera, and corv helps vs steel and normal, so we're moving back to x side now, dragonite teras into fire, now we can have a water resist like rotom wash to pair with it, since fire is the new weakness, so you can adjust your cores to benefit your team post tera given you have the tera sheets on preview, it gives u the idea/dynamic that u can build a team that can switch its offenses/defenses to other positions, this gives more teambuilder variety and ultimately never-ending cores, so the tier would never get boring it would be forever changing, so examples, tera fairy dondozo, u have a team with almost no dragon resists, tera dondozo, and now u have the ultimate dragon resist, and u can build around it as if u had a fairy like clef, example 2: tera dark chien pao, dual typings can be consistently used without compression, u can have an ice type since chien pao changes to dark, and ice can be your ice resist like cetitan, and chien pao can be used as your ghost resist, example no. 3: chi yu, tera fire chi yu makes u lose the fighting weaknesses so u can have chi yu + chien pao with only 1 fight resist, since chi yu drops its resist post tera.


Concluding this point by saying u can strategise more precisely based on the tera sheet given on the opposing team, and u can have double layer teams manipulating tera movesets to shift playstyles from balance to BO mid game, which allows for shorter or longer more exciting games that no one would know the direction till its over, and with the tera sheets, teambuilding and preparation in tournaments can be limitless.

My conclusion that my supporting points above justified:

Tera should stay, but it must be restricted, my precedence is as follows:

1. Reveal Tera type at team preview
2. Outright ban
3. Only STAB Tera types allowed
4. 1 Tera user per team

This is my final stance on terastallization.

 

[carbonlifeform]

Just want to throw my hat in the ring again echoing the voices against "Tera Captain". Outside of very specific team structures, it really forces teams to build around offensive tera abusers, while Tera Preview and No Action both enable teams to divide up their tera usage more evenly between defensive and offensive applications and form a wider variety of game plans. This only serves to make those abusers more powerful, since you lose the option to Tera your Skeledirge to help counter a wider variety of setup sweepers, for example.

As somebody who derives joy from building off-meta teams (I peaked #2 on RU ladder running SD Golisopod, Bulky DD/Roost Flygon, and Tsareena back when Tsareena was considered C rank in that tier), I still prefer No Action to Tera Preview, since I think Tera Preview doesn't solve the timing issues innate to tera and mostly serves to push team building towards a smaller set of "optimal" choices, but I also recognize the frustration of losing a match because of an expected tera into an unexpected type. I also understand the frustration that comes with something as fundamental as typing becomes a guessing game and the ability to simplify the number of variables (and that off-meta teams need to function without the surprise value to actually be worthwhile).

I still think that the best argument for Total Ban is about overall tier health more than competitiveness. I think that experience has taught us that Tera isn't as fundamentally broken as we were afraid it might be. The fact that UU seems to be clamoring to keep tera is a strong suggestion that there won't be the perpetual Next `Mon Up issues that Dynamax introduced where anything with Max Airstream became an instead snowball threat. But there definitely are OU `mons that are pushed into questionable territory by Tera, and if there's a choice to be made between 3 suspects (Tera plus a couple of `mons that are maybe too strong even without it) vs 7-10 suspects (this one plus suspects for Dragonite, Volcarona, Chien Pao, Roaring Moon, Dragapult, Iron Valiant, Annihilape, Gholdengo, etc.) PLUS having to (re)test things as the meta changes around new `mons, I understand the desire to keep it simple (stupid) and remove Tera from the equation.

I don't think most of those `mons are nearly as broken as we thought they were a few weeks ago (I haven't lost to an ESpeed Dragonite that didn't actively out-position me in ages), but a suspect is still a lot of resources and introduces a lot of churn, and if people want to vote Full Ban just to simplify the bs, it's their tier.

Still, I'm very much moving towards:
1a. No Action
1b. Tera Preview
3. Full Ban
4. Tera Captain
5. STAB Only

Good luck to all fighting for last minute reqs.

 

[Nice Succ]

No Action

If action is taken:
1: Reveal Tera type at team preview
2: 1 Tera user per team
3: Outright ban
4: Only STAB Tera types allowed

 

[Biannual Run]

I fought and I failed for reqs. Was one of my goals to do this over the break, and I'm pretty disappointed in myself that I couldn't get it done. There is just such a skill gap between where I am and where I need to be to get to that 80% GXE, and I don't see myself getting significantly better between now and my holiday plans, so I guess it is time to stop. I hadn't played much since Gen 6, and the knowledge curve has increased a lot since then. Either way, after playing 300+ games in this meta, I feel like my opinion has shifted and become more nuanced, so I'll share it here.

Hide

My attempts:

If I made reqs, I would have voted YES ACTION for Q1 and PREVIEW > BAN > CAPTAIN > STAB. As for Tera, I think it adds to the meta in that it provides a tool that you can use to adapt to the current game. Of all of the ways I have lost trying to ladder, rarely do I feel that I have had an unwinnable matchup. Usually, I have some either offensive or defensive tera option that I can use to either break through a wall that or defend against a Pokemon that I otherwise would not have been able to do without Tera. However, Tera comes with three notable problems.

1. It is virtually impossible to scout for a Tera type, and running a "lure" Tera type has a significantly lower opportunity cost than lure sets of the past and work significantly better than lure sets of the past. While it isn't as bad as "any Pokemon can be any type," there are Pokemon that can transform into so many types (ie Kingambit) and it is virtually impossible to scout beforehand. This forces absolute shots in the dark of predictions. (Have you ever used ESpeed against a Kingambit predicting Tera Flying, only for it to be Tera Ghost?) Losing games on these types of interactions is really demoralizing, because it is really hard to learn from these incidents, so you leave the game feeling cheated. (Should I really stop using ghost moves against Annihilape because of the one Tera Normal Annihilape?). This is why I want action, and PREVIEW solves this issue.
2. Tera pushes many offensive Pokemon over the edge, either by eliminating common weaknesses (Espathra, Annihilape), gaining additional strong coverage (Dragonite, Volcarona), or by providing too much power in additional STAB (Dragapult, Chien-Pao, Chi-Yu). Frankly, I don't really know what to do about this one. Many of the Pokemon here are strong absent of Tera, many benefit from the excess of Taunt and the should-be-banned Cyclizar that eliminates so much defensive counterplay, and many of the defensive Pokemon in the game are simply not that good relative to the new offensive options. I can't speak to UU as I haven't played it, but it seems the sentiment there is that Tera works. Further, these lists are not endless and eventually defensive options catch up. I lean on the "Ban the Pokemon" side compared to the "Ban the Mechanic" here, but I completely understand the other side, which is why I would choose YES ACTION as opposed to NO ACTION.
3. The 50/50s. This point seems to be the crux of the anti-Tera argument, and while I do agree it is a problem, I think it is not cause for ban. Why? The number of game-altering 50/50s per game in this generation is so high. Every time there is a Great Tusk in play and the opponent has a Gholdengo in the back there is a game-altering 50/50. Every time a Grimmsnarl wants to click Parting Shot but the opponent has a dark type is a 50/50. Every time you want to set up hazards but the opponent has a Hatterene is a game-altering 50/50. Every Sucker Punch is a 50/50. That is just the nature of a meta with a lot of offensive threats, few pivots, random move immunities, and few U-Turn/Volt Switch users: you are gonna have to make a lot of guesses about what your opponent is going to do on a given turn, and guessing wrong can swing the game out of your favor. Is this a desirable part of the game? I don't know, but Tera (if previewed) is far from the only thing causing this. I think as offensive threats get banned, defensive Pokemon will get relatively stronger, and the slower pace of the game will reduce the impact of individual 50/50s and allow better players to win more often.

It was fun playing this meta though, even though I did not reach my goal and there are some kinks to be worked out in the meta. I also appreciate the incredible transparency of the council in all communications relating to this process, as it feels professional even though they are volunteers.

 

[pikachu<3]

A lot has been written on Tera already, so I'm not going to rehash points that have already been made.

I will, however, point out what gets lost if terra gets banned and/or restricted: Defensive terra becomes a lot less viable, and we (effectively) axe some pokemon/sets from the OU tier. The most obvious example here is Garganacl, which goes from an fantastic OU defensive option with Terra available into yet another defensive rock-type stuck in NU/PU/ZU as a causality of the type chart. Other notable examples include Tera Dark Corviknight who is able to actually defog in games by beating Gholdengo 1v1 (bulk up power trip is good guys, use it), and Tera Fairy Skeledirge as a fantastic check to dangerous dragon types. In addition, if Terra is restricted/banned here, we might never explore defensive options such as (for example) Fairy/Steel/etc amoonguss/pex/chansey/etc

I encourage anyone who wants a more competitive, skillful metagame to vote no action.

 

[alephgalactus]

The most obvious example here is Garganacl, which goes from an fantastic OU defensive option with Terra available into yet another defensive rock-type stuck in NU/PU/ZU as a causality of the type chart.

I doubt it’ll fall that far, if it falls at all. Typing aside, it’s still got access to Salt Cure, which discourages two of Rock’s best answers—Water and Steel—from switching in. It also has Recover, which defensive Rock-types have historically lacked. Additionally, 100/130/90 is a way better defensive spread than almost any other Rock-type—most of them are noticeably lacking on one side of the spectrum, usually special, and the ones that don’t tend to have crippling double weaknesses or poor HP. It’s not going to be top-5 material without Tera, yes, but it’s also not going to be bad. Tera doesn’t turn bad things good, it turns good things broken.

Also, banning Tera will hurt offensive play infinitely more than it hurts defensive play. This is an objective fact—the quantity and quality of offensive Tera abusers far outstrips that of defensive Tera abusers. Defensive Tera has Garganacl, Skeledirge, sometimes Dondozo, and maybe Corviknight. Offensive Tera has Dragapult, Dragonite, Annihilape, Espathra, Roaring Moon, Iron Valiant, Chi-Yu, Chien-Pao, Volcarona, Kingambit, and that’s just what I’m listing off the top of my head.

 

[Moyashi]

The most obvious example here is Garganacl, which goes from an fantastic OU defensive option with Terra available into yet another defensive rock-type stuck in NU/PU/ZU as a causality of the type chart.

No. Just no. While tera makes Garganacl amazing, it doesn't outright need the mechanic. Its signature ability is amazing and provides invaluable role compression for teams (status immunity/ghost check), and its natural bulk still is great in conjunction with recovery. Salt Cure however is the major reason this will not happen, as the move is an outstanding progress maker that in conjunction with hazards annoys many pokemon. Garg is also a good stealth rocker in general, and it can even tech ways of beating checks (heavy slam for Hatterene and I've seen Earthquake tor Clodsire).

Other notable examples include Tera Dark Corviknight who is able to actually defog in games by beating Gholdengo 1v1 (bulk up power trip is good guys, use it), and Tera Fairy Skeledirge as a fantastic check to dangerous dragon types. In addition, if Terra is restricted/banned here, we might never explore defensive options such as (for example) Fairy/Steel/etc amoonguss/pex/chansey/etc

Corv pivots on a predicted Gholdengo switch, and fairy Skeledirge... Yeah it's nice but losing it would not suddenly make dragons unbearable. If that was the case, then there would be a bigger issue to look at. There is also no real point to theorymonning about stuff that MIGHT happen if tera is around (your suggestions of teras on amoonguss, pex or chansey). We should discuss what IS happening now.

I encourage anyone who wants a more competitive, skillful metagame to vote no action.

While it's contentious if Tera needs to be banned outright at this stage, there seems to be some shared sentiment generally that some kind of restriction is desirable. In it's current state, unrestricted terastilize is not balanced and if we want a competitive, skillful metagame we should do something.

 

[pikachu<3]

I doubt it’ll fall that far, if it falls at all. Typing aside, it’s still got access to Salt Cure, which discourages two of Rock’s best answers—Water and Steel—from switching in. It also has Recover, which defensive Rock-types have historically lacked. Additionally, 100/130/90 is a way better defensive spread than almost any other Rock-type—most of them are noticeably lacking on one side of the spectrum, usually special, and the ones that don’t tend to have crippling double weaknesses or poor HP. It’s not going to be top-5 material without Tera, yes, but it’s also not going to be bad. Tera doesn’t turn bad things good, it turns good things broken.

Also, banning Tera will hurt offensive play infinitely more than it hurts defensive play. This is an objective fact—the quantity and quality of offensive Tera abusers far outstrips that of defensive Tera abusers. Defensive Tera has Garganacl, Skeledirge, sometimes Dondozo, and maybe Corviknight. Offensive Tera has Dragapult, Dragonite, Annihilape, Espathra, Roaring Moon, Iron Valiant, Chi-Yu, Chien-Pao, Volcarona, Kingambit, and that’s just what I’m listing off the top of my head.

You're missing the point of the post.

If a voter's goal is to maximize the number of viable mons/sets in OU-- I'm arguing that they should vote to keep Terra instead of banning it, because more options would be available in OU here even after necessary bans.

Think--how many offensive mons would we have to ban due to Terra? I can only count 3-- Expathra, Annihilape and maybe Volcarona--Chi-yu and Chien-Pao are likely to get sent to Ubers regardless, and the others are just not broken even with Terra (esp with all the anti kingambit measure found in OU atm)

Meanwhile, there are at least as many mons/sets no longer viable in OU due to banning terra--Garganacl, Maushold (this thing NEEDS tera normal), Skeledirge; and there are sets that lose viablity, such as Specs Pelipper, BU+defog Corviknight, Curse Dordenzo, etc. And of course there could be mons currently in UU that might have a cute terra set that we just haven't discovered yet.

 

[Levant Mir Celestia]

A lot has been written on Tera already, so I'm not going to rehash points that have already been made.

I will, however, point out what gets lost if terra gets banned and/or restricted: Defensive terra becomes a lot less viable, and we (effectively) axe some pokemon/sets from the OU tier. The most obvious example here is Garganacl, which goes from an fantastic OU defensive option with Terra available into yet another defensive rock-type stuck in NU/PU/ZU as a causality of the type chart. Other notable examples include Tera Dark Corviknight who is able to actually defog in games by beating Gholdengo 1v1 (bulk up power trip is good guys, use it), and Tera Fairy Skeledirge as a fantastic check to dangerous dragon types. In addition, if Terra is restricted/banned here, we might never explore defensive options such as (for example) Fairy/Steel/etc amoonguss/pex/chansey/etc

I encourage anyone who wants a more competitive, skillful metagame to vote no action.

I would argue the exact opposite - that getting rid of terastallization would make things more competitive and skillful, as sweepers no longer have a get-out-of-jail-free button to abuse to steal games by turning a check into setup fodder. Also, because of that, it would hit offensive tera users much harder; Espathra, Dragonite, Roaring Moon, etc. will no longer have tera to hide behind when a bad matchup comes knocking. If they end up being oppressive anyway, they will be summarily dealt with.

 

[Puppetdude354]

Hello OU

I have been constantly shuffling teams around with multiple strategies and qualities, but across all of that, Chi-Yu still remains extremely broken. First off it's immune to Prankster, and because of its speed it's almost impossible to use status moves to take it down. Second its ability lowers the opponents special defense, which makes it's attacks do even more damage since it only uses special moves, and it come to a point where it is killing things in just one hit with absolutely no boosts whatsoever. Third, there is no checking as there is no rock type that can check it, all the other fire types are too slow and will just get killed by another attack, water types are also too slow except boosted Quaquaval, which itself it just weak to the move Psychic and will already be dead before any boosted can actually get done, and dark types will just be killed, usually by flamethrower or overheat. All I'm trying to say is that Ch-Yu completely dominates the whole tier and it makes battles super unfair. I personally believe that all the 570 BST pokemon should be banned unless they're absolutely crushed and unused in Ubers; but Chi-Yu should be the first.

 

[658Greninja]

Hello OU

I personally believe that all the 570 BST pokemon should be banned unless they're absolutely crushed and unused in Ubers; but Chi-Yu should be the first.

Wo-Chien and Iron Thorns upon hearing this statement

 

[swampmist1142]

Hello OU

Hey dude, wrong thread. This one is for specifically the suspecting of Tera, not of any specific mon.


If I could try and twist your post to the topic at hand: Chi Yu is an incredibly powerful mon, tera be damned, and I suspect will eat a ban regardless of how this test goes; I honestly suggest everyone take it out when considering how many mons will be banned "because of tera", fish is crazy regardless

 

[alephgalactus]

You're missing the point of the post.

No, I’ve chosen not to address the point of the post because it’s wrong and at this point in the discussion it’s futile to try to change anyone’s mind.

Think--how many offensive mons would we have to ban due to Terra? I can only count 3-- Expathra, Annihilape and maybe Volcarona--Chi-yu and Chien-Pao are likely to get sent to Ubers regardless, and the others are just not broken even with Terra (esp with all the anti kingambit measure found in OU atm)

There’s also Dragonite, Dragapult, and possibly Roaring Moon and Iron Valiant. We’re talking a minimum of 4 bans caused by Tera. Anything more than a single ban because of the mechanic is bending over backwards to preserve the mechanic rather than the Pokémon. The game is called “Pokémon”, not “Terastal”. If one of those has to go, it should be the latter, not the former.

Meanwhile, there are at least as many mons/sets no longer viable in OU due to banning terra--Garganacl, Maushold (this thing NEEDS tera normal), Skeledirge; and there are sets that lose viablity, such as Specs Pelipper, BU+defog Corviknight, Curse Dordenzo, etc. And of course there could be mons currently in UU that might have a cute terra set that we just haven't discovered yet.

Garganacl and Skeledirge are staying in OU with Tera or without. Maushold was never viable and is dropping no matter what happens. Sets lose or gain viability all the time as the meta changes and that’s a natural part of having a metagame at all.

As I said, Tera does not make bad things good, it makes good things broken. It makes the meta feel like a Pet Mod that wouldn’t even make it through the approval process.

 

[Moyashi]

Meanwhile, there are at least as many mons/sets no longer viable in OU due to banning terra--Garganacl, Maushold (this thing NEEDS tera normal), Skeledirge; and there are sets that lose viablity, such as Specs Pelipper, BU+defog Corviknight, Curse Dordenzo, etc. And of course there could be mons currently in UU that might have a cute terra set

Why are you talking past people? Garganacl would not stop beinng viable in a post tera metagame (both myself and alephgalactus explained why). Maushold is not viable even with Tera, and similarly, Skeledirge would not drop out of viability as it is still very capable of beating physical attackers (people have givn accounts of it beating pokemon it shouldn't beat like Quaquaval/Gyarados without needing to Terastilize).

Regarding sets, specs Pelipper is and would be as viable as it was last gen as a set whether tera existed or not. That is to say, viable but has to be built around. Curse Dondozo also is not dropping either. Like what? These sets are not dependant on terastilize to function. But really, if terastilize is or comes to be cosidered unhealthy and unbalanced in the tier to the point of needing to be removed, and if some specific mons or sets lose viability without it (not that it would happen for the given examples bar Maus who is bad outright), so be it. The balance and health of the game is more important.

If a voter's goal is to maximize the number of viable mons/sets in OU-- I'm arguing that they should vote to keep Terra instead of banning it, because more options would be available in OU here even after necessary bans.

Going through the VR, pretty much every relevant mon on that list (basically S through B ranks) is viable regardless of tera. Only the really fringe stuff is made worth using because of tera, and again, losing a few fringe options is preferable if the mechanic as a whole is needing to go at some point.

Think--how many offensive mons would we have to ban due to Terra? I can only count 3-- Expathra, Annihilape and maybe Volcarona--Chi-yu and Chien-Pao are likely to get sent to Ubers regardless, and the others are just not broken even with Terra (esp with all the anti kingambit measure found in OU atm)

No one claimed Kingambit was broken so i don't know what you brought it up for. Volcarona, Roaring Moon, Espathra, Annihilape, these pokemon exemplify why the ability to switch counterplay on the fly midbattle is not balanced in its current state. Enabling set up sweepers to gain easy set up on would be answers. But even past that, same type tera is just as bad. It screws with damage calcs in a way that leads to further second guessing of what to do. Like having a check to specs Iron Valiant that can take three hits from like 70% only for tera fairy to pop out and 2hko on the switch.

 

[Railroader17]

Well 329 games later, and I still couldn't get to the needed GXE to win. (am at about 52.9 GXE) but I have things to say.

From the start, I've personally been in the pro show Tera Type on Team Preview. I feel like it would help identify key Tera threats much faster so the meta can properly form and develop around them. It also makes it easier to actually learn from your losses rather then losing to "cheese" (like thinking your opponent's Dragonite is going to Tera Normal, only for them to Tera Dark and promptly KO your Ghost type, among other uncommon Teras). As they say, knowledge is power. Sure you can read up on what's meta and what isn't, but what is stopping your opponent from going with an anti-meta tech? (Like say, Ghost Tera Levitate Brongzong as a counter to the common Tera Normal Espeed + EQ Dragonite?) Seeing that your opponent has an uncommon Tera type lets the player think "Hey, wait that isn't a commonly used Tera type for that pokemon, they may try to bait me with it!" and take it into account, and even if it isn't an uncommon Tera, just knowing what Teras your opponent has can help you figure out what their plan is, just as much as knowing the team archetype itself.

As for the other possible options:

> 1 Tera user per team

Kind defeats the purpose of the mechanic, but considering how Tera works, isn't that sort of how it already works? Doing this though wouldn't do anything to help develop the Meta, if anything, it encourages anti-meta sets to take advantage of potential counters to both the mon at base, and potential counters to the Tera set of the mon. Maybe this would work if we also showed Tera on team preview, both to make it easier for the player to ID the key threat, but also properly plan their endgame and dealing with the Tera mon.

> Only STAB Tera types allowed.

Certainly removes a LOT of particularly nasty offense mons (such as Tera Normal ESpeed D-Nite, Tera Fairy / Fighting Espathra, among others) but it also kneecaps defensive Tera to just removing an extra weakness from a dual typed mon (like going from Poison / Ground Clodsire to just Ground Clodsire. Sure you remove pesky weaknesses to Psychic and Ground, but you also gain a grass weakness, and a vulnerability to Toxic!). But at least certain mons get a somewhat viable STAB move in Tera Blast to make up for their own poor offerings. This is more or less what Monotype did for their meta before moving to just an outright ban. Speaking of....

> Outright ban

Probably the worst option of the bunch. Yes, it removes some pretty nasty Tera Sweepers, but it also removes any potential defensive play the mechanic could have enabled, and the only things that really differentiate this meta from Gen 8 are the new mons, new moves, and the losses (until HOME compatibility drops). Maybe in a year or so once we are done with DLC (assuming it goes like how the Ilse of Armor & Crown Tundra did for SwSh) this will be the best option, but IMO it's far too early to ban Tera when their are other fish to fry (cough SHED TAIL / CYCLIZAR cough).

 

[alephgalactus]

and the only things that really differentiate this meta from Gen 8 are the new mons, new moves, and the losses (until HOME compatibility drops).

So aside from the generational gimmick where your Pokémon gets out of a bad matchup for free because it’s wearing a silly hat, the only things that make the meta different from Gen 8 are… the things that make every meta different from every other meta? I really don’t see how this argument works. Even without Tera, this meta would be pretty damn different from the Regenspam nightmare that last gen turned into.

 

[Vall]

So aside from the generational gimmick where your Pokémon gets out of a bad matchup for free because it’s wearing a silly hat, the only things that make the meta different from Gen 8 are… the things that make every meta different from every other meta? I really don’t see how this argument works. Even without Tera, this meta would be pretty damn different from the Regenspam nightmare that last gen turned into.

I think it's referring to the changes in the core battling system?
- Gen 1 Was Gen 1
- Gen 2: Held Items, Special Split
- Gen 3: Abilities, EV/IV System
- Gen 4: Physical-Special Split, Modern Hazards
- Gen 5: Hidden Abilities
- Gen 6: Matchup Chart Changes, Fairy Types, Modern Weather, Megas
- Gen 7: Megas
- Gen 8: Speed Mechanics (only really relevant in doubles)

I don't this Gen has fundamentally changed the core mechanics in battling, other than tera. For some people, the new pokes, might not be enough

 

[658Greninja]

I think it's referring to the changes in the core battling system?
- Gen 1 Was Gen 1
- Gen 2: Held Items, Special Split
- Gen 3: Abilities, EV/IV System
- Gen 4: Physical-Special Split
- Gen 5: Hidden Abilities
- Gen 6: Matchup Chart Changes, Fairy Types, Modern Weather, Megas
- Gen 7: Megas
- Gen 8: Speed Mechanics (only really relevant in doubles)

I don't this Gen has fundamentally changed the core mechanics in battling, other than tera. For some people, the new pokes, might not be enough

Gen 8: Boots/Dex Cut/Teleport buff/Pursuit and HP removal
Gen 9; Recovery move nerf/Big moveset nerfs (Barra losing Flip Turn, Pex losing Knock, Blissey losing Teleport)

Personally I think the new mons change the meta in a major way. Three incredible unaware walls with even more bulk than Clef/Quag. Another great ground with utility and progress making potential. Tons of mons with new niches. Garg’s ability to nulify status and force progress with Salt Cure and Ghold’s ability to block Defog/Spin. Glimmora being able to redefine the hazard game. The last few gens only brought in a few mons as meta staples. However this might be the first gen where a large portion of the mons introduced impact the meta.