For everyone who wants tera preview or restrictions, here's my opinions on this matter. Ill also go over tera as a whole right now and my views as a pro-tera (im bored of laddering so enjoy this wall of text)
Firstly, I think tera preview is a horrible idea and should not even be considered whatsoever at this point of the meta - even National Dex OU has banned talks of tera preview.
If tera preview was to be implemented, I believe it would cause even more coin flips than the metagame already is, whilst not even fixing the problem that anyone can tera at any time and change types.
I believe the metagame is fine as it is right now and tera should absolutely stay since its a mechanic that rewards game knowledge and is skill expressive. Playing around tera is something that only comes with experience and knowing when to use tera whilst being considerate of the fact of the opponent's tera usage is a skill. If my opponent used tera turn one to KO a mon, even if it would be a 5v6 I personally consider it an advantage for the 5 because now you have tera to use and they don't. All the anti-teras complain of Kingambit's many different tera types, however Kingambit becoming a new type gives it new weaknesses as well, and this can all be played around. Teambuilding should also cater for popular mons tera types as well - from WCOP we have seen that Kingambit is the mon that Teras the most. Only you are at fault if you have not prepared for the most popular gambit tera types - dark, fairy and flying. Tera is a skill expressive mechanic that rewards playing a high risk high reward play style, and removing tera would turn this generation into a slow and stale metagame, comparable to gen 8, albeit much worse with the introduction of shit like Donbozo, Garganacl and Ting-Lu, and the lack of toxics and knock offs. For example,
here is a game where knowing when to tera is key. By terastallizing, you gain new resistances and weaknesses, which can be used to your advantage. My opponent used tera to stop someone that was likely going to stomp his team, however because he used tera and I did not I ended up having the advantage anyways and used it to win the game. This all comes back to my point in this meta being
very matchup heavy, and that tera only helps with it. Its not a tera problem, its honestly just some mons like Garg and Enam/Val being way too oppressive right now (the former partially as a result of a volcarona quickban..)
Both sides can use tera - and whilst some have debunked that it is matchup dependant with types, isn't that the same as every game? Some games are simply just a bad matchup of one another, and whilst tera can help that, it doesn't change the fact of the matter that matchups are just how the game is. Everyone wants Kingambit banned, but it must be understood that Kingambit has so many counters that boast frequent usage, such as Iron Valiant, Great Tusk, Enamorus, Encore, Will-o-Wisp; the list goes on. Tera just expands Kingambit's potential as a mon, and going back to the matchup section - it definitely helps with matchups. This metagame is very skill reliant - if you make one mistake it could practically be game over; this is not because of Tera, its just because the mons are a big step from previous generations, and the HO oriented metagame are very punishing to mistakes, and tera only complements this. Srn says that saying both sides can use tera is similar to "Both sides can dynamax", however I tie this all back to being the matchup and how skilled the player is. Even in a Dynamax metagame, I am sure that it can be used similarly to tera in the sense that skilled players will know when the best time is to Dynamax, how to play around DMax etc however dynamax was blatantly OP since it literally doubled the HP of the enemy mon and increased all moves BPs as well as adding an additional stat change side effect... idk how u can be comparing tera to dmax at all, LOL. And to people who keep saying "tera broke volcarona, tera broke regieleki" - the addition of heatran effectively reduced volcarona's tera types to be only water or ground to beat it, and regieleki is the only mon to be truly broken with tera since its niche of beating everything BUT ground types was fucked when it received bolt beam coverage as a result of tera.. yikes.
Another interesting thing is that
despite the "randomness" and "inconsistent" nature of tera, its skill expressive nature is shown by players such as
Vert and
Storm Zone hitting 2100s consistently and with ease quite frankly,
with a GXE of 88%+ which says a lot about how skill expressive the mechanic is. Personally the highest GXE I have ever hit is 85.7 iirc - talk all about "gxe farming" all you want but I know for sure these guys do it by culminating wins on high ladder. The majority of people I have talked to high ladder have all been pro-tera, its just no one wants to talk about it because frankly theres no reason to - as Vert always says; just let the numbers speak of themselves. Just look at the Zamazenta vote; from day one of the suspect I have personally been very vocal about the mon being perfectly fine, yet the majority of people on the forums talk shit about how OP the dog is. This is a poor statistic however but from the frequent OU room polls regarding the general consensus' opinion on Zama, it seems that the "Ban" poll almost always receives double the votes than the "Do not Ban", and yet Zama remains unbanned with a 15% margin. Even if a tera suspect were to happen, I highly doubt it would be banned - not to downplay anyones abilities or anything in mons but tera is manageable with more experience and game knowledge. thats it.
I did mention this a bit before but many anti-teras claim that tera heavily restricts teambuilding. The thing is, in such an aggressive and HO favoured metagame, there are teams everywhere that have 4 or 5 fairy weaknesses, with only tera to circumvent them. However, they all see very high success despite all the Iron Valiant and Enamorus spam (2 very broken mons after volcarona was banned, #freevolc). I think that the issue at hand is that the 'mons of generation 9 are just far superior offensively and defensively to previous gens, and with tera's introduction, it only acts as the catalyst in their success. Many players play with the high risk high reward mentality, and will sack mons frequently to open opportunities for certain mons to carry. Same thing as balance teams - it mainly just comes around finding the opportunity, and TERA is here to help with that.
Regarding team building, I believe that the common tera types of high usage mons should all be accounted for. For example, I personally have tera water great tusk on my teams to help with rain matchups, or steel to help with fairy matchups. Tera water garg is very common as well, so I have tera ground or grass on my iron moths to help with that matchup. and ofc, on my squishy targets I love going tera ghost to help with extreme speed spam or zamazenta body press / fighting moves in general. It all comes down with matchups relating to your team, which is what makes tera so unique compared to other mechanics in teambuilding. I personally don't think tera restricts teambuilding at all, on the other hand I think it makes good teambuilding much more rewarding.
Finally - tera preview. It is the literal worst idea ever - if I see that the opposing Kingambit is tera flying and I am using a great tusk with ice spinner EQ stealth rocks and rapid spin, do I click ice spinner or EQ?
Even if I know the kingambit is tera flying, will I really click EQ or should I predict the tera flying and click ice spinner? Like what the fuck... it just adds more coinflips to the gen 9 metagame than there already are.
The game in WCOP earlier today with my fellow aussie March Fires and so noisy from India
was literally was decided by 2 different speed ties.. do we want even more coinflips with situations like "will my opponent tera even though I know his tera"...
Not to mention, tera preview also breaks the whole point of tera blast.. if the opposing dragapult is tera fighting and he reveals dragon darts, do you think I will ever send in my gambit vs it ever again? I understand that people hate these situational Teras but you just gotta understand that its part of the game, and zapdos static or dire claw on sneasler is 100% more uncompetitive than surprise tera blasts..
It also completely breaks teambuilding regarding tera on specific matchups
for example, a tera electric iron valiant always OHKOs an enamorus with thunderbolt, but if my opponent sees that I have tera electric do you think the opposing Enamorus is going to tera ground and should the iron valiant player predict this... etc.
Tera preview just causes way more problems, I personally don't want to see any more posts that bring up the idea of tera preview again, its just stupid imo
just let the numbers speak for themselves when a tera suspect is eventually released.
