I didnt think of that, thank u for the reply finch :)
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Metagame Terastallization Tiering Discussion, Part II [CLOSED FOR DLC]
- Thread starter Finchinator
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like, if we're not going to be changing the ladder during suspect tests, we should at least stop calling them tests. nothing is being tested except everyone's patience. we should call them something more accurate, like "suspect arguments" or "slowbans". or maybe we should call them "50/50s" since the term appears to have lost all meaning anyway
if you're wondering whether this is a serious opinion or not… well, good fucking question. i'm on so many layers of irony that even i don't know when i'm being earnest anymore. i've reached shitpost nirvana
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The actual volc
Very rude to assume this
I think u can bring any mechanic into the "more complexity" argument. Let's say i can use ONE uber slot in an OU team. This add complexity or is just another variant i must consider during the team bulding? Having that uber can make me win or lose a game, when in a good amount of the games i win or lose because that single uber is strong enough to shift the result of the match i call having the uber slot a bullshit.
I keep having 6 slots in a team, adding more variants only pushes the game to a level where the skilled players u talk risk to lose against a retard like me because they don't expect gimmicky sets like fire tera roaring moon or the fact they assume i have an hidden tera water, while i don't have it.
- 6 slot
- any pokemon has 2 or 3 good/very good tera
- u must predict the turn your opponent tera
- the pokemon he will tera
- the typing of tera
For me the prediction, or being skilled, with tera is turning into a guessing game in a good portion of matches.
It was more based on skills and humanly possible predicting the remaining 2 pokemon after seeing 4 of them in a metagame without team preview.
we are into 8 months into sv ou and is very weird for me see HO as the best archetype
HO is the best archethipe when a new game get releases, after 1 or 2 months the metagame should shift enough, thanks to ban and restrictions to let me choose between HO, BO, Offense, Balance, Stalls
I follow smogon and development of tiers since XY (started in 2013 with bw2) and this is the first time i see HO being still so dominant after so much time; the major reason of this for me is tera and how good it fits into a meta with so low pokemon able to hazard control.
A vote of a top player (whatever that mean) count like the vote of someone that never played a tour in his life.
First and foremost, Ups, my bad. First time posting for Smogon and my therapist says I need to practice my social skills.
Now, I want to discuss actual points, starting with the most ambiguous one. Tera blast. I think we need to see which mons are actually abusing Tera Blast on a regular basis to determine if it's actually a problem or not. Luckily smogon has monthly stats to determine the main users, which are the following in OU as of June:
Now, what we can conclude from all of this?
- Tera Blast is mostly used by Special attackers.With the exceptions of Dragapult and Landorus-T, all hit for the special side. Reason? Tera Blast without Terastalization is an special move, and you don't always want to terastalize the same creature every time. While a weaker Hyper voice who doesn't bypass substitutes is underwhelming, is definitely better when you're using that special side. This is known as opportunity cost.
- I think my VGC experience can be useful here to express my point. I've used in the last 7 months Tera Blast in 8 ocassions on my teams, with Fire and Water Sylveon, Grass Sandy Shocks, Flying Kingambit twice, Flying Dragonite twice and Flying Landorus-T (There's a serious lack of good physical flying moves). Sylveon felt very intuitive to use and sometimes i genuinely wanted to use regular Tera blast (Wide guard), Sandy shocks felt a bit more limited but regular tera blast was still good against grass types which are plentiful due to Amoonguss, Kingambit felt more like it had 3 moves before tera but its STABs were so good it wasn't a big deal, and with both Dragonite and Landorus it felt inconsistent to because of a high reliance on Tera to deal maximum damage, because otherwise the move was useless, specially Dragonite due to lacking STAB, altough with higher reward if it worked. Speaking of VGC...
- Tera Blast is less common in 6v6 than in 3v3 or VGC. That has to do mostly with the lenght of each format. In both VGC and 3v3 there's rarely such thing as long term consequences, and each turn has more relative weight. Stuff like Dragonite, Gyarados, Dondozo, Tatsugiri, Zapdos, Kingambit and Tyranitar now use Tera Blast as actual coverage, while Dragapult, Chi-Yu, Heatran, Landorus-T and Enamorus also seem to use it more often. The only exception to this is Volcarona because in VGC the sun god is more of an offensive support.
- Tera Blast is almost always used like a fancy hidden power. With that I mean it's used just like hidden power in most ocassions, aka to break through otherwise checks or to be an odd STAB option in lack of better ones like in advance Salamence or Gyarados. It's more powerful, 78-100% more powerful in fact, but it also works only for one of your pokémon unlike Hidden Power and it demands both a moveslot and a once-per-battle power up.
- Smogon stats aren't very informative at times. There's certainly a lot more Tera Blast users in OU, but those were not founded because of being a more niche option and therefore being between all "others", and I'm sure that's quite common specially at lower ranks who also used Tera Blast on Roaring Moon, Enamorus, Walking Wake, Hoopa, Lilligant-H (Also a frequent user in high elo, but let's be real, she's not popular up there), Basculegion (Same as Lilligant) and Thundurus-T (Same as Basculegion). Speaking of...
- Tera Blast is more on the niche side of things. Outside Iron Moth, Sandy Shocks and Moltres-G, no creature uses Tera Blast more than 18%. This is likely because if you want to use Tera Blast you should use Terastalization on said creature, which basically demands you to build your team around it. Is not like that kind of teambuilding is bad or anything, quite the contrary in fact, it just that you should not use more than one tera blast per team and not a lot teams can actually afford to do this. There's also the famous concepts of Lures, at which Tera excels at anyways but making it less reactable with tera blast doesn't hurt, and said lure is also worth putting it in specific style of teams.
- The move seems mostly fair. I was surprised to reach this conclussion, but Tera Blast is mostly used in fair scenarios instead of actual cheese like some of you said. It has great power at bypassing some checks, but also has great usage cost, which means that tera blast is basically a style of teambuilding, reminiscent of Mega Evolutions in the sense of you building teams around them. Unlike megas however, Tera does not increase stats nor gives you a better hability, and the restrictive conditions oftentimes balances the fact you have an actual item unlike megas.
PS: Is "for the love of Arceus", not god. After all, you shall not misuse the name of the lord and creator.
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I have thought of a possible solution that may fix things somewhat, and that is one tera pokemon per team. That way we can keep the skillful elements while cutting down a lot of variance and the unpredictability.
Finch, does that sound like something the council as an option could consider if people vote for action?
Finch, does that sound like something the council as an option could consider if people vote for action?
I also agree that tera blast definitely isn't the issue, but I do believe some sort of action should be taken in some way on tera if we aren't banning it outright.First and foremost, Ups, my bad. First time posting for Smogon and my therapist says I need to practice my social skills.
Now, I want to see actual points, starting with the most ambiguous one. Tera blast. I think we need to see which mons are actually abusing Tera Blast on a regular basis to determine if it's actually a problem or not. Luckily smogon has monthly stats to determine the main users, which are the following in OU:
Dragapult is one of the main Tera Blast Users of this tier, using it in 1 out of 7 sets. Is mostly used as a ghost type Tera blast to get a reliable STAB in physical sets.
Heatran uses Tera Blast mostly as coverage considering it already has reliable STABs in flash cannon and Lava plume. If I had to guess it would be a similar use to VGC using Tera Blast grass to defeat Great Tusk and water Types like Samurott or Dondozo.
Landorus-T uses Tera Blast in a similar fashion to Dragapult, this time with flying type Tera blast. This is relatively common on VGC but is rarer on OU.
Despite now being banned there's still a lot reliable data of this mon, and Volcarona was indeed the biggest tera blast user, having it in most sets. The unpredictability of said tera blast made Volcarona unwallable way too often because, Unlike Hidden Power's 60BP, Tera Blast has 120 after factoring STAB.
Similar story to Volcarona, but not really. Magearna could use Tera Blast, but it didn't most of the times. She just infiltrated here but if I had to guess it would be mostly ground to deal with their checks like Heatran or Volcanion.
Volcanion is basically the same case as Heatran. That being said the tera blast is Fairy type according to your own suggestions to deal with stuff like Samurott, Dragapult, Baxcalibur, Hoopa, Iron Valiant or Roaring Moon in a 1v1 scenario.
Just like its ancestor, Iron Moth LOVES to use Tera Blast in most of its sets. Tera Blast is from a new post-home set, but according to you is mostly Tera blast ground or water used, mostly for the same reasons Magearna used it aka Heatran. It seems to be kept in check by the fact Iron Moth lacks quiver dance or reliable Special Attack boosting methods; in fact most Iron moths prefer to go 4 attacks with booster energy.
Despite she being in UU, Cresselia is quite popular at high ELO due to being an oddly reliable calm mind sweeper with Stored power. When she uses Tera Blast, it's fighting type Tera Blast to deal with Kingambit, Tera Normal Dragonite, Heatran and Garganacl pre-tera. This is basically the Espathra at/from Home and I definitely prefer this version due to not boosting its speed every turn.
You know the deal, Sandy shocks with Earth Power, Thunderbolt/Volt switch, Ice Tera blast and hazards is oddly reliable because of the BoltBeam combo + ground being virtually impossible to resist when all 3 have STAB. Used similarly to Regieleki but fairer.
I felt Moltres-G was worth mentioning because it was more popular than Garchomp at high level (It hurts me as much as you, but is true). The set this hell bird uses is a double dance one, with its signature move, Agility, Nasty plot and either a Flying type move or Fairy tera Blast. Fairy has roughly the same aplications as with Volcanion.
Worth mentioning the other 3 mons notorious for causing issues due to Tera Blast. Regieleki is the proof the OU council went pridedly overeboard with the June celebrations because of course Regieleki would be busted once it gets something to hit ground types with. Espathra is the proof that Stored power + Tera Blast + Speed boost is just overpowered if used by a competent pokémon. Finally, Chi-Yu was broken beyond belief and regularly used Grass tera Blast to destroy the few pseudo-checks it would have as a cherry on top of the fiery marine cake.
Now, what we can conclude from all of this?
I'm honestly shocked... Before today I was a genuine believer of banning tera blast, but hey, that's why we're doing this discussion to begin with. After seeing all of this information about its usage, now I genuinely think Tera Blast is an overall positive addition to the tier. It's painful for me to say this considering tera blast is why my favorite pokémon got banned in such questionable way, but the fact that Tera Blast is incentivizing "new" flavors of teambuilding around a central mon, an ace, something lost in the transition to switch due to the lost of Megas, while also not forcing you to have those, is honestly beautiful and somewhat puts in perspective why there's so many people willing to keep Tera, even if is overpowered by many.
- Tera Blast is mostly used by Special attackers.With the exceptions of Dragapult and Landorus-T, all hit for the special side. Reason? Tera Blast without Terastalization is an special move, and you don't always want to terastalize the same creature every time. While a weaker Hyper voice who doesn't bypass substitutes is underwhelming, is definitely better when you're using that special side. This is known as opportunity cost.
- I think my VGC experience can be useful here to express my point. I've used in the last 7 months Tera Blast in 8 ocassions on my teams, with Fire and Water Sylveon, Grass Sandy Shocks, Flying Kingambit twice, Flying Dragonite twice and Flying Landorus-T (There's a serious lack of good physical flying moves). Sylveon felt very intuitive to use and sometimes i genuinely wanted to use regular Tera blast (Wide guard), Sandy shocks felt a bit more limited but regular tera blast was still good against grass types which are plentiful due to Amoonguss, Kingambit felt more like it had 3 moves before tera but its STABs were so good it wasn't a big deal, and with both Dragonite and Landorus it felt inconsistent to because of a high reliance on Tera to deal maximum damage, because otherwise the move was useless, specially Dragonite due to lacking STAB, altough with higher reward if it worked. Speaking of VGC...
- Tera Blast is less common in 6v6 than in 3v3 or VGC. That has to do mostly with the lenght of each format. In both VGC and 3v3 there's rarely such thing as long term consequences, and each turn has more relative weight. Stuff like Dragonite, Gyarados, Dondozo, Tatsugiri, Zapdos, Kingambit and Tyranitar now use Tera Blast as actual coverage, while Dragapult, Chi-Yu, Heatran, Landorus-T and Enamorus also seem to use it more often. The only exception to this is Volcarona because in VGC the sun god is more of an offensive support.
- Tera Blast is almost always used like a fancy hidden power. With that I mean it's used just like hidden power in most ocassions, aka to break through otherwise checks or to be an odd STAB option in lack of better ones like in advance Salamence or Gyarados. It's more powerful, 78-100% more powerful in fact, but it also works only for one of your pokémon unlike Hidden Power and it demands both a moveslot and a once-per-battle power up.
- Smogon stats aren't very informative at times. There's certainly a lot more Tera Blast users in OU, but those were not founded because of being a more niche option and therefore being between all "others", and I'm sure that's quite common specially at lower ranks who also used Tera Blast on Roaring Moon, Enamorus, Walking Wake, Hoopa, Lilligant-H (Also a frequent user in high elo, but let's be real, she's not popular up there), Basculegion (Same as Lilligant) and Thundurus-T (Same as Basculegion). Speaking of...
- Tera Blast is more on the niche side of things. Outside Iron Moth, Sandy Shocks and Moltres-G, no creature uses Tera Blast more than 18%. This is likely because if you want to use Tera Blast you should use Terastalization on said creature, which basically demands you to build your team around it. Is not like that kind of teambuilding is bad or anything, quite the contrary in fact, it just that you should not use more than one tera blast per team and not a lot teams can actually afford to do this.
- The move seems mostly fair. I was surprised to reach this conclussion, but Tera Blast is mostly used in fair scenarios instead of actual cheese like some of you said. It has great power at bypassing some checks, but also has great usage cost, which means that tera blast is basically a style of teambuilding, reminiscent of Mega Evolutions in the sense of you building teams around them. Unlike megas however, Tera does not increase stats nor gives you a better hability, and the restrictive conditions often balances those teams out.
PS: Is for "the love of Arceus", not god. After all, you shall not misuse the name of the lord and creator.
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This would be a catastrophic decision. You almost completely lose the ability to counter the opponents terastalization with your own, and this results in uncompetitive matchup fishing.
Also,
That was one of the original options in the first suspect test, and it garnered negligible support. At heart, it's just not very interesting, and even makes games more matchup based - at its most extreme, the standard pre-Home stall team needs to tera-Flying its Alomomola versus a physical grass attacker, or it simply loses. There's no choice here on what they select, both Meowscarada and Breloom threaten to 6-0 the team if they can't flip Alomomola's typing, but that means against any team without a physical grass, the stall team basically doesn't have a tera.
Compare that to a tera-Dark Kingambit or a tera-(literally anything) Gargnacl, which are almost never going to be wasted, and all you really accomplish is removing the option to shore up a team's weaknesses versus specific threats. That's one of the best features of terastalization, the teambuilding flexibility it offers!
Sheesh, give me a break here. It took me like 4 hours to make that comment, from the investigation to the referential images I had to search separately (I'm glad Wikidex had those home icons. Bulbapedia and Smogon did not) to the analysis to the writting to the editing
.I'll try to tackle in the Team Preview idea tomorrow, because the mechanic deserves lots of points of view... Yeah, I have way too much free time, and I don't know how to feel about.
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Okay new idea how about we just leave tera as is?
Considering there's a super mayority at all Elos that wants to do something about Tera, that seems as good of an idea as going inside Skyla's gym without an emolga suit/padded clothing.
I'd love for Tera to be left alone, but it seems like it's going to get acted on harder than YouTube acts on bad actors.
Honestly at this point Big Anti Tera has yet to come up with any substantial ways to restrict tera (this includes me btw), So i honestly feel like we should just do this.
Or ban it entirely if no one can agree on a compromise solution (better than dragging out another baton pass case of compromise after compromise until total banishment.)
Tera preview, tera blast ban and full ban are being discussed. Remember that the playbase is much bigger than people who post on these forums and one of these options could have support from the voters even if they don't have support on this thread.
Well I'm glad you're contributing to this thread & and chatting with people and getting your thoughts out there.First and foremost, Ups, my bad. First time posting for Smogon and my therapist says I need to practice my social skills.
Now, I want to see actual points, starting with the most ambiguous one. Tera blast. I think we need to see which mons are actually abusing Tera Blast on a regular basis to determine if it's actually a problem or not. Luckily smogon has monthly stats to determine the main users, which are the following in OU:
Dragapult is one of the main Tera Blast Users of this tier, using it in 1 out of 7 sets. Is mostly used as a ghost type Tera blast to get a reliable STAB in physical sets.
Heatran uses Tera Blast mostly as coverage considering it already has reliable STABs in flash cannon and Lava plume. If I had to guess it would be a similar use to VGC using Tera Blast grass to defeat Great Tusk and water Types like Samurott or Dondozo.
Landorus-T uses Tera Blast in a similar fashion to Dragapult, this time with flying type Tera blast. This is relatively common on VGC but is rarer on OU.
Despite now being banned there's still a lot reliable data of this mon, and Volcarona was indeed the biggest tera blast user, having it in most sets. The unpredictability of said tera blast made Volcarona unwallable way too often because, Unlike Hidden Power's 60BP, Tera Blast has 120 after factoring STAB.
Similar story to Volcarona, but not really. Magearna could use Tera Blast, but it didn't most of the times. She just infiltrated here but if I had to guess it would be mostly ground to deal with their checks like Heatran or Volcanion.
Volcanion is basically the same case as Heatran. That being said the tera blast is Fairy type according to your own suggestions to deal with stuff like Samurott, Dragapult, Baxcalibur, Hoopa, Iron Valiant or Roaring Moon in a 1v1 scenario.
Just like its ancestor, Iron Moth LOVES to use Tera Blast in most of its sets. Tera Blast is from a new post-home set, but according to you is mostly Tera blast ground or water used, mostly for the same reasons Magearna used it aka Heatran. It seems to be kept in check by the fact Iron Moth lacks quiver dance or reliable Special Attack boosting methods; in fact most Iron moths prefer to go 4 attacks with booster energy.
Despite she being in UU, Cresselia is quite popular at high ELO due to being an oddly reliable calm mind sweeper with Stored power. When she uses Tera Blast, it's fighting type Tera Blast to deal with Kingambit, Tera Normal Dragonite, Heatran and Garganacl pre-tera. This is basically the Espathra at/from Home and I definitely prefer this version due to not boosting its speed every turn.
You know the deal, Sandy shocks with Earth Power, Thunderbolt/Volt switch, Ice Tera blast and hazards is oddly reliable because of the BoltBeam combo + ground being virtually impossible to resist when all 3 have STAB. Used similarly to Regieleki but fairer.
I felt Moltres-G was worth mentioning because it was more popular than Garchomp at high level (It hurts me as much as you, but is true). The set this hell bird uses is a double dance one, with its signature move, Agility, Nasty plot and either a Flying type move or Fairy tera Blast. Fairy has roughly the same aplications as with Volcanion.
Worth mentioning the other 3 mons notorious for causing issues due to Tera Blast. Regieleki is the proof the OU council went pridedly overeboard with the June celebrations because of course Regieleki would be busted once it gets something to hit ground types with. Espathra is the proof that Stored power + Tera Blast + Speed boost is just overpowered if used by a competent pokémon. Finally, Chi-Yu was broken beyond belief and regularly used Grass tera Blast to destroy the few pseudo-checks it would have as a cherry on top of the fiery marine cake.
Now, what we can conclude from all of this?
I'm honestly shocked... Before today I was a genuine believer of banning tera blast, but hey, that's why we're doing this discussion to begin with. After seeing all of this information about its usage, now I genuinely think Tera Blast is an overall positive addition to the tier. It's painful for me to say this considering tera blast is why my favorite pokémon got banned in such questionable way, but the fact that Tera Blast is incentivizing "new" flavors of teambuilding around a central mon, an ace, something lost in the transition to switch due to the lost of Megas, while also not forcing you to have those, is honestly beautiful and somewhat puts in perspective why there's so many people willing to keep Tera, even if is overpowered by many.
- Tera Blast is mostly used by Special attackers.With the exceptions of Dragapult and Landorus-T, all hit for the special side. Reason? Tera Blast without Terastalization is an special move, and you don't always want to terastalize the same creature every time. While a weaker Hyper voice who doesn't bypass substitutes is underwhelming, is definitely better when you're using that special side. This is known as opportunity cost.
- I think my VGC experience can be useful here to express my point. I've used in the last 7 months Tera Blast in 8 ocassions on my teams, with Fire and Water Sylveon, Grass Sandy Shocks, Flying Kingambit twice, Flying Dragonite twice and Flying Landorus-T (There's a serious lack of good physical flying moves). Sylveon felt very intuitive to use and sometimes i genuinely wanted to use regular Tera blast (Wide guard), Sandy shocks felt a bit more limited but regular tera blast was still good against grass types which are plentiful due to Amoonguss, Kingambit felt more like it had 3 moves before tera but its STABs were so good it wasn't a big deal, and with both Dragonite and Landorus it felt inconsistent to because of a high reliance on Tera to deal maximum damage, because otherwise the move was useless, specially Dragonite due to lacking STAB, altough with higher reward if it worked. Speaking of VGC...
- Tera Blast is less common in 6v6 than in 3v3 or VGC. That has to do mostly with the lenght of each format. In both VGC and 3v3 there's rarely such thing as long term consequences, and each turn has more relative weight. Stuff like Dragonite, Gyarados, Dondozo, Tatsugiri, Zapdos, Kingambit and Tyranitar now use Tera Blast as actual coverage, while Dragapult, Chi-Yu, Heatran, Landorus-T and Enamorus also seem to use it more often. The only exception to this is Volcarona because in VGC the sun god is more of an offensive support.
- Tera Blast is almost always used like a fancy hidden power. With that I mean it's used just like hidden power in most ocassions, aka to break through otherwise checks or to be an odd STAB option in lack of better ones like in advance Salamence or Gyarados. It's more powerful, 78-100% more powerful in fact, but it also works only for one of your pokémon unlike Hidden Power and it demands both a moveslot and a once-per-battle power up.
- Smogon stats aren't very informative at times. There's certainly a lot more Tera Blast users in OU, but those were not founded because of being a more niche option and therefore being between all "others", and I'm sure that's quite common specially at lower ranks who also used Tera Blast on Roaring Moon, Enamorus, Walking Wake, Hoopa, Lilligant-H (Also a frequent user in high elo, but let's be real, she's not popular up there), Basculegion (Same as Lilligant) and Thundurus-T (Same as Basculegion). Speaking of...
- Tera Blast is more on the niche side of things. Outside Iron Moth, Sandy Shocks and Moltres-G, no creature uses Tera Blast more than 18%. This is likely because if you want to use Tera Blast you should use Terastalization on said creature, which basically demands you to build your team around it. Is not like that kind of teambuilding is bad or anything, quite the contrary in fact, it just that you should not use more than one tera blast per team and not a lot teams can actually afford to do this.
- The move seems mostly fair. I was surprised to reach this conclussion, but Tera Blast is mostly used in fair scenarios instead of actual cheese like some of you said. It has great power at bypassing some checks, but also has great usage cost, which means that tera blast is basically a style of teambuilding, reminiscent of Mega Evolutions in the sense of you building teams around them. Unlike megas however, Tera does not increase stats nor gives you a better hability, and the restrictive conditions often balances those teams out.
PS: Is for "the love of Arceus", not god. After all, you shall not misuse the name of the lord and creator.
There's a pretty common thread with all those examples (Kingambit is one it's pretty important to add) is that it allows a lot of things to beat their checks. Once again I must ask, is giving every Pokémon the ability to completely change the tide of battle in the face of its counter once per battle good for a competitive metagame? You listed a lot of Tera Blast users and what they do with the move (with a few glaring omissions such as Dragapult using TB Fighting to get perfect STAB coverage, and Kingambit using Fairy for Kingambit stuff) but didn't really touch on what makes it healthy or unhealthy. In fact, I'm not really seeing how the data you've presented relates to the conclusion you've drawn, at all.
The point of a Tera Blast ban isn't necessarily because the move Tera Blast is broken. It has a lot of drawbacks, several you mentioned. But a Tera Blast ban wouldn't be tiering action on Tera Blast, it would be tiering action on Tera. One of the biggest problems with Tera is that it allows Pokémon to not only beat their counters, but set up in their face and completely turn the tide in battle. Tera Blast, by turning into a STAB super effective move, greatly compounds this issue because it allows every Pokémon to kill the counter while doing it, rendering it counterless. The reason there aren't many specific examples of especially egregious Tera blast users is because every single Pokémon can do this at every single point in every single battle. Removing Tera Blast from the equation greatly reduces many Pokémon's ability to do this, while still allowing Pokémon to get stab on their coverage moves, to defensively Terastalize, or to get Adaptability STAB. Overall, I'm not sure allowing every Pokémon to get super effective stab against anything actually is super good for the tier.
Do you enjoy Tera? What do you think the issues with it are? Why don't you think the suggested measures address them? Part of the draw of a Tera blast ban is it doesn't impede on many of the more enjoyable aspects of terastalization that several have mentioned.
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Completely reversing the train of thought, rather than banning Tera blast, what if tera blast was mandatory?
i.e. a mon can only tera if it knows the move tera blast.
I know this is a stupid, complex ban that wouldn't & shouldn't exist, but i'm interested in what people's thoughts of such a restriction would be. It weakens tera by forcing dead weight for non-stab tera, but keeps the option open for those who want it.
Edit: Should've specified this originally, but It was moreso a thought exercise than a serious suggestion, mb for not making it clear initially
i.e. a mon can only tera if it knows the move tera blast.
I know this is a stupid, complex ban that wouldn't & shouldn't exist, but i'm interested in what people's thoughts of such a restriction would be. It weakens tera by forcing dead weight for non-stab tera, but keeps the option open for those who want it.
Edit: Should've specified this originally, but It was moreso a thought exercise than a serious suggestion, mb for not making it clear initially
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There is almost no chance of any meaningful change happening to tera as long as this gen remains the primary generation. The best you might get is tera preview, but anything further will call forth all the youtubers and personalities to brigade the vote with DNBs.
There's a lot wrong with this. The biggest one is that it again stacks the deck in favor of offense over defense (which is one the main reasons why tera objectively is bad for the tier). The secondary one is that it actually doesn't fix all that much. Especially since there's no way to know if your opponent has tera blast and can use tera, therefore you still have to play like they can.
Even though I support keeping Tera in the tier I see no benefit in bending over backwards to keep it legal. Imo the only viable options are fully legal, fully banned, or revealed at preview. I don't see a benefit to speculating such a restriction. As you mentioned, it would never happen, and it would totally change the mechanic anyway.
Aside from that completely irrational comment (which is moreso a thought exercise than a real suggestion), I propose the consideration of the voting system of a referendum instead of a supermajority.
What is a referendum?
To change the Australian constitution, rather than a bill passing parliament, a referendum must be held instead. This is national vote in each state and territory and, when passed, allows the constitution to be changed.
To pass a referendum, rather than a supermajority to be reached, 2 simple majorities must instead be reached, the national approval and the number of states.
How Does this relate to Tera?
Similarly to most referendums, changing tera fundamentally changes a core rule across all levels of play. As such, all tiers should be able to have a say in what action is taken on tera. Additionally, it removes the controversial supermajority element that has caused significant debate in previous suspects in both OU and National Dex.
The system is designed to give empower less played tier while ensuring the most common denominator (OU), also gets significant say. OU will pretty much determine the popular vote due to its size, with the lower tiers having a greater influence on the other vote.
How Will this Function?
I propose that players of each major tier (OU, UU, RU, NU & PU) be able to individual obtain reqs on their own ladder. Then, when voting occurs, each player will select the tier with which they obtained reqs and vote on their preferred outcome.
Any action on tera will pass if a Majority of tiers (3/5) and a majority of players (>50%) vote for action on tera.
What is a referendum?
To change the Australian constitution, rather than a bill passing parliament, a referendum must be held instead. This is national vote in each state and territory and, when passed, allows the constitution to be changed.
To pass a referendum, rather than a supermajority to be reached, 2 simple majorities must instead be reached, the national approval and the number of states.
How Does this relate to Tera?
Similarly to most referendums, changing tera fundamentally changes a core rule across all levels of play. As such, all tiers should be able to have a say in what action is taken on tera. Additionally, it removes the controversial supermajority element that has caused significant debate in previous suspects in both OU and National Dex.
The system is designed to give empower less played tier while ensuring the most common denominator (OU), also gets significant say. OU will pretty much determine the popular vote due to its size, with the lower tiers having a greater influence on the other vote.
How Will this Function?
I propose that players of each major tier (OU, UU, RU, NU & PU) be able to individual obtain reqs on their own ladder. Then, when voting occurs, each player will select the tier with which they obtained reqs and vote on their preferred outcome.
Any action on tera will pass if a Majority of tiers (3/5) and a majority of players (>50%) vote for action on tera.
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We already changed the system we used in accommodating for restrictions rather than and outright ban, it's been acknowledged that this is a pivotal tiering decision, so the primary intention was to bring involvement to other tiers.
(Aside from that Full ban isn't particularly the result I want so I'm kinda ok with the natdex result)
The suspect test only involves tiering policy for OU. While it's almost certain a ban would be passed down through the tiers, it would ultimately be at the discretion of the lower tier leaders to implement the ban. The idea of altering the ban threshold or conducting lower tier suspect tests to guide OU policy is not sound. I honestly would hardly call the threshold controversial.
This isn't entirely true btw, a ban in OU means a ban in all of the lower tiers as well except Ubers. That's the policy for any OU ban on pokemon, items, moves, etc. So, once OU bans tera, it's banned in all the official tiers under it as well (except Ubers obviously). The only time this doesn't happen is in oldgens because of the tier lock in oldgen formats.
That being said, I think the referendum is a fine idea, but realistically it would probably never happen as, while Empress Mobile was incorrect in the ripple effects of an OU ban, they are indeed correct that lower tier effects should not guide OU tiering policy.
I always sort of favored the idea of implementing tera team preview, but I gotta credit a handful of well-written posts here, most notably Vrin, for making me second guess that.
I personally don’t see myself ever wanting to get rid of tera (mainly cuz it’s a generational mechanic that isn’t obviously broken and I do think it adds skill to the game), but banning tera blast certainly makes some sense. I agree usually whenever someone hits me with a random tera blast it feels a little gimmicky and match-up fishy.
However, in response I ask myself “How is getting surprised with a random tera blast any different from getting surprised by a lure set? And isn’t tera blast a pretty big opportunity cost because you’re using your once-a-game tera, as well as potentially wasting a moveslot in games you don’t tera that ‘mon?”
To respond to my thought above, I think we need to acknowledge that running tera blast is a pretty big opportunity cost. However, what separates tera + tera blast from a traditional lure set is that tera + tera blast essentially allows “Anything to get past anything else”.
So when concerned with tera blast, we should ask ourselves “Does the fact that tera blast lets anything get past anything else promote skill in the metagame”?
And I honestly think there are sensible arguments on both sides. Creating a lure set, which is a notable opportunity cost to begin with, and using it effectively to position yourself to win the game takes skill.
However, getting hit by a surprise tera blast out of nowhere certainly feels super cheesy. This is another fact we need to acknowledge in this debate.
Additionally, does the concept of any ‘mon be able to get past any other ‘mon make the game more skillful, or more unpredictable and chaotic? And if we suspect the latter is that how it plays out in practice?
Here’s one final thought and hopefully I can make it easy to follow this logic:
Imagine you lose due to a surprise dd tera blast fire pult. Well, if it’s a total surprise than I’d say you’re correct to be upset, but if it’s a more standard set than perhaps you could have better managed the game so you didn’t need to take that risk. And if it is a surprise set, if it’s actually good it’ll become a standard set eventually. And since you’re only really cheesed when you’re “surprised”, then that means either the tera blast user is using a bad set (in which case I don’t find tera blast unfair), or using a good set which would therefore become more standard eventually? And if the latter, don’t they deserve to be rewarded for developing the good set themselves/catching on early during the window of opportunity before the set became more known (like with tera steel hydreigon pre-home)?
So all of the above to say, the only times you can be mad when your opponent uses tera blast is when they surprise you with it, in which case they either 1) Developed/caught onto the good set early or 2) Caught you off guard with an objectively bad set. However, in the case of 1) I argue they deserve it and for 2) I wouldn’t support banning something mainly due to its use as a surprise factor used on objectively bad sets. In conclusion, this leads me to support keeping tera blast in the tier, however, randomly getting struck down by it is actually so annoying that I support banning it.
I personally don’t see myself ever wanting to get rid of tera (mainly cuz it’s a generational mechanic that isn’t obviously broken and I do think it adds skill to the game), but banning tera blast certainly makes some sense. I agree usually whenever someone hits me with a random tera blast it feels a little gimmicky and match-up fishy.
However, in response I ask myself “How is getting surprised with a random tera blast any different from getting surprised by a lure set? And isn’t tera blast a pretty big opportunity cost because you’re using your once-a-game tera, as well as potentially wasting a moveslot in games you don’t tera that ‘mon?”
To respond to my thought above, I think we need to acknowledge that running tera blast is a pretty big opportunity cost. However, what separates tera + tera blast from a traditional lure set is that tera + tera blast essentially allows “Anything to get past anything else”.
So when concerned with tera blast, we should ask ourselves “Does the fact that tera blast lets anything get past anything else promote skill in the metagame”?
And I honestly think there are sensible arguments on both sides. Creating a lure set, which is a notable opportunity cost to begin with, and using it effectively to position yourself to win the game takes skill.
However, getting hit by a surprise tera blast out of nowhere certainly feels super cheesy. This is another fact we need to acknowledge in this debate.
Additionally, does the concept of any ‘mon be able to get past any other ‘mon make the game more skillful, or more unpredictable and chaotic? And if we suspect the latter is that how it plays out in practice?
Here’s one final thought and hopefully I can make it easy to follow this logic:
Imagine you lose due to a surprise dd tera blast fire pult. Well, if it’s a total surprise than I’d say you’re correct to be upset, but if it’s a more standard set than perhaps you could have better managed the game so you didn’t need to take that risk. And if it is a surprise set, if it’s actually good it’ll become a standard set eventually. And since you’re only really cheesed when you’re “surprised”, then that means either the tera blast user is using a bad set (in which case I don’t find tera blast unfair), or using a good set which would therefore become more standard eventually? And if the latter, don’t they deserve to be rewarded for developing the good set themselves/catching on early during the window of opportunity before the set became more known (like with tera steel hydreigon pre-home)?
So all of the above to say, the only times you can be mad when your opponent uses tera blast is when they surprise you with it, in which case they either 1) Developed/caught onto the good set early or 2) Caught you off guard with an objectively bad set. However, in the case of 1) I argue they deserve it and for 2) I wouldn’t support banning something mainly due to its use as a surprise factor used on objectively bad sets. In conclusion, this leads me to support keeping tera blast in the tier, however, randomly getting struck down by it is actually so annoying that I support banning it.
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