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I wanted to take a more objective and macro-level look at the impacts of Terastalization, so I've spent the past week and a half or so writing up some code that can take in a replay and output a set of stats indicating the performance of each Pokemon in that game, such as the number of active turns, times brought in, KOs, % damage dealt, and more. More importantly, I also tracked which Pokemon terastallized in a game, enabling us to compare the performance of pokemon that terastallize to those that do not to see if we get any significant results.
Turns Active specifically refers to how many times a Pokemon used a move during battle.
Times Brought is pretty self-explanatory; this includes being the lead, being pivoted in, coming in after a sack, and just raw switching in.
Percent Damage Dealt only includes damage dealt by direct attacks. Chip dealt by hazards, poison, salt cure, etc. are not included in this variable. If a pokemon damages a Substitute that damage is not added to this variable.
KOs is the number of opposing pokemon that were knocked out while the pokemon was active, including damage from direct attacks and indirect damage as well. If an opposing pokemon knocks itself out with Healing Wish, Explosion, etc. this does not count as a KO.
Hits Taken is the number of direct attacks a pokemon sustained, as well as the number of times the pokemon is swapped into a move it is immune to. This aims to be the main metric by which a pokemon's defensive capabilities are measured.
Percent Healed sums all healing done to a pokemon, including passive recovery from Leftovers. If another pokemon passes Wish/Healing wish to the pokemon, the pokemon that received the wish gets its percent healed stat added to.
The Tera indicator variable is a 1 if the pokemon terastallizes during a game, and is 0 otherwise. If a pokemon does terastallize, its stats reflect its overall performance in the game, both before and after terastallizing.
For my dataset I used every SV WCoP game after the Urshifu and Volcorona bans, giving a dataset of 232 games to work with; the dataset can be found here. I also dropped all pokemon that had 0 active turns in battle, thus wouldn't even have the chance to tera if it wanted to. For my analysis I did a fixed-effect regression using terastallization as the explanatory variable against several different dependent variables. Simply put, for each pokemon it takes the difference between its performance without terastallization and compares it to its performance with terastallization to compute the overall effect terastallization has on pokemon performance. I also looked at how terastallization impacts the performance of the most commonly terastallized pokemon in WCoP, being Kingambit, Garganacl, Iron Valiant, and Baxcalibur. In light of the incoming Kingambit suspect I also ran the regression on all pokemon excluding Kingambit, to estimate the impacts of Tera in a metagame without Kingambit. The results can be found here.
Surprisingly, terastallization had significant results for most metrics I chose to look at, meaning we can be confident that these results weren't just caused by random chance in our dataset. Notably, on average, terastallization increases the KOs a pokemon attains by 0.679, the % damage dealt by 61.984, hits taken by 0.468, and the number of active turns by 1.642, indicating that terastallization has nontrivial impacts on a pokemon's ability to make progress in a game. However, a pokemon that terastalizes does not have significant effects on the number of times it switches in, supporting the premise that terastallization is mainly utilized for short-term swings and endgame cleanups than to improve a pokemon's longevity over the course of a game.
Looking at some pokemon individually, we first see that Kingambit yields results mostly similar to that of Tera on the entire dataset. From this lens it seems that terastallization may not be as major of a factor in Kingambit's current power levels.
Garganacl's results are also not particularly surprising; Tera lets it sustain more hits and Recover more often than the average Tera user. Offensively, its numbers are rather low since Salt Cure isn't being added to damage numbers currently.
The most surprising results come from Iron Valiant and Baxcalibur's performances. Both of these pokemon don't have significant results for hits taken, but have the highest significant numbers for damage dealt and KOs, showing their ability to suddenly Tera to net a KO during a game rather than utilizing Tera defensively for setup opportunities.
Lastly, the results of the analysis without Kingambit in the dataset are mostly similar to that with Kingambit included, so part of me is skeptical how much a Kingambit ban will actually do for making terastallization healthier.
One thing to note however, these regressions also resulted in low R^2 values across the board, meaning that the effects that terastallization has high variance on the outcome. While this high variance may at first glance imply the inconsistency of the mechanic and the ability to play around it, a look at the actual distributions of our variables argues an opposite story. For instance, take a look at the difference between the number of KOs attained by pokemon that do not Terastallize versus pokemon that do:
Here, we see that despite high variance, the ability of terastallization to net a pokemon KOs is quite consistent, with less than 30% of terastallized pokemon obtaining no KOs at all. This compares to over 50% of non-Tera pokemon getting no KOs in a game. The high variance instead comes into play through a terastallized pokemon's ability to net potentially several KOs in a game. The consistency at which this occurs- more than 70% of terastallized pokemon attain a KO in a game- demonstrates that the mechanic currently is very difficult to play around, even at a tournament level. Because of this, I'm leaning to support some sort of tiering action for Tera. So yeah let me know if you have any feedback or questions or other things I should analyze
As someone who enjoys tera and leans pro ban due to variance and the general nature of the mechanic, I have come to a realization. Whenever we try to think of restrictions for it, it seems nothing works, as it either limits the skillful play, or makes the mechanic less fun. Being a tera enjoyer who is pro ban, I really don't see tera working unless someone actually thinks of a reasonable restriction, I personally think we should just let tera go, but clearly not everyone agrees.
As much as I would love to keep tera, I think the tera tiering discussion has convinced me that it most likely cannot be sustained, as restrictions thrown about tend to ruin the fun and good parts about the mechanic in some way, and do not feel like the best compromises possible. So honestly, we might just be better off without it as what makes the mechanic broken is what makes it fun unfortunately, as well as the skillful plays it allows.
And the solutions we have, aren't really all that great... Team preview ruins skillfulness, tera blast ban feels unnecessary, etc;
I just wish people would just give up trying to find a solution, because most likely NOTHING is gonna work.
And if someone does find a reasonable solution, i'll be damned. Tera is such a pain in the ass to restrict in a reasonable way that it just makes me think, what's the point of keeping it at all really since in its current state it probably cannot be sustained
I love tera as much as the next person, but I want people to think about what smogon is competitive first and foremost and how none of these restrictions have offered any sort of reasonable compromise or fix any of tera's inherent problems fully. Tera cannot be sustained forever in a competitive meta, and I wish people would know how to let go.
Gen 8 may not have been your cup of tea, but at least it was a balanced meta with minimal bans, and you know what? It was 10 times more fun to play in the long term because there was so much variety in teams towards the end of the gen. Having to ban all these mons over tera just feels like its limiting variety in a way, and while it makes the meta more fun in the short term, in the long term I believe it will only hurt it to keep it around, as banning and suspecting is kind of a last resort to keep pokemon in line. And the more we have to ban due to this mechanic, the less team variety we have.
Sorry for this long pro ban speech, but can you see where I am coming from? I'm willing to try restrictions, but only if they are somehow a happy medium, which as of right now aren't even close to that,
As someone who enjoys tera and leans pro ban, I have come to a realization. Whenever we try to think of restrictions for it, it seems nothing works, as it either limits the skillful play, or makes the mechanic less fun. Being a tera enjoyer who is pro ban, I really don't see tera working unless someone actually thinks of a reasonable restriction, I personally think we should just let tera go, but clearly not everyone agrees.
As much as I would love to keep tera, I think the tera tiering discussion has convinced me that it most likely cannot be sustained, as restrictions thrown about tend to ruin the fun and good parts about the mechanic in some way, and do not feel like the best compromises possible. So honestly, we might just be better off without it as what makes the mechanic broken is what makes it fun unfortunately, as well as the skillful plays it allows.
And the solutions we have, aren't really all that great... Team preview ruins skillfulness, tera blast ban feels unnecessary, etc;
I just wish people would just give up trying to find a solution, because most likely NOTHING is gonna work.
And if someone does find a reasonable solution, i'll be damned.
I love tera as much as the next person, but I want people to think about what smogon is and how none of these restrictions have offered any sort of reasonable compromise or fix any of tera's inherent problems fully. Tera cannot be sustained forever in a competitive meta, and I wish people would know how to let go.
Gen 8 may not have been your cup of tea, but at least it was a balanced meta with minimal bans, and you know what? It was 10 times more fun to play in the long term because there was so much variety in teams towards the end of the gen. Having to ban all these mons over tera just feels like its limiting variety in a way, and while it makes the meta more fun in the short term, in the long term I believe it will only hurt it to keep it around.
It hasn't even been two weeks since this thread came up and we're doom and glooming about not coming to a consensus? People are still posting here and on the PR thread (although sometimes people post a little too much about unrelated things) and there's still time to monitor and discuss. A suspect is literally dropping today, so not only do people have more time to think and discuss but the ramficiations of said suspect can affect people's perception of tera and how to move forward. This feels like unnecessary catastrophizing to me.
It hasn't even been two weeks since this thread came up and we're doom and glooming about not coming to a consensus? People are still posting here and on the PR thread (although sometimes people post a little too much about unrelated things) and there's still time to monitor and discuss. A suspect is literally dropping today, so not only do people have more time to think and discuss but the ramficiations of said suspect can affect people's perception of tera and how to move forward. This feels like unnecessary catastrophizing to me.
Simply been watching the thread as I believe everyone here can contribute infinitely more than I can. But I feel like we shouldn't be worrying about getting an agreed upon solution so quickly. It's best to remember that we have DLC on the horizon which will introduce many more mons (both new and old) that can affect the Tera landscape. And this is gonna happen twice within a mere 5 months. I feel like this is something that will prolly not have a full solution until either the first DLC or until both are released.
What I'm saying is be patient. There are thousands of players here in which I feel like will eventually discover some way to deal with this whether Tera will be left alone, restricted or banned. No need for the doom and gloom.
I don't know the very best solution, but might as well try some of the proposed ones to see if that fixes anything. I firmly believe the main issue of Tera is the feeling of you lacking agency when used against, which is produced due to the overabundance of lure sets and lack of critical information. Unlike Hidden power being a 2HKO in a lot of scenarios, Tera Blast is prone to OHKO due to having double the power, so there's no reaction to the opponent receiving Tera Blast. That's why people seem to dislike tera so much, because the other ones are just akin to Z moves and Megas, toned down but with less downside in item department.
There's 2 ways I can see it being MOSTLY solved.
Ban tera Blast and therefore no more "random" coverage. It has lots of nasty side effects though, most notably deleting lots of perfectly fine sets, but also could allow Volcarona, Espathra and Regieleki to come back, the former something certain someone would love.
Tera preview so you can proceed with more certainty in certain critical moves and turns. It might not be enough in practice due to teras being more predictable at high level and the uncertainty having no real effect outside the turn of terastalization.
Yeah, I get why you want to ban, but I see more positives than negative in those. Considering Tera is the definition of chaotic neutral, trying to make it Chaotic Good is as good as we can get without complex bans.
Apologies for the delay. If you can, please relay this message to Goku. He might be busy training or being dead.
For banning specific Tera types that are broken on specific Pokemon, the issue becomes defining that. What constitutes brokenness? Like, let's take Sandy Shocks. Like Regieleki, it's also using Tera to make a jury-rigged BoltBeam combo, but with added Ground coverage on top of that. However, Regieleki was banned to Ubers in under 24 hours and Sandy Shocks only recently moved out of UU. What's the difference? Well the Speed of course, with Shocks needing Booster Energy or sun to come within spitting distance of Eleki's unboosted uninvested Speed. Its Electric attacks are weaker too, without Transistor. Therefore, without some drastic meta shift on the horizon, I think it's safe to say Shocks isn't going to Ubers any time soon.
Does the issue make sense now? First, we have to establish what Tera types even have the potential to be broken, which depending on the mon means anywhere from just one to almost five. We have to constitute what brokenness even is in this context, something straightforward with Shocks but really tricky with a defensive one like Flying Kingambit. We have to do this for at least every OU mon and likely a few lower tier ones with OU niches. The big one, though, is how we even go about deciding it. Suspect test? It would take over a hundred and we'd never be able to do anything else again. Community polls? Even if it's restricted to the qualified playerbase, it'd still be deciding everything almost purely with theory. OU council quickbans? If we had to wake up to surprise announcements every day that went like "Tera Fairy is banned on Baxcalibur now btw" people would burn Smogon to the ground.
In essence, the idea sounds really good, but it's very difficult to conceptualize how to do it and basically impossible to actually implement.
And yes, you may call me Zero. That's my actual name.
funnily enough i already made a post about tera needing an item and got silenced VERY quickly and noone even thinks about that post of me anymore :/
Z-moves were a ONE-TIME powerboost that you had to commit to IN THE TEAMBUILDER or lose two itemslots on your team, it required you to have a move of the type in your set and it didnt make your defensive profile better, the two opportunity costs that pro-tera people always bring up are: you lose your (pre-tera) type (but retain your stab) and you cant tera another pokemon, that is little to no opportunity cost to me since yeah, i cant tera all six pokemon of my team, however when i tera, i usually do it so my type becomes BETTER against the opponents team so im sorry but if you say tera is balanced since you lose the good things of your first type, why are you even teraing
Megas and Z-Moves were something you had to look out for in the team preview and think about in the game, so you could actually predict what would use a zmove and especially what would mega since there was usually only one mega on a team
Z-Moves are somewhat discussionworthy over all imo since the powerboost is quite big but you do lose your item and oftentimes the checks would prepare for zmoves in some kind of way
with tera you can just use a pokemon and tera it so you kill your checks and counters, which doesnt seem to be very competetive to me, in gen 7 you had to do a little dance in front of your opponent to get the right pokemon to switch into rocks and spikes or just attackingmoves so you could break through it later, in gen 8 with boots that was more difficult but at least knock off was existent and quite good already, in gen 9 you just click the funny button and go "haha tera dragon glaive rush with band go boom" or "haha tera ghost valiant go sub on amoonguss and sweep haha" or "haha tera fairy enam go boom and twoshot amoonguss"
The fact that you can defensive tera as a countermeasure to offensive tera is correct, however oftentimes teramons can just get their one kill anyways before you get your countertera in (actually that reminds me of dynamax) and the fact that tera is such an important thing in every battle (usually the battles are something of a war of "how can i get the opponent to get nothing with their tera while i can win with it") makes it actually fell like a version of dynamax that is calmed down to an extent where you could try to defend it but over all it just is uncompetetive
Oh and to all the people that are like "but tera gives weaker pokemon more options or makes lure sets more powerfull":
using tera dark kingambit to beat dondozo is not a lure set, using grass knot would be, using tera ground enam to beat grounds, rocks, poisons, electrics is not a lure set, using tera fighting ghold against gambit is not a lure set, colbur berry fblast is one
luring threats to your team is a tech since gen three and especially since gen four with things like grass knot infernape, these sets always had to be specialized a bit to do their job and were a bit worse at their normal job due to not being able to use an item/a moveslot/ some ev's for something other than luring the threat
being able to be the same pokemon and just changing something that'll never come to play in 80% of the matches anyways doesnt make you a lureset and definitely doesnt give you bragging right for being able to lure something like a zapdos with tera electric tusk for example
I don't know the very best solution, but might as well try some of the proposed ones to see if that fixes anything. I firmly believe the main issue of Tera is the feeling of you lacking agency when used against, which is produced due to the overabundance of lure sets and lack of critical information. Unlike Hidden power being a 2HKO in a lot of scenarios, Tera Blast is prone to OHKO due to having double the power, so there's no reaction to the opponent receiving Tera Blast. That's why people seem to dislike tera so much, because the other ones are just akin to Z moves and Megas, toned down but with less downside in item department.
There's 2 ways I can see it being MOSTLY solved.
Ban tera Blast and therefore no more "random" coverage. It has lots of nasty side effects though, most notably deleting lots of perfectly fine sets, but also could allow Volcarona, Espathra and Regieleki to come back, the former something certain someone would love.
Tera preview so you can proceed with more certainty in certain critical moves and turns. It might not be enough in practice due to teras being more predictable at high level and the uncertainty having no real effect outside the turn of terastalization.
Yeah, I get why you want to ban, but I see more positives than negative in those. Considering Tera is the definition of chaotic neutral, trying to make it Chaotic Good is as good as we can get without complex bans.
as mentioned lure sets are something that have an opportunity cost and imo changing your tera type from tera water to tera fighting on gholdengo to kill kingambit easier is not a lure set, its just playing guessinggame imo
if tera is chaotic neutral and we want a competetive game, why would we want to keep it chaotic but make it "good" in your words, chaos in a tier is not good, a full order is not good, we need to find something inbetween but with tera around and no restrictions on the actual teramons like an itemloss for example we wont be able to get that
Actually zero chance, since it violates Smogon policy by altering game mechanics. This is why posts suggesting it get no traction, because they're not even available for consideration.
Apologies for the delay. If you can, please relay this message to Goku. He might be busy training or being dead.
For banning specific Tera types that are broken on specific Pokemon, the issue becomes defining that. What constitutes brokenness? Like, let's take Sandy Shocks. Like Regieleki, it's also using Tera to make a jury-rigged BoltBeam combo, but with added Ground coverage on top of that. However, Regieleki was banned to Ubers in under 24 hours and Sandy Shocks only recently moved out of UU. What's the difference? Well the Speed of course, with Shocks needing Booster Energy or sun to come within spitting distance of Eleki's unboosted uninvested Speed. Its Electric attacks are weaker too, without Transistor. Therefore, without some drastic meta shift on the horizon, I think it's safe to say Shocks isn't going to Ubers any time soon.
Does the issue make sense now? First, we have to establish what Tera types even have the potential to be broken, which depending on the mon means anywhere from just one to almost five. We have to constitute what brokenness even is in this context, something straightforward with Shocks but really tricky with a defensive one like Flying Kingambit. We have to do this for at least every OU mon and likely a few lower tier ones with OU niches. The big one, though, is how we even go about deciding it. Suspect test? It would take over a hundred and we'd never be able to do anything else again. Community polls? Even if it's restricted to the qualified playerbase, it'd still be deciding everything almost purely with theory. OU council quickbans? If we had to wake up to surprise announcements every day that went like "Tera Fairy is banned on Baxcalibur now btw" people would burn Smogon to the ground.
In essence, the idea sounds really good, but it's very difficult to conceptualize how to do it and basically impossible to actually implement.
And yes, you may call me Zero. That's my actual name.
Hey Zero, badass name. Goku almost died while training but hearing the ding sound on his phone from all the laughing emojis from his first post on this forum in a while got him seething like crazy and he is in an effort to improve
So what I'm getting at is that a good mon in Gen 8 could be insanely broken with Tera, like in this case Leki?
It seems that my idea is very flawed. How about a ban on moves like Tera Blast? Moves like tera blast are just HP but with the benefits of tera and free stab.
Hey Zero, badass name. Goku almost died while training but hearing the ding sound on his phone from all the laughing emojis from his first post on this forum in a while got him seething like crazy and he is in an effort to improve
So what I'm getting at is that a good mon in Gen 8 could be insanely broken with Tera, like in this case Leki?
It seems that my idea is very flawed. How about a ban on moves like Tera Blast? Moves like tera blast are just HP but with the benefits of tera and free stab.
Less Gen 8 and more Eleki's design being balanced on a pin and Tera knocking it off with a hammer. Now, a Tera Blast ban is possible, and IMO it would be a whole lot better than Tera preview. It just has to pick up traction and demonstrate that it's a notable change to Tera's problematic aspects like losing matchups in the builder and unpredictability while retaining the competitive and skillful points about it.
I mean sure, in a non tera meta some Pokemon would potentially rise up and become difficult to check. But that happens in any metagame, and without tera counterplay DOES become more streamlined and generally identifiable, consistent. If you bring Great Tusk to check Kingambit in a non tera meta, GT will check it in any circumstance (barring silly situations like grass knot Gambit). That's what it means.
The thing is some potential checks get removed from really strong mons as well when you remove Tera. I've been running pure physically defensive tera water skeledirge since the start of SV ou. This mon checks literally every variation of Kingambit. It cannot be 2hko by anything gambit can run with exception of a predict tera blast grass/electric prior to dirge tera or that silly grass knot gambit situation. The Tera blast sets also still lose if gambit does not make the predict of dirge tera water. It burns any non-tera fire gambit, immediately beating it and beats fire gambit by healing off damage and eventually 1 torch song + 2 either hex or shadowball.
This is all to say, there are consistent checks to even the strongest mons even in tera metas, barring silly situations.
Hear me out on this one, I have something most people haven't thought of. Albeit a less effective and common tiering strategy, I suggest that we have a temporary No Tera ladder alongside the normal OU ladder, and we can use it to see how the community perceives a metagame without terastallization, and we can use this ladder alongside the OU ladder to compare the benefits of both metagames before moving onto a full fledged suspect test.
Hear me out on this one, I have something most people haven't thought of. Albeit a less effective and common tiering strategy, I suggest that we have a temporary No Tera ladder alongside the normal OU ladder, and we can use it to see how the community perceives a metagame without terastallization, and we can use this ladder alongside the OU ladder to compare the benefits of both metagames before moving onto a full fledged suspect test.
if tera is chaotic neutral and we want a competetive game, why would we want to keep it chaotic but make it "good" in your words, chaos in a tier is not good, a full order is not good, we need to find something inbetween but with tera around and no restrictions on the actual teramons like an itemloss for example we wont be able to get that
Because there's literally no way tera isn't somewhat chaotic. The mere fact it can swing a battle with a good turn means it'll always make the meta have more chaos than without it... and that's not bad, just less organized than THE previous gen, because let's be real, Z-Moves were also chaos inducing at times due to their overwhelmingly offensive nature in critical moments, reminiscent to Tera Blast. We don't want a fully deterministic meta, but also not so chaotic skill and knowledge doesn't matter.
Just like how reducing taxes can increase or decrease the money collected depending on the country, chaos can also increase skill ceiling up to certain point due to forcing adaptation which requires game knowledge. Also, I must point something, and is the second word neutral, because all in all Tera is as good as bad stuff on it, that's why people genuinely want to keep it, unlike Dynamax where there were no real positives...
I don't know what numbers you're looking at as that is blatantly incorrect.
For February 2022, the competitiveness score was 7.83, which is not in any sense slightly over a 7. The July and September numbers were all well-above 7 as well.
I wonder how much of this is arguing in bad faith, considering I saw pro-Tera users say that a majority of the people who voted in the first Tera suspect wanted no action. Do they just think nobody will check the numbers and accept being gaslit?
I mean if you read my post i provided the year. My guy, you are looking at late 2021/2022 data.
I wasn't able to find the 2022 numbers previously, so I'll give you that eventually after a year and a half after final dlc, the meta reached a competetive rating of upper 7's.
However, my guy none of the information I provided was incorrect other than the max it ever reached. If you had payed attention to my post, I said "2020" and "6 months following the final dlc". This should have clued you in that the information from 2022 was probably not the same data I was looking at, given that the last DLC was released in October of 2020 . On top of this looking at July/September 2021 data, around 9 months after the final dlc is again not comparable to the month following homes release. Like this just shows how bad faith your argument is, you didn't even bother to check if you were looking at the right year. You know what makes this worse? The thread YOU linked has the previous thread linked at the top where I got my data. In case you are having difficulty, I will provide that link for you here:
The data for July >>>> 2020 <<< is located in the first post of the thread in table 2.
I mean maybe it was an honest mistake on your part that you looked at the wrong year, we all make mistakes. I made a similar mistake not following the pinned thread comment by finch at the end of the thread with my data, which would have lead to these more recent sword and shield surveys. However, these new surveys don't really effect my argument.
So, I will make this argument about competetiveness again. A survey conducted roughly a month following the isle armor release is the closest comparison we have between SS and the month following home release in SV. The average competetiveness score in SS at this time was 5.82/10, whereas SV at this time was 5.99/10. It is not a good comparison to compare a meta's competetiveness which has multiple months to over a year of meta development/bans/etc with a meta with only a month to develop. Comparing any of the 7+ competetiveness scores in SS to SV fall into this category as all of these 7+ scores occurred at least 6 months after the last SS dlc where the meta had time to settle and be refined with no new content being added.
Actually zero chance, since it violates Smogon policy by altering game mechanics. This is why posts suggesting it get no traction, because they're not even available for consideration.
just like sleep clause alters a game mechanic actually, why isnt sleep over all banned to not alter a game mechanic
i do get that it was something done a while ago but we can take the thought to at least think about why tera is broken while megas werent besides of a few exceptions or why z-moves were fine as well
Because there's literally no way tera isn't somewhat chaotic. The mere fact it can swing a battle with a good turn means it'll always make the meta have more chaos than without it... and that's not bad, just less organized than THE previous gen, because let's be real, Z-Moves were also chaos inducing at times due to their overwhelmingly offensive nature in critical moments, reminiscent to Tera Blast. We don't want a fully deterministic meta, but also not so chaotic skill and knowledge doesn't matter.
Just like how reducing taxes can increase or decrease the money collected depending on the country, chaos can also increase skill ceiling up to certain point due to forcing adaptation which requires game knowledge. Also, I must point something, and is the second word neutral, because all in all Tera is as good as bad stuff on it, that's why people genuinely want to keep it, unlike Dynamax where there were no real positives...
yeah but the meta without tera is somewhat chaotic as well, how could it be not with all the immense threats that came to be and a meta that has complete order is unfun and rarely played so the council will make it so it wont be that way, if it means banning things then so be it
tera makes it more chaotic which in my mind is too chaotic, id like it to be less completely chaotic in the game and moreso that you have to play well instead of having predictions every single turn on if they tera or not
i do see it from the lens of someone who really enjoyed gen 7 and gen 8 natdex the most though, maybe someone who only came to play in gen 9 or gen 8 or someone who started in a completely chaotic mess like gen 5 thinks differently about it
it should be obvious why tera's significantly more problematic than megas or tera stones. Megas are just additional 20 or so mons you had to cover. They could have just released them as regular mons and you wouldn't have known the difference. If every mon has 2-3 popular tera types, you have to functionally cover hundreds of extra mons, because how you beat a kingambit is not how you beat a tera flying kingambit. Dnite with tera normal is a entirely separate problem than normal Dnite, because not only are all of it's weaknesses gone you are now deal with STAB extreme speed. This applies across the board, nearly every mon has atleast one tera type that completely nullifies how you were going to interact with it 15 seconds ago. Additional, a lot of megas weren't viable without the mega, and frequently kept similar weaknesses, so there was limited value in the type switch aspect. If you lobbed a stone edge at a charizard normal, that covers charizard, x-zard, and y-zard. If you lob a close combat at a Kingambit with tera, it could hit super effectively, it could hit resist (tera fairy) or it could be outright immune (tera ghost), and there's no way to predict it. Tera would be much more balanced if you couldn't use it to cheat turns with resist/immunity switches like you can now.
Z moves were a hot topic for most of the generation iirc, it's not like a lot of people were happy with them. But they were a single turn swing, not a 'your mon no longer counters my mon' situation. It also required you have a move of the type already on hand, unlike tera which gives coverage of your choice at will. Hell tera is pretty much a perma Z move if you same type tera.
Additionally, Megas were specifically designed for the mon it was being attached to, so they were better balanced than tera was because there was more of an effort from GF to get more balanced Mega. Any mon being able to tera means it's just a free-for-all. Additional, if an individual mega was out of line, we could just ban the mega stone. We can't exactly ban Kingambit from tera flying, or just ban Kingambit from Tera'ing at all.
it should be obvious why tera's significantly more problematic than megas or tera stones. Megas are just additional 20 or so mons you had to cover. They could have just released them as regular mons and you wouldn't have known the difference. If every mon has 2-3 popular tera types, you have to functionally cover hundreds of extra mons, because how you beat a kingambit is not how you beat a tera flying kingambit. Dnite with tera normal is a entirely separate problem than normal Dnite, because not only are all of it's weaknesses gone you are now deal with STAB extreme speed. This applies across the board, nearly every mon has atleast one tera type that completely nullifies how you were going to interact with it 15 seconds ago. Additional, a lot of megas weren't viable without the mega, and frequently kept similar weaknesses, so there was limited value in the type switch aspect. If you lobbed a stone edge at a charizard normal, that covers charizard, x-zard, and y-zard. If you lob a close combat at a Kingambit with tera, it could hit super effectively, it could hit resist (tera fairy) or it could be outright immune (tera ghost), and there's no way to predict it. Tera would be much more balanced if you couldn't use it to cheat turns with resist/immunity switches like you can now.
Z moves were a hot topic for most of the generation iirc, it's not like a lot of people were happy with them. But they were a single turn swing, not a 'your mon no longer counters my mon' situation. It also required you have a move of the type already on hand, unlike tera which gives coverage of your choice at will. Hell tera is pretty much a perma Z move if you same type tera.
Additionally, Megas were specifically designed for the mon it was being attached to, so they were better balanced than tera was because there was more of an effort from GF to get more balanced Mega. Any mon being able to tera means it's just a free-for-all. Additional, if an individual mega was out of line, we could just ban the mega stone. We can't exactly ban Kingambit from tera flying, or just ban Kingambit from Tera'ing at all.
I TOTALLY agree wtih you besides one point: if they released megas as normal pokemon they wouldve been able to use an item, that wouldve been stupid, glad there are no mechanics that let you hold an item while giving you the opportunity to change your whole pokemon
Because there's literally no way tera isn't somewhat chaotic. The mere fact it can swing a battle with a good turn means it'll always make the meta have more chaos than without it... and that's not bad, just less organized than THE previous gen, because let's be real, Z-Moves were also chaos inducing at times due to their overwhelmingly offensive nature in critical moments, reminiscent to Tera Blast. We don't want a fully deterministic meta, but also not so chaotic skill and knowledge doesn't matter.
Just like how reducing taxes can increase or decrease the money collected depending on the country, chaos can also increase skill ceiling up to certain point due to forcing adaptation which requires game knowledge. Also, I must point something, and is the second word neutral, because all in all Tera is as good as bad stuff on it, that's why people genuinely want to keep it, unlike Dynamax where there were no real positives...
Actually zero chance, since it violates Smogon policy by altering game mechanics. This is why posts suggesting it get no traction, because they're not even available for consideration.
Idk if somebody else answered already but I don't think this is the reason. Smogon wants to replicate Cart play as close as possible, and there's nothing preventing two Cart players in a wifi battle of agreeing to not run an object on the pokemon they want to tera, in the same way they can agree to only put one pokemon to sleep
Where I see the problem is in the fact that it doesn't solve anything and creates a huge divide. What is better, Itemless Tera Ground Enam or Choice Scarf Teraless Enam? I'd argue the latter. But on mons like Gambit for example, I'm running Black Glasses on it bc I don't really need to run Lum or CB or whatever with the team I run. In that regard, the tera abusers will become a lot less but will be much more prominent. And if Tera continues to be problematic, we will have acomplished nothing, because if there's a single pokemon in the meta that is better off having tera than having an item, the restriction is not real for said pokemon, and we will be back at step one.
at least thats what i think could happen, correct me if im wrong
Understood, but I'm worried that a big consensus is to restrict tera then do something about Kingambit (You said that was a common feeling around Kingambit), so the process will be incredibly troublesome with tons of different solutions to the same issue.
I honestly think for my part that, unless we fully ban tera, Kingambit will be banworthy due to roughly the same reasons as gen 6 aegislash, gen 8 Magearna, gen 9 Zamacenta-C/Annihilape/Palafin, Gen 4 Garchomp and gen 7 Zygarde to an extent, aka having both great power and ease of setting up due to typing and bulk so they can easily sweep. Since a full ban of tera is very unlikely...
I REALLY don't want to be in your shoes, nor anyone of the council, because no one is equipped to deal with 2 suspect tests at the same time. I'll try my best to help the discussion to mantain its dialogue in both Tera and Kingambit.
PS: With 2 suspects I mean discussions about restrictions and bans, specially since Kingambit is a big part of terastalization issues and viceversa.
Hear me out on this one, I have something most people haven't thought of. Albeit a less effective and common tiering strategy, I suggest that we have a temporary No Tera ladder alongside the normal OU ladder, and we can use it to see how the community perceives a metagame without terastallization, and we can use this ladder alongside the OU ladder to compare the benefits of both metagames before moving onto a full fledged suspect test.
