They're waiting until DLC 2, which is probably best considering this is likely the last big change the games and/or generation will have to offer, especially with there being a 19th tera type.
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v3
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They're waiting until DLC 2, which is probably best considering this is likely the last big change the games and/or generation will have to offer, especially with there being a 19th tera type.
reminder that anyone bitching about the "lack of democracy" more often than not doesnt play the game. even if they did i seriously doubt theyre actually good or know what theyre talking about
okay, does anyone in favor of a tera ban have any other pokemon that abuses tera to such an extreme extent? kingambit is an outlier, as is manaphy, and all other notable abusers (espathra, annihilape, volcarona, baxcalibur, roaring moon, regieleki) have been banned. so its quite literally just the two i mentioned who you could argue pushes tera to the extent of being a problem. and unless its the aforementioned kingambit and manaphy, i feel like losing to one turn of tera on the spot is just a sign of bad plays or a bad team. maybe your opponent positioned themselves properly through careful play, or maybe you had an exceptionally bad team matchup that got ran over by your opponent gaining an extra turn. but its probably not tera itself if youre consistently losing to it off of one turn to anything not named kingambit or manaphy. you can correct me, argue with me all you like but i just do not know of any notable instances of tera being overbearing besides on the two pokemon i mentioned
I also want to mention that if Finchinator was forced to grind ladder every single day then(ignoring the obvious outcome of heavy pokemon burnout) he would be prevented from posting random images of food on twitter and be barred from the concept of "having a life" and "being with friends"
i have a lot of respect for your positions & demeanour, & don’t want to talk much about most of your post - i just want to outline why i would be against a ban of terablast.
i explained my stance here for the most part, but i’ll give some additional thoughts.
there are two reasons why i am against banning terablast, one is on a practical basis, the other more primary one is a more foundational tiering concern.
1) it is such a sparsely used move in the first place, has a lot of opportunity cost associated with it, & the problematic users of it (practically just gambit as it stands) are also problematic by virtue of other benefits afforded by tera itself even without running terablast, such as flipping matchups & turning stabs into nukes. banning terablast does nothing to fix the tier in reality.
2) terablast in & of itself does not fit the criteria of banworthtness, thus, if we are to follow smogon’s consistent tiering philosophy, it cannot be the focus of action in the metagame. it seems to me that the push to banning terablast is actually a push to normalise broken pokémon (once again, gambit), which is not how good tiering works. it leaves us in a state of tiering action being arbitrary & lacking a solid foundation. if a limited pool of pokémon that occasionally use terablast in a problematic manner, whilst all others do not, it is the pokémon & the confluence of their unique traits that is the problem, not terablast.
furthermore, any argument alleging that terablast introduces uncompetitive aspects to the metagame can be made for tera as a whole, but with far greater validity.
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i recently had an extended conversation with a council member, in which they expressed that they are in favour of a terablast & stored power ban to potentially normalise volcarona & magearna, and dropping them to ou. the logical conclusion of this mentality leads us to situations where banning speed boost to free blaziken in g5/6/7 is acceptable. this rational is one i see increasingly common within the community. i’ve already outlined the issue with such a mindset in this post & previous posts.
i find it concerning that the community is adopting such a philosophy.
so if you think the council is a group of random internet buddies and the tera vote was rigged, what are you doing here? if this is really some sort of oppressive dystopia whose tyrannical, unelected leaders are manipulating votes to give the illusion of democracy, why not just go somewhere else? hell, why not create a new tiering system and website entirely and populate it with all the people who think that they got a raw deal from the tera suspect or that their voices aren't being heard?
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This thread isn’t even that far off from r/stunfisk at this point lol
I mean for starters, do you understand what being a councilmen or a tier leader entails? It isn’t just sitting there and saying “ban” or “no ban”, but it’s carefully maneuvering through tiering, timely situations, data analysis, and more at this point.
I see myself just as much of an organizer and logistics guy as I do someone who is a Pokemon guy in this role honestly. Just because you can hit top10 on the ladder doesn’t really have a ton to do with becoming a councilmen or anything like that.
To go further, the council is definitely not a group of random Internet buddies. We have multiple councilmen who I had only spoken to 1-2 times before adding, if at all, because we wanted to add them thanks to their strength in posting and/or playing as we believed their elevated understanding would be a good fit.
So I mean beyond the fact that I don’t think qualifying for council and peaking ladder have much correlation, I also think your perception of the council is just wrong.
no one is forcing anyone. there is no "right" to be on the council...it's a volunteer position. occasionally there's a post about how some random account got added to the council with no insight into how or why that occurs. If you want to don a tinfoil hat, for all I know, they could all be accounts belonging to the same person.
if playing the game is too much, then don't volunteer. right? people have free will and can prioritize having friends over playing pokemon. With all respect to the individuals on the council and the their time (for which I am personally appreciative!), there is still a responsibility to everyone else that they are acting on behalf of. If they can't fulfill those obligations, even though it's a volunteer basis, then don't sign up for it!
furthermore, if the human element of tiering is so burdensome, then maybe actual data-driven decision processes can be employed, using the wealth of information at https://www.smogon.com/stats/. Opinion-based tiering doesn't need to be how things are done, but for some reason this site has its policies informed by Greco-Roman political discourse, circa 300 BCE.
if playing the game is too much, then don't volunteer. right? people have free will and can prioritize having friends over playing pokemon. With all respect to the individuals on the council and the their time (for which I am personally appreciative!), there is still a responsibility to everyone else that they are acting on behalf of. If they can't fulfill those obligations, even though it's a volunteer basis, then don't sign up for it!
like wtf is this? what kind of egoism is going on here? this is directly from https://www.smogon.com/dex/sv/formats/ou/
furthermore, if the human element of tiering is so burdensome, then maybe actual data-driven decision processes can be employed, using the wealth of information at https://www.smogon.com/stats/. Opinion-based tiering doesn't need to be how things are done, but for some reason this site has its policies informed by Greco-Roman political discourse, circa 300 BCE.
What council member do you have questions about the qualifications of? I’ve touched on everyone before and while people who frequent Smogon are likely familiar, I am more than happy to go into more detail to give perspective to those unsure. Transparency is something we have improved all generation and while I feel more than ever is out there, always happy to provide clarity for the sake of improving public understanding.
come on, if they were all one person then they've been successfully pretending to be something like 50 different people over the past 15 years, on multiple platforms, with different voices and wildly differing opinions, all actively playing the game, and they've never gotten caught. if someone's willing to put in that much effort and clever enough to get away with it for that long, they deserve to run the tier
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I also want to point out that this is against forum rules — every person is only allowed one forum account. This is also impossible given a lot of different factors.
Finchinator don't feed the troll pwease..
to add to this, council members have a clear understanding of the tiering process & a holistic view of the metagame & how it may develop following certain actions.
We had our first inactivity demote in OU council history this generation, and it wasn’t particularly easy as it was someone I was quite fond of. You have to be an active player to be on council. This is a given.
no, please feed the troll, we're so close to the birth of a new copypasta, i can feel it
You say it’s a troll, but I get dozens of people asking me how to join council, what qualifies someone that is already on council, and more. It’s important to be transparent and take these complaints at face value.
Democracy is overrated anyway, I have a few ideas on how to solve this
1) Do a Mortal Kombat tournament, top 8 get to be councilmen, winner and runner up get tiering leader, everyone else gets banned and a lobotomy
2) Give me the power, Ill promise ill listen to all of your opinions and either laught at it and ban you, or put it on the policy and we can be corrupt together as friends who will betray each other
3) Do absolutly nothing
1) Do a Mortal Kombat tournament, top 8 get to be councilmen, winner and runner up get tiering leader, everyone else gets banned and a lobotomy
2) Give me the power, Ill promise ill listen to all of your opinions and either laught at it and ban you, or put it on the policy and we can be corrupt together as friends who will betray each other
3) Do absolutly nothing
don't say that, now they'll actually start to use the 2 neurons they have left to ruin our chances of getting a new copypasta!!!!
Well, I expected the chaos to develop with the surveys, but not so much, and I as many do, think that Gliscor is gonna get a QB or suspected, but I'm mostly curious if Gholdengo will be in like top 4 of the ones who got the highest score or be more or less in the same score of the last one where RM was the highest one
thank you Finchinator. I can always be appreciate of efforts towards transparency and it's clear you put that forward. and thanks for your time spent on everything that I know you do without anything in return.
it's not individuals or select decisions that are of concern. I'm making note of the overall process and apparent incongruencies between the want for community input and the exquisitely insular nature of how those decisions are actually made. Neither of those things are inherently good or bad. Be a dictator for all I care. More stuff would probably get done.
Far worse is the disrespectful, curmudgeony, and dismissive gatekeeping community that has arisen around this structure -- the randos on this forum. I don't think it is productive or serving the well-being and growth of the community for those attitudes to persist.
it's not individuals or select decisions that are of concern. I'm making note of the overall process and apparent incongruencies between the want for community input and the exquisitely insular nature of how those decisions are actually made. Neither of those things are inherently good or bad. Be a dictator for all I care. More stuff would probably get done.
Far worse is the disrespectful, curmudgeony, and dismissive gatekeeping community that has arisen around this structure -- the randos on this forum. I don't think it is productive or serving the well-being and growth of the community for those attitudes to persist.
i say we do a 33-round single-elimination ou tournament featuring every living person on earth and top 8 get to be the council. who knows, there might be someone out there who's never seen pokemon but is somehow a super-mega-genius at the game
Yes
I'm not trying to be rude but you're getting paraded around the forum like a show dog with all the reasoning they're providing, just stop talking about it if you have nothing reasonable to rebuttal with.
Agreed, on a serious note I'm concerned with the direction we're willing to take just to not ban Terastalization. I understand we are taking some care from the last generation when we banned dynamax in OU and friends, but that was an obviously broken mechanic with no upsides. Terastalization has a lot of the same unhealthy symptoms as a generational mechanic, but it's so widespread in the middle of a chaotic metagame that it gets conflated with other unhealthy elements. I think we need to take the time to quickly discern what needs to go and just remove it personally. I believe that is what Finchinator is discussing with the council. Hopefully, if we get enough action we can remove some of these mons
Speaking directly on my own beliefs, however, I think that the only two real options for Tera are to ban or not ban it. The restrictions really don't get us anywhere meaningful no matter what the sentiment or theoretical outcome is post-restriction. Similarly to Srn, when it comes to restrictions I think Tera Blast and Preview are the most realistic but at the same time don't do much for us. For the most part, Tera Blast is uncommon and only affects a few mons, while Preview simply removes the surprise element entirely and doesn't fix any other issues that we have with Tera. Both are unreliable solutions; there is no one solution for Tera that solves our problem other than banning it outright or accepting that hell is here to stay and do what we can to minimize it.
Gliscor and Ghold are the top two scoring Pokemon
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