We have spoken about a tera test like so maaaaany pages and you have been shut down so many times. It's not happening. Get used to tera. Start a website to play teraless. Hop on discord to organize a teraless room. But it is simply not happening in OU, not for the time being, not unless there's any significant changes. There's no support from the playerbase, there's no interest or agenda from the council, guys, it's really really really tiring. I come in this thread because I wanna read about meta developments, learn how people are adapting to GFire, see how Waterpon is doing, etc etc. Tera is NOT GOING AWAY.
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Volcarona Banned]
- Thread starter TPP
- Start date
Yelling won’t make your opinion any more right, so calm down. Perhaps Tera won’t go away, but the playerbase is entitled to ask for a retest of one of the most divisive mechanics in OU. You have not provided a singular argument against either Raikou or mine clamoring for a Terastallization test. If you don’t want people to complain, go make your own tier or website. Hell, start a cult with you at the center of it. Protest is key to change, and even if things don’t change, it’s insulting that you think that these protests are a “waste of time”.
While I do believe Tera is an issue in the tier, I don't think a Tera suspect is the right path right now. Support for action against Tera is mixed at best, and support for an actual ban is even lower. Any suspect would inevitably fail again, and then we're stuck with Tera until Gen 10 comes out.
As you said it's best to wait and see what happens at this point with tera and how things pan out with it before any suspect happens again, plus there are brokens we need to get out so as much as I dislike tera being here, it is best to see how things play out and see if the situation gets dire enough for action, as right now, it is not currently.
A tera suspect right now would be a bad idea anyway when we have lots of brokens running around that are just broken in their own right like Waterpon, Roaring Moon, and Kyurem(Who might get a second suspect.). As I said before we should see how this all pans out and if things get dire with tera in the tier before any suspect/action is held, because it is absolutely not the time and not needed when Waterpon, Moon, and Kyurem are warping the meta around themselves. Point being right now it is best to see how things play out and how many bans tera will ultimately result in, because this meta truly is unstable and uncertain in terms of its trajectory
The fact that the sheer existence of Booster makes DEOXYS-SPEED TOO SLOW FOR OU should definitely be a cause for concern, but I don't think it's worth banning. Unlike some things it does indeed have reliable counterplay as most booster abusers can be forced out since they all have some glaring weakness. Bolt can't do anything against gliscor or clod, Gouging rarely actually runs booster, instead opting for other items while under sun, Moon is 4x weak to fairy and not exactly the fastest thing in the world (even at +1), and Valiant has the defensive profile of balsa wood.
balsa wood when I engage in some combat closely, Cleave it with the power of my dead comrades or just simple Might, summon draconic meteors from the heavens to rain down upon it, scissor it in 4, and crunch it in half (it stands impervious to my puny tricks)
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I don't think it's that Deoxys-Speed is too slow for OU. Even UU players don't find it broken. It's just not broken as a spiker or an offensive threat.
To be fair people interested in action on tera have done nothing but wait.....there's hasn't been much to look forward for that entire base of players that isn't ambiguous.
Looking at Booster in a vacuum it's pretty easy to make arguments about it not being broken but it does exert extensive offensive pressure on the meta in terms of what it enables.
(Warning, wall of text and me finding my old references to follow)
The Tera topic is probably the most significant case of this: Terastalization has shown up on multiple recent surveys and struggled to demonstrate that the current playerbase is hungry for action or a ban on it overall. At the same time, RL has a history of very frequently bringing up Tera as a mechanic to be addressed even when the topic of discussion was deep into something else and the Tera comments were routinely ignored/briefly rebuffed before returning to said point.
I think the one that sticks in my head the most was a DLC1 discussion concerning Gholdengo (can be found in the archived thread if you search for Posts made by me and that include "RaikouLover" since I quote-replied to several of their posts), in which I bring up among other points
At THIS point they reply to ask what's wrong with them pointing out Tera is used by some mons people complain about such as Dragonite and Manaphy, accuse others of "name-calling" when saying not to discuss Tera, and then tangentially bringing up Gholdengo ("As for Gholdengo") at the end of the comment in reference to it using Tera Ghost to stuff Tusk and Treads harder. This essentially interjects my until-then unrelated Gholdengo post to make another "Tera is a bad thing" comment despite me arguing in the post itself "Gholdengo is not healthy with or without Tera, and in fact should be dealt with first if wanting to make a case Tera creates a negative meta," which gives an air of ignoring my point because they can't help themselves to deride Tera again, or misunderstanding what I was even arguing about Gholdengo throughout the entire post.
These are my experiences that reflect a pattern I think is consistent with what other annoyances are being expressed. There comes a point where the complaints cease to further their point and make people less receptive to it if anything. That said I also use the term "complaint" in a more derisive manner, because this is just saying things are bad over and over when told multiple times things aren't happening, rather than elaborating on the point or perhaps turning discussion to the actual topics.
And this is a completely subjective point, but the "Save Gen 9! Unite against Tera!" stuff is just not a very entertaining bit. It reminds me of another user making all these points about the Council as "The OU Monarchy" and such that similarly derailed topics and added little to present discussions for the sake of trying to play a part in some narrative that clearly wasn't happening.
The thing is the complaints become very derailing because several of them include topics that simply aren't garnering much discussion even when they or other users try to bring them up multiple times. After a point it feels less like trying to introduce/bring up the topic than insist it be talked.
In this post for example, while Gargancl was on a relatively recent survey (albeit at low support numbers coming back), the majority of the other Pokemon brought up (Zama, Gliscor, Gholdengo, even Volc to a degree) were not subjects of discussion with the council to appear, didn't have particularly noteworthy write-in representation, and/or were barely generating serious discussion in the Meta talk threads (Gholdengo came up but ultimately was shot down as significant even among detractors like myself).
Gliscor and Garganacl were topics being brought up as if inevitable months ago in December, and 3 months later neither has really borne out this prediction given we have gone through 3 Suspects, 1 ban, and neither Pokemon is doing the stuff they did (or in Garg's case, were afraid they would do) in prior versions of the Meta.
The Tera topic is probably the most significant case of this: Terastalization has shown up on multiple recent surveys and struggled to demonstrate that the current playerbase is hungry for action or a ban on it overall. At the same time, RL has a history of very frequently bringing up Tera as a mechanic to be addressed even when the topic of discussion was deep into something else and the Tera comments were routinely ignored/briefly rebuffed before returning to said point.
I think the one that sticks in my head the most was a DLC1 discussion concerning Gholdengo (can be found in the archived thread if you search for Posts made by me and that include "RaikouLover" since I quote-replied to several of their posts), in which I bring up among other points
Literally saying that whether or not Tera is unbalanced, I did not consider it relevant to the Gholdengo discussion because I found the mon, at the time of DLC1 meta, uncompetitive regardless of using the mechanic. RL in the following page is replying to other users with sarcastic comments about how Tera is "skillful" or that he's just saying things that don't make people feel "warm and fuzzy," which I later point out as not helping their point in a different reply, relatively unrelated to my post (this part isn't an accusation, others were discussing different matters and mine was last on its page so probably just didn't catch anyone's interest).
At THIS point they reply to ask what's wrong with them pointing out Tera is used by some mons people complain about such as Dragonite and Manaphy, accuse others of "name-calling" when saying not to discuss Tera, and then tangentially bringing up Gholdengo ("As for Gholdengo") at the end of the comment in reference to it using Tera Ghost to stuff Tusk and Treads harder. This essentially interjects my until-then unrelated Gholdengo post to make another "Tera is a bad thing" comment despite me arguing in the post itself "Gholdengo is not healthy with or without Tera, and in fact should be dealt with first if wanting to make a case Tera creates a negative meta," which gives an air of ignoring my point because they can't help themselves to deride Tera again, or misunderstanding what I was even arguing about Gholdengo throughout the entire post.
These are my experiences that reflect a pattern I think is consistent with what other annoyances are being expressed. There comes a point where the complaints cease to further their point and make people less receptive to it if anything. That said I also use the term "complaint" in a more derisive manner, because this is just saying things are bad over and over when told multiple times things aren't happening, rather than elaborating on the point or perhaps turning discussion to the actual topics.
And this is a completely subjective point, but the "Save Gen 9! Unite against Tera!" stuff is just not a very entertaining bit. It reminds me of another user making all these points about the Council as "The OU Monarchy" and such that similarly derailed topics and added little to present discussions for the sake of trying to play a part in some narrative that clearly wasn't happening.
People are sleeping on it even in UU.
the 50% damage from a 4x resist in question:
+2 252+ Atk Black Glasses Supreme Overlord 5 allies fainted Tera Dark Kingambit Sucker Punch vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Iron Valiant: 169-199 (58.4 - 68.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
I’ll come out right now and say that our intent for the remainder of the generation is as follows:
- Wait a little bit (likely to the end of SPL and maybe OST, which are both huge metagame movers) for the metagame to continue settling as it’s moving too quick for the tier to be similar at the start and end of a suspect right now
- Start suspecting things specifically that the council targets as the best candidates for suspects after thorough internal discussion and taking a look at the public discourse as well
- Probably using surveys a bit more conservatively as a “check-in” rather than a firm guide, which was their intention to begin with and allows us to have more freedom in proceeding
The problem is agendapushing right now means 2 things: Unbanning D-Tier ubers (Lugia, Magearna, Lando-I, stuff like that) which is a terrible idea, or banning half the tier's offensive and defensive threats, which is an equally terrible idea because now there will be massive impenetrable walls like gliscor. In the end, we'll have to koko half the tier until OU starts looking like UUBL. If we ban a single overbearing threat, a new one rises up to take its place, and all that happens is that mon's designated hard counter gets a little worse. It will still be the same metagame.
I think it’s important that strong players are given a voice and a platform, which is the benefit of surveys and public discussions (when you can filter out the wrong things). However, what’s most important is letting the council act in the best interest of the tier. I strongly feel that this has been the case — Gouging Fire is a good example as it felt too strong for a couple of weeks, but we suspected it, knowing how variable the metagame was, and it began to settle down after having heavy support and getting a 4.1.
In the end, tiering is a lot of trial-and-error. Suspects are meant to help determine things as we reach a boiling point in the metagame. It is never going to be super easy to push every right button, but I am confident in our process and our people.
Anyone is entitled to be frustrated with the tier and the metagame’s state is at the mercy of the generation we have had released as well as suspect voters, but I view both of these things as perfectly fine and I am excited for the next steps.
In the end, tiering is a lot of trial-and-error. Suspects are meant to help determine things as we reach a boiling point in the metagame. It is never going to be super easy to push every right button, but I am confident in our process and our people.
Anyone is entitled to be frustrated with the tier and the metagame’s state is at the mercy of the generation we have had released as well as suspect voters, but I view both of these things as perfectly fine and I am excited for the next steps.
I'm not louder than anybody. I get that you are entitled to your opinion. I also think that Urshifu-RS was broken in SS OU and you don't see me spamming that eight days a week because there is no consensus and thus no use in pursuing that with such passion. I don't feel the need to give any arguments because people more well spoken, knowledgeable and capable than me have given thousand arguments on why it's not going to happen in the near future. This is the status quo like it or not. The silent majority doesn't think tera is an issue, and most strong players and members of the council agree. I work 8 hours a day and I want to come to this thread to talk about cool sets and neat ideas, not hear why tera is broken for the umpteenth time.
besides the fact that nobody runs adamant with tera dark black glasses and you've let it set up for free, Valiant STILL wins the interaction because it can simply encore it into either sucker or kowtow both of which are exploitable by teammates. Also this doesnt really address the argument that valiant doesn't have "the defensive profile of balsa wood"
You know, I wasn't going to complain about Tera. But so many people on here are complaining about people complaining about Tera. I would like to file a complaint against the complainers who are complaining about those complaining about Tera. It's like a real drag and stuff.
Also, this makes me want to complain about how Tera is one of the main problems with gen 9 from a game design standpoint. But instead, I'll just posture because people more well spoken, knowledgeable, and capable than me have given a thousand arguments on why action on Tera should have happened already. And according to the survey, nobody actually likes the status quo. The issue is we all disagree on exactly why.
If you want discuss certain topics like weird sets and neat ideas, maybe try actually discussing those things instead of crying about what other people are talking about. Volunteer some stuff and get the ball rolling. I swear people complain more about what others are talking about than actually try to contribute positively to discussions.
My fucking god, I just was asking RaikouLover that question because it seemed like they did not enjoy anything about the tier and I wanted to know if they actually like anything, not to start a war about complaining.
It's alright to complain, I will say this straight up, however, that complaining has to be constructive and lead to discussion. THAT, was my issue with them. They derailed a thread just right beforehand with zamazenta disuccsion, which was not really productive and that is my issue with their complaining.
It is the same with the tera discussion, people are talking about something else, it is artificially injected into the conversation and stagnates productive conversation. If you do not like tera and think it is banworthy, that's fine. If you want to create a metagame without tera, that's also fine and I wish you the best in your endevours. However, bringing it back up again is not going to lead to anything productive and that is not right.
I know that they are most likely an amazing player, but derailing a thread is not alright, that is my issue.
It's alright to complain, I will say this straight up, however, that complaining has to be constructive and lead to discussion. THAT, was my issue with them. They derailed a thread just right beforehand with zamazenta disuccsion, which was not really productive and that is my issue with their complaining.
It is the same with the tera discussion, people are talking about something else, it is artificially injected into the conversation and stagnates productive conversation. If you do not like tera and think it is banworthy, that's fine. If you want to create a metagame without tera, that's also fine and I wish you the best in your endevours. However, bringing it back up again is not going to lead to anything productive and that is not right.
I know that they are most likely an amazing player, but derailing a thread is not alright, that is my issue.
This is my exact frustration with the meta right now, no one seems to be able to agree on what is busted and what isn't at times, along with all the uncertainty.
Also yeah no need to derail this meta discussion with more tera discussion when we have broken mons to deal with
Yeah no need to derail the meta discussion with more dropping Ubers discussion when we have more broken mons to deal with
... that we still won't ban since we as a community cannot agree on banning anything.
Glad we agree on something, let's blacklist Tera and Ubers drops discussions from here and we are both happy.
I don't know who to tag but I feel discussion was more worthwhile when we had the separate Tera discussion. I think now amongst this threat saturation period might be a good time to reopen that thread and separate Tera and metagame discussion. Because for fucks sake metagame discussion means discuss the metagame at hand not discuss the metagame you'd like.
Anyway, I'll listen to your advice and start actual metagame discussion. I've seen Waterpon sets with Grassy Glide, anyone having success with those? What kind of team archetypes is (this and other) Waterpon thriving in?
DaRotomMachine
I COULD BE BANNED!
I would assume an offensive team as GTerrain is exclusively set up by Rillaboom and Its a pretty good offensive mon.
TBH tho Having more power in Power Whip or recovery in Horn Leech just sounds better.
Honestly, grassy glide is the much better option on G Terrain teams as it gets past one of waterpons issues, which is the fact that faster mons can revenge kill it. This means that you have to be bulky enough to survive a hit from waterpon, which while possible, is a lot more difficult.
The brief tera derailment ended and I don't really want to contribute more to it, but nobody mentioned the flaws in an argument that gets thrown around in this discussion a lot lately.
"Survey results indicate that a tera vote would be pointless". This is silly to me. We just witnessed with Gouging Fire that over the course of a suspect, when tensions are running high and people are truly actively thinking about the issue, opinion can massively swing. A tiering survey has the same flaws as real world election polling, which I won't go super into here beyond stating that those polls can also, under many circumstances, mispredict election results.
Specifically, I want to address a bias that we don't consider as much as we should: people who are truly dissatisfied with the state of a tier often quit and stop engaging with the community. This significantly depresses anti-tera "voter turnout" during tiering survey. However, if a tera suspect were to happen, it would be a pretty big event, and a good amount of the people who don't actively play the tier anymore would find out via social media etc. This otherwise silent population would greatly boost the anti-tera camp's actual prospects during a suspect, in my opinion.
It's important to note a difference here between Tera suspect and other aspects of the tiering survey. With specific pokemon that come out in new releases/updates, I find the surveys a much more convincing metric for predicting ban support. There hasn't been enough time for a problem pokemon to significantly cause people to quit the tier. However, Tera has been a pervasive, sticky issue, and as time drags on with people adopting a more and more "doomer" attitude towards tera ever changing, the sampling bias towards who actually posts in the forums or votes in the surveys grows even worse.
"Survey results indicate that a tera vote would be pointless". This is silly to me. We just witnessed with Gouging Fire that over the course of a suspect, when tensions are running high and people are truly actively thinking about the issue, opinion can massively swing. A tiering survey has the same flaws as real world election polling, which I won't go super into here beyond stating that those polls can also, under many circumstances, mispredict election results.
Specifically, I want to address a bias that we don't consider as much as we should: people who are truly dissatisfied with the state of a tier often quit and stop engaging with the community. This significantly depresses anti-tera "voter turnout" during tiering survey. However, if a tera suspect were to happen, it would be a pretty big event, and a good amount of the people who don't actively play the tier anymore would find out via social media etc. This otherwise silent population would greatly boost the anti-tera camp's actual prospects during a suspect, in my opinion.
It's important to note a difference here between Tera suspect and other aspects of the tiering survey. With specific pokemon that come out in new releases/updates, I find the surveys a much more convincing metric for predicting ban support. There hasn't been enough time for a problem pokemon to significantly cause people to quit the tier. However, Tera has been a pervasive, sticky issue, and as time drags on with people adopting a more and more "doomer" attitude towards tera ever changing, the sampling bias towards who actually posts in the forums or votes in the surveys grows even worse.
Well, my point is actually that I think we should all stop playing moderator and trying to control what people say in the discussion.
Grassy Glide comes with Rillaboom for free, so it's a little bit unconventional to have it on something else unless you are going double Glide. The problem with double Glide being there are like 7 resistances to Grass. So you would want the team to cover for that somehow. Ice, Ground, Fire, and sometimes Rock are all types that can hit multiple Grass resists. Fairy attacks are also decent for hitting hard neutrally and stopping dragons that aren't Gouging Fire. Dragons in particular are a huge problem since they are very common in the meta. You would also need an obvious Zama answer because physical attackers.
I tried something somewhat similar with Rillaboom and Teal Mask Ogerpon for the speed boost awhile back. Before the DLCs. It was very mid because there were too many stacked resistances to Grass Spam. It's probably worse these days I don't think I would even try something like that now with all the Gouging Fires and things making it even harder these days. But Waterpon at least has handy Water STAB. So it's not all bad.
In the case of Waterpon specifically, there are a lot of mons that outspeed it and revenge kill it. Grassy Glide would give it the option to hit those mons and at a speed tier that is higher than most of the priority users. E-Speed and Comfey still ignore that, but it's still decent against a lot. Waterpon Tera is also nice to have against Weavile Ice Shard and Cinderace Fire moves. Probably not Roaring Moon, though.
For complimentary attackers, I'm just gonna state the best options with each STAB that I listed earlier. For Ice attackers, you want Weavile or Kyurem. You could also maybe get cute with triple Grass spam and Triple Axel from Protean Meowscarada. This stacks a ton of weaknesses, but you do have a couple ways sort of around that and it's a more offensive core anyways.
For Fire, you want Gouging Fire, Volcorona, Heatran, or Cinderace. You can potentially pick more than one if you have room and you want more firepower. Pun intended. This is because Waterpon forms 2/3rds of an offensive Fire/Water/Grass core. But again, beware of Dragons.
For Ground, the best offensive grounds are Tusk, Treads, and Lando-T. You might want Lando-T because it gives you a ground immunity and a special attacking option. Something cheeky you can do with Heatran on the team is stack fire weaknesses like Treads. But maybe it's a bit too telegraphed.
Rock type attackers are tricky. Iron Boulder really isn't very good in most cases. You don't want Cornerstone if you have Waterpon. Glimmora is decent hazard support mon, but it's generally not used as a primary attacker. You can still make the set more offensive, though. Generally, I would skip this type as a primary focus in OU.
You can't fit too many complementary attackers next to two grass mons since you still need room for whatever bulk and/or support you are running. So focus on one or two primary Ground, Fire, or Ice attackers (or Meow if you are feeling cheeky) depending on what you are going for and what you have room for. You should try to fit in glue mons that also have Fire, Ground, Ice, or Rock STAB and/or coverage on them where you can. I think this would be the best way to make grass spam work.