Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4

[TheTraininator]

I feel like pro-banners for TB don’t understand the magnitude of the scale of the ban they are proposing because they’re just viewing it in the context of a few Pokémon in the OU metagame. We’ve banned 3 Pokémon directly due to the move, but there is a total of, (if I did my math correctly), 727 possible species of Pokémon that can use the move, and this isn’t even counting alternate forms that are tiered differently, so not only are you banning a move that is broken on less than 0.5% of its users, you’re banning that move from being used by all of its 724 less problematic users across all tiers. This would be by far the largest-scale ban that the Scarlet/Violet OU tier would enact, having a even larger ramifications than the ban on sleep did, which required an entire re-evaluation of tiering policy to come into place to begin with. Even if you want to argue how that 3 should actually be an 8 because blah blah blah, you just legitimately can’t make a mathematical argument that the move is broken, so you have to make a damn good argument as to how this move is fundamentally uncompetitive to justify to ZU why they can’t run TB Fire on their Chlorophyll Leafeon anymore.

 

[LoseToRU?]

Many bits of this comment are laced with a somewhat patronizing and rude tone that isn’t helping the rest of your argument especially when you’re outright refusing to honestly engage in certain parts of their comment, or certain arguments in general.

(Redacted lol) Sorry mods :'(
I'm not going to entertain an opinion like "Bolt has a great MU vs Ting Lu w/o TB"

Maybe don’t make comments like “to stop defensive walls from being unbreakable” when talking about how TB is supposedly needed? It’s hard not to get the impression when you make remarks like this.

Thousands of times in OU 6v6 singles has a game been decided because one player could not break the others core.
Look at a recent OLT replay or games from 10+ years ago.
You will see cores like Glisc/Clef/Skarm and the opp either does have a wall-breaker, or the breaker got worn down, etc.
Hence, unbreakable.
No TB objectively makes some cores harder to break. It removes tools to break past these cores. Get it?
-
We are just on the Tera treadmill a lot of ppl predicted years ago. Constant tech chases. Teras falling in and out of favor over time. It was also predicted to mons would abuse Tera, get banned, create a vacuum in which another mon takes its place then also gets banned. Banning TB isn't going to "fix" this lol. We lost Moon, and now Nite has stepped up. Let's just do what we always do in this scenario.

Anti-TB likes to claim "Variance" when the issue is just positioning. If you send your Corv in vs SD Rilla and are surprised when it has TB Fire idk what to tell you. Did you look at their team and see they had no Corv answer? Did u predict Fire but already use your defensive tera? No TB hurts players who position better and have better meta knowledge.
If a game comes down to Nite and Tusk, and Nite player saved their Tera, they absolutely deserve to destroy that Tusk with TB.

Once this TB witch-hunt is over, I'd love to see us focus on something that has far more potential to improve the meta, such as a Woger suspect. A Nite suspect as well couldn't hurt, it will probably survive but would be nice to find out.

 

[duckycrater]

No TB objectively makes some cores harder to break. It removes tools to break past these cores. Get it?

I struggle to see why we need more tools to break past cores? The tier is already full of breakers, whether through ludicrously strong breakers like SD or Specs or just constant chip to wear down mons from status, pivots, and the omnipresent ruler of the metagame, hazards. Sure without TB can't blast down directly, but its not like then becomes magically unbreakable, you can still chip it down through stuff like spikes, other special theats like or , or you can use specs and just chunk it down directly. Sure its not a good matchup(unless its specs ), but there are a plethora of tools to shore it up. Its not like balance and stall are exactly ruling over the metagame, balance is ok and stall is quite bad currently, despite the predictions from the anti- ban crowd. I don't exactly see why defensive pokemon being able to actually wall other pokemon is this thing we're trying to avoid, especially in this metagame with so much already existing non-TB counterplay. If you let your only breakers get worn down, or just build a team that can't break past common cores, not being able to break those cores is honestly what should happen.

 

[Estradiol5mg]

I feel like pro-banners for TB don’t understand the magnitude of the scale of the ban they are proposing because they’re just viewing it in the context of a few Pokémon in the OU metagame. We’ve banned 3 Pokémon directly due to the move, but there is a total of, (if I did my math correctly), 727 possible species of Pokémon that can use the move, and this isn’t even counting alternate forms that are tiered differently, so not only are you banning a move that is broken on less than 0.5% of its users, you’re banning that move from being used by all of its 724 less problematic users across all tiers. This would be by far the largest-scale ban that the Scarlet/Violet OU tier would enact, having a even larger ramifications than the ban on sleep did, which required an entire re-evaluation of tiering policy to come into place to begin with. Even if you want to argue how that 3 should actually be an 8 because blah blah blah, you just legitimately can’t make a mathematical argument that the move is broken, so you have to make a damn good argument as to how this move is fundamentally uncompetitive to justify to ZU why they can’t run TB Fire on their Chlorophyll Leafeon anymore.

this is a bad faith argument, the vast majority of the 727 pokemon that can use tb are fundementally non viable in sv ou, in most cases of tb being used it is to give already strong offensive mons coverage against their common checks/ terrastellar blast on 2 mons

 

[Welcome to mars]

I believe the opportunity cost of tera blast prevents it from being broken, it requires use of your tera slot to be used, which means most teams will only have one mon running the move and will have to pick mon will run the move (not to mention it requires a complete sacrifice of your original typing, which could turn normally good matchups in nightmares). I also do not think it has broken enough pokemon because yes, it broke volcarona and regieleki but it didn’t break the other problematic mons that used it, roaring moon and gouging fire were broken with or without it and its debatable if tera fairy dazzling gleam espathra would be fine in this current meta.

Overall, I do not support a tera blast ban.

 

[TheTraininator]

this is a bad faith argument, the vast majority of the 727 pokemon that can use tb are fundementally non viable in sv ou, in most cases of tb being used it is to give already strong offensive mons coverage against their common checks/ terrastellar blast on 2 mons

If you want to argue that point, fine, but following it to its logical conclusion doesn’t support the argument of Tera Blast being banworthy due to brokenness either. Excluding D-rank Pokémon, the current OU Viability Rankings has 109 Pokémon ranked on it. Though the three ranked Ogerpon formes can use the move, they effectively can’t really due to their locked Tera types, so that makes 106 OU-viable Pokémon that can use Tera Blast. Let’s be extra generous and say that in addition to Regieleki/Espathra/Volcarona, we’ll pretend that Gouging Fire and Roaring Moon were broken due to the move and also argue that Kyurem, Kingambit, and Dragonite are also all broken due to it since they’ve all been some degree of contentious regardless of the fact that none of them have actually been banned this gen. With our new total pool of 111 Pokémon, we have 8 “broken due to Tera Blast”, putting us at a ground total of… 7% of OU-viable users, or users that were OU but banned due to it. You could make a better mathematical case for the banning of Choice Items, Heavy-Duty Boots, or Booster Energy with math like that, and this is after we’ve removed 80% of the dex and generously nearly tripled our pool of “brokens”. So no, I would argue it’s not a bad-faith argument; there is just legitimately no world in which you can argue the move is broken in the traditional sense of what makes a move broken. I wouldn’t even be bothering to point all this out if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m literally still seeing people argue this point in this very thread. People should go read some of ausma ’s arguments to get a good sense of how to effectively argue in favor of a ban for Tera Blast.

 

[Avira]

Personally, I do not agree with Finchinator and others who have the same view as him that the pro-Tera Blast supect camp must prove that Tera Blast is broken for a suspect to proceed. The tiering framework does indicate that an element can be acted on if broken, uncompetitive, and/or unhealthy, and I shall argue that Tera Blast is both unhealthy, and to an extent, uncompetitive.

Many Pokemon are specifically designed to have limited powerful coverage options as a natural balancer of their kits, and I believe Tera Blast giving any Pokemon strong coverage is inherently unhealthy since this goes against that. Pre-Gen 8, Hidden Power was used similarly to snipe 2x or 4x weak targets, but it only had 60 BP, making it more managable than Tera Blast with Hidden Power Ice often bouncing off of something like Gliscor if its user didn't invest in Special Attack. Since Tera Blast has 80 Base Power and gets STAB if you Terastalize, it has effectively 120 BP, making it much more powerful than Hidden Power, which was a fair and balanced move due to the low BP. Yeah, you have to commit your Tera and a moveslot, but Tera Blast is quite often worth it

Additionally, Tera Blast lets the user mindgame the opponent by baiting out a Tera just by throwing out an unTerastalized Tera Blast to force your opponent to wonder whether you actually have the right Tera Type but just misclicked, which forces your opponent to consider the option even if it was just a bluff. This was alluded to by Ausma who indicated that Tera Blast can give the user a positional advantage in game sequencing by forcing your opponent to play cautiously in case of you having a Tera Blast sweeper. I get that with metagame knowledge that this positional advantage is made less, but it is very difficult to reasonably ensure that you can prepare for most Tera Blast coverage given that there are so many mons for which a Tera Blast set is viable even if it isn't the best set. I believe this unreasonably increases the demand on the builder to account for the amount of variance in SV OU, which is one of the reasons Palafin wasn't freed to OU since the format had so many threats to account for, and Tera Blast contributes to this problem. While Ausma argues that Tera Blast is unintuitively broken, I straight up believe it is just unhealthy and uncompetitive and that that is what the pro-ban camp should focus on if it hopes for a consensus favoring our side to be reached.

Another reason why the pro-ban Tera Blast camp shouldn't have to prove that Tera Blast is broken is that earlier in this generation, the SV OU Council banned Sleep moves in general after there was a fuss about Darkrai, Iron Valiant, and Lilligant-Hisui in the high ladder using inaccurate moves to fish for a Sleep that would invalidate a check and give them more opportunites to sweep. 'Cause of the low accuracy and the high power level of SV OU, failing to get off that crucial Sleep could result in the user getting KOed, but top players were still abusing that due to how high the reward was for using them given it forced their opponents into very linear play patterns due to the threat of Sleep. Sleep moves were banned for being uncompetitive rather than straight up broken with their ability to invalidate checks and contribute to sweeps and the same somewhat applies to Tera Blast since Pokemon such as Kyurem and Kingambit often change their offensive profiles entirely with Tera Blast, which is a point Shaymin Sky has made in the past in that rather than 16 centralizing threats, Tera and Tera Blast makes it so that there are more like 48 centralizing threats due to what the Terastal mechanic encourages, and since banning Terastal is now completely off the table, limiting Tera Blast is the only avenue by which we can limit the high variance/somewhat uncompetitive nature of SV OU.

Additionally, an item such as King's Rock was not broken but caused certain mons such as Cloyster and Weavile to be unreasonably consistent alongside them being items solely designed to hax targets, which is why it was banned. This is another argument why given that Sleep moves and King's Rock weren't problematic on all Pokemon or even a large portion of OU-viable mons but were banned anyway Tera Blast is worth suspecting. Kyurem and Kingambit being able to deep six checks (Tera Fire, Electric, or Ground for Kyurem and Fairy and Flying for Kingambit) with Tera Blast is uncompetitive since the move lets them snipe anything the user wants to target at the cost of their Tera and dedicating a moveslot to Tera, which is often worth it to set up a sweep or easily break a crucial part of the opponent's core with it being often out of your opponent's hands given there are only so many Tera Types you can account on any given team, which increases the match-up fishiness of the tier and doesn't necessarily promote skill with the very wide breadth of threats and coverage to account for.

Having said that, a Tera Blast suspect can only happen if the requisite community support is there, and we're nowhere near that point right now with support for acting on Tera Blast decreasing over time. It's not that the OU Council is silencing the pro-Tera Blast suspect camp as some users suggest but that the support was never there to begin with with only a very loud minority of the playerbase calling for it. Survey scores for competitiveness still only being at a 7 shows that there's still work to do on SV OU, and with no single mon having the support for a suspect test, we should articulate a clear case on why a Tera Blast suspect is worth pursuing based on previous precedent although said precedents involved quickbans rather than suspect tests of more problematic elements.

 

[LoseToRU?]

I struggle to see why we need more tools to break past cores? The tier is already full of breakers, whether through ludicrously strong breakers like SD or Specs or just constant chip to wear down mons from status, pivots, and the omnipresent ruler of the metagame, hazards. Sure without TB can't blast down directly, but its not like then becomes magically unbreakable, you can still chip it down through stuff like spikes, other special theats like or , or you can use specs and just chunk it down directly. Sure its not a good matchup(unless its specs ), but there are a plethora of tools to shore it up. Its not like balance and stall are exactly ruling over the metagame, balance is ok and stall is quite bad currently, despite the predictions from the anti- ban crowd. I don't exactly see why defensive pokemon being able to actually wall other pokemon is this thing we're trying to avoid, especially in this metagame with so much already existing non-TB counterplay. If you let your only breakers get worn down, or just build a team that can't break past common cores, not being able to break those cores is honestly what should happen.

We don't need more tools to break past cores, we have everything we need, that's kinda my point.
Woger and Kyu are problematic, though, and there may be a time when we lose both.
Never said Lu was "magically unbreakable" whatsoever, in any capacity. That said, Moth is prolly the worst example of how to handle Ting since it loses it's BE after it's phazed out - Gleam and Eball are 6hkos... and Specs Bolt? Ting still wins. Rest-Lu wins all battle long. If Ting is chipped a lot sure, but then you have a Bolt at -2 or even -4 lol which is just free setup and/or a momentum sink. I've never seen a random example used to highlight a point get so many brains broken lol

The game is better when skewed towards offense, GF agrees. Z-Moves were implemented to increase wall-breaking capability. Megas to raise the power level. No one is mad about the Recovery PP nerf. A huge talking point from pro-Tera back in the day was "We don't want another boring meta like Gen 8."

Not being able to break cores due to misplay or building is one thing- the better player is rewarded for outplaying the breaker, or just having a solid core and playing with it well. That makes sense. But if, for example, one player positions themselves with Polteageist- keeping the sash intact, keeping Tera, and making sure Psychic Terrain is up, then that Polt should 100% be rewarded when it clicks TB Fighting vs that final Gambit. TB is niche, so I have to use niche examples. Which is why I find it so funny this is even a main focus of discussion

It's a fundamental part of the gimmick we fought wars over lol it should not be dissected
TB adds skill expression and increases viability of lower tier mons.
Most, if not all, of the TB complaints are just actually overlap with complaints about Tera in general.
"Too much variance, can't predict, they broke past my wall using Tera" Like yes, that's SV bro, you just get here or?

Anyway I'm done lol debating something so obviously not a problem isn't worth the time. As much fun it is to know the same handful of (redacted) still religiously react negatively to literally every post for years now warms my heart but I'll be back when it comes time to discuss actual solutions to improve the meta, not grasping at straws trying to blame something with such a high opportunity cost it's rarely used in the first place.

 

[duckycrater]

and Specs Bolt? Ting still wins. Rest-Lu wins all battle long. If Ting is chipped a lot sure, but then you have a Bolt at -2 or even -4 lol which is just free setup and/or a momentum sink. I've never seen a random example used to highlight a point get so many brains broken lot

Specs absolutely breaks ????? Rest is a rare set on its own(~10% usage iirc) and even then, specs deals 40-50(50-60 with tera) with draco, allowing it to outdamage the amount of healing can get from rest, especially by exploiting the amount of free turns a rest gives you to bring in mons that can force lu out like and . Even with -2, specs can still serve as enough pressure to not serve as setup fodder, dealing 70% to a or 65% to an might not kill them, but it does allow for a or to deal with them easily, stopping any attempted setup

 

[Bakugames]

Sorry to interrupt with non ou discussion but please avoid using the party sprites to replace the pokemon names. it makes posts really hard to read sometimes esp if they dont load in correctly

 

[Estradiol5mg]

(Redacted lol) Sorry mods :'(
I'm not going to entertain an opinion like "Bolt has a great MU vs Ting Lu w/o TB"

Thousands of times in OU 6v6 singles has a game been decided because one player could not break the others core.
Look at a recent OLT replay or games from 10+ years ago.
You will see cores like Glisc/Clef/Skarm and the opp either does have a wall-breaker, or the breaker got worn down, etc.
Hence, unbreakable.
No TB objectively makes some cores harder to break. It removes tools to break past these cores. Get it?
-
We are just on the Tera treadmill a lot of ppl predicted years ago. Constant tech chases. Teras falling in and out of favor over time. It was also predicted to mons would abuse Tera, get banned, create a vacuum in which another mon takes its place then also gets banned. Banning TB isn't going to "fix" this lol. We lost Moon, and now Nite has stepped up. Let's just do what we always do in this scenario.

Anti-TB likes to claim "Variance" when the issue is just positioning. If you send your Corv in vs SD Rilla and are surprised when it has TB Fire idk what to tell you. Did you look at their team and see they had no Corv answer? Did u predict Fire but already use your defensive tera? No TB hurts players who position better and have better meta knowledge.
If a game comes down to Nite and Tusk, and Nite player saved their Tera, they absolutely deserve to destroy that Tusk with TB.

Once this TB witch-hunt is over, I'd love to see us focus on something that has far more potential to improve the meta, such as a Woger suspect. A Nite suspect as well couldn't hurt, it will probably survive but would be nice to find out.

If you want to argue that point, fine, but following it to its logical conclusion doesn’t support the argument of Tera Blast being banworthy due to brokenness either. Excluding D-rank Pokémon, the current OU Viability Rankings has 109 Pokémon ranked on it. Though the three ranked Ogerpon formes can use the move, they effectively can’t really due to their locked Tera types, so that makes 106 OU-viable Pokémon that can use Tera Blast. Let’s be extra generous and say that in addition to Regieleki/Espathra/Volcarona, we’ll pretend that Gouging Fire and Roaring Moon were broken due to the move and also argue that Kyurem, Kingambit, and Dragonite are also all broken due to it since they’ve all been some degree of contentious regardless of the fact that none of them have actually been banned this gen. With our new total pool of 111 Pokémon, we have 8 “broken due to Tera Blast”, putting us at a ground total of… 7% of OU-viable users, or users that were OU but banned due to it. You could make a better mathematical case for the banning of Choice Items, Heavy-Duty Boots, or Booster Energy with math like that, and this is after we’ve removed 80% of the dex and generously nearly tripled our pool of “brokens”. So no, I would argue it’s not a bad-faith argument; there is just legitimately no world in which you can argue the move is broken in the traditional sense of what makes a move broken. I wouldn’t even be bothering to point all this out if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m literally still seeing people argue this point in this very thread. People should go read some of ausma ’s arguments to get a good sense of how to effectively argue in favor of a ban for Tera Blast.

this is still fundemenally bad faith the vast majority of even semi viable mons in sv ou will not use terablast, in the vast majority of cases in which terablast is used it is as 1 a coverage move against a common check or 2 it enables a late game setup sweeper i.e dragonite or kingambit, i just find the dynamics terablast creates to be unfun tbh

 

[gregdawiz]

Personally, I do not agree with Finchinator and others who have the same view as him that the pro-Tera Blast supect camp must prove that Tera Blast is broken for a suspect to proceed. The tiering framework does indicate that an element can be acted on if broken, uncompetitive, and/or unhealthy, and I shall argue that Tera Blast is both unhealthy, and to an extent, uncompetitive.

Many Pokemon are specifically designed to have limited powerful coverage options as a natural balancer of their kits, and I believe Tera Blast giving any Pokemon strong coverage is inherently unhealthy since this goes against that. Pre-Gen 8, Hidden Power was used similarly to snipe 2x or 4x weak targets, but it only had 60 BP, making it more managable than Tera Blast with Hidden Power Ice often bouncing off of something like Gliscor if its user didn't invest in Special Attack. Since Tera Blast has 80 Base Power and gets STAB if you Terastalize, it has effectively 120 BP, making it much more powerful than Hidden Power, which was a fair and balanced move due to the low BP. Yeah, you have to commit your Tera and a moveslot, but Tera Blast is quite often worth it

Additionally, Tera Blast lets the user mindgame the opponent by baiting out a Tera just by throwing out an unTerastalized Tera Blast to force your opponent to wonder whether you actually have the right Tera Type but just misclicked, which forces your opponent to consider the option even if it was just a bluff. This was alluded to by Ausma who indicated that Tera Blast can give the user a positional advantage in game sequencing by forcing your opponent to play cautiously in case of you having a Tera Blast sweeper. I get that with metagame knowledge that this positional advantage is made less, but it is very difficult to reasonably ensure that you can prepare for most Tera Blast coverage given that there are so many mons for which a Tera Blast set is viable even if it isn't the best set. I believe this unreasonably increases the demand on the builder to account for the amount of variance in SV OU, which is one of the reasons Palafin wasn't freed to OU since the format had so many threats to account for, and Tera Blast contributes to this problem. While Ausma argues that Tera Blast is unintuitively broken, I straight up believe it is just unhealthy and uncompetitive and that that is what the pro-ban camp should focus on if it hopes for a consensus favoring our side to be reached.

Another reason why the pro-ban Tera Blast camp shouldn't have to prove that Tera Blast is broken is that earlier in this generation, the SV OU Council banned Sleep moves in general after there was a fuss about Darkrai, Iron Valiant, and Lilligant-Hisui in the high ladder using inaccurate moves to fish for a Sleep that would invalidate a check and give them more opportunites to sweep. 'Cause of the low accuracy and the high power level of SV OU, failing to get off that crucial Sleep could result in the user getting KOed, but top players were still abusing that due to how high the reward was for using them given it forced their opponents into very linear play patterns due to the threat of Sleep. Sleep moves were banned for being uncompetitive rather than straight up broken with their ability to invalidate checks and contribute to sweeps and the same somewhat applies to Tera Blast since Pokemon such as Kyurem and Kingambit often change their offensive profiles entirely with Tera Blast, which is a point Shaymin Sky has made in the past in that rather than 16 centralizing threats, Tera and Tera Blast makes it so that there are more like 48 centralizing threats due to what the Terastal mechanic encourages, and since banning Terastal is now completely off the table, limiting Tera Blast is the only avenue by which we can limit the high variance/somewhat uncompetitive nature of SV OU.

Additionally, an item such as King's Rock was not broken but caused certain mons such as Cloyster and Weavile to be unreasonably consistent alongside them being items solely designed to hax targets, which is why it was banned. This is another argument why given that Sleep moves and King's Rock weren't problematic on all Pokemon or even a large portion of OU-viable mons but were banned anyway Tera Blast is worth suspecting. Kyurem and Kingambit being able to deep six checks (Tera Fire, Electric, or Ground for Kyurem and Fairy and Flying for Kingambit) with Tera Blast is uncompetitive since the move lets them snipe anything the user wants to target at the cost of their Tera and dedicating a moveslot to Tera, which is often worth it to set up a sweep or easily break a crucial part of the opponent's core with it being often out of your opponent's hands given there are only so many Tera Types you can account on any given team, which increases the match-up fishiness of the tier and doesn't necessarily promote skill with the very wide breadth of threats and coverage to account for.

Having said that, a Tera Blast suspect can only happen if the requisite community support is there, and we're nowhere near that point right now with support for acting on Tera Blast decreasing over time. It's not that the OU Council is silencing the pro-Tera Blast suspect camp as some users suggest but that the support was never there to begin with with only a very loud minority of the playerbase calling for it. Survey scores for competitiveness still only being at a 7 shows that there's still work to do on SV OU, and with no single mon having the support for a suspect test, we should articulate a clear case on why a Tera Blast suspect is worth pursuing based on previous precedent although said precedents involved quickbans rather than suspect tests of more problematic elements.

This post does an excellent job at highlighting an issue I think I've really been having with SV OU tiering policy recently, which is the word "uncompetitive". This word is pretty much a massive gray zone and allows for things to get banned with no real explanation other than "we didn't like this". Even then, the "we" is quite broad as this "we" can actually just be about half or less players in the metagame. It makes it hard for players who aren't as active like myself to understand why something was truly banned. Sleep in general is a controversial ban that relied on the reasoning of "uncompetitive" to pass through and many players wonder why it was banned instead of the few mons that abuse the mechanic. Likely this is also going to cause divisiveness and confusion in the metagame as some may really disagree with the ban and wonder why the most prominent tera blast abusers werent banned instead.

Its a lot more clear to see why Baton Pass and OHKO moves are more fundamentally broken. OHKO moves sort of speak for themselves almost, while Baton Pass has had endless revisions yet has never been healthy for a meta. I strongly disagree with using the Sleep ban as a precedent for future decisions, and I feel like, if TB does get banned, this will also be used as a precedent for future discussions when tiering surveys have shown most people don't think Tera Blast to be an issue. I really don't understand the idea of banning something most of the playerbase doesn't find problematic that also cannot be proven to be broken.

I know in the initial post (which i do think was well written) Avira highlighted the same thing. But it does lead me to believe this about other bans generally considered "uncompetitive". Is there more of a barrier for something to be considered uncompetitive? I'd understand it if this was intrinsically tied to high player support, but as we're speaking now the phrase uncompetitive is just too nebulous of an area in my mind to be explicit tiering policy. Its something that sounds to me like it can neither be tracked (through community support) nor proven (in a way a broken thing can be proven with missing counters)

 

[Welcome to mars]

Today I present another niche and hyper specific wellspring counter, but this time its not our boy cobby.

Duraludon @ Eviolite
Ability: Light Metal
Tera Type: Flying
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
- Dragon Pulse
- Flash cannon/dragon tail
- Rest
- Thunder Wave/Stealth Rock
Duraludon already had good bulk since it was originally intended to be fully evolved, now its even bulkier with eviolite boosting its defense to 541 which makes it shrug off all of Ogerpon’s attacks easily, its typing means Ogerpon only has brick break, superpower, low kick and stomping tantrum to hit supereffectively and …
252 Atk Ogerpon Superpower vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Duraludon: 110-130 (31.9 - 37.7%) -- 91.6% chance to 3HKO
252 Atk Ogerpon Low Kick (40 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Light Metal Duraludon: 38-46 (11 - 13.3%) -- possible 8HKO
252 Atk Ogerpon Brick Break vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Duraludon: 68-82 (19.7 - 23.8%) -- possible 5HKO
252 Atk Ogerpon Stomping Tantrum vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Duraludon: 68-82 (19.7 - 23.8%) -- possible 5HKO

As you can see, it would not be able to break Duraludon unless it used knock off prior and then hit it with Superpower, which has drawbacks especially for non sd sets.

Tera flying is to get rid of two weakness whilst retaining a grass immunity.

 

[Finchinator]

Personally, I do not agree with Finchinator and others who have the same view as him that the pro-Tera Blast supect camp must prove that Tera Blast is broken for a suspect to proceed.

I never said this. Nobody has.

What I said is there has to be an argument it is possible to be compliant with the framework. If it’s a non-starter, then obviously we aren’t even going to have the debate. This is very different than what you said.

Nobody has made an argument that proves a substantial portion of Tera Blast users are broken. If that argument exists and can hold weight with a significant portion of people agreeing with it, then I can convince tiering admins to approve a suspect. Until then, it’s unlikely to occur.

This is how tiering of non-Pokemon elements has always worked. This is not the first case like this and it will not be the last either.

Finally, we need to stop likening Tera Blast to Baron Pass and Sleep moves. It is not close to the same.

 

[SittinGamer]

I mean, it somewhat seems like the entire discussion was a non starter, then? Even if three council members support the ban, it is objectively not broken on 99% of fully evolved Pokemon, and if we are to accept there is no analogy to Baton Pass or Sleep, then action on the move seems like it was never on the cards even before the PR thread was made.

Edit while I look back though, the Sleep move ban is surprisingly similar to that of Tera Blast's condition, at least in my eyes? It was three abusers (Darkrai, IVal, and H-Lilligant) weaponizing something unhealthy but not broken (the vast majority of sleep users being healthy within the confines of the status quo (Sleep Clause, of which said clause being the status quo is an entirely different discussion)) due to their unique attributes which allowed them to abuse the metagame element freely. The argument was made by many that, if the traits of the abusers are what pushes sleep over, then Darkrai and IVal should be banned. Evidently, that is not what happened, and I ultimately agree with the removal of the unhealthy element in sleep as opposed to action on its top abusers. Tera Blast, similarly, has only a handful (no more than 10 total) edge cases in which it specifically breaks or nearly breaks a mon, and its removal is argued for under the pretense of a lack of competitiveness/unhealthiness.

 

[Finchinator]

I mean, it somewhat seems like the entire discussion was a non starter, then? Even if three council members support the ban, it is objectively not broken on 99% of fully evolved Pokemon

This is how I have felt and why I did not entertain a larger scale discussion for a long time.

For reference, I was also told I had to include the snippet I did from tiering admins when drafting the OP, too. And I absolutely get why this is the case — the move does not fit the definition of being a broken move or come close, in my opinion.

 

[DartTamarin519]

Today I present another niche and hyper specific wellspring counter, but this time its not our boy cobby.

Duraludon @ Eviolite
Ability: Light Metal
Tera Type: Flying
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
- Dragon Pulse
- Flash cannon/dragon tail
- Rest
- Thunder Wave/Stealth Rock
Duraludon already had good bulk since it was originally intended to be fully evolved, now its even bulkier with eviolite boosting its defense to 541 which makes it shrug off all of Ogerpon’s attacks easily, its typing means Ogerpon only has brick break, superpower, low kick and stomping tantrum to hit supereffectively and …
252 Atk Ogerpon Superpower vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Duraludon: 110-130 (31.9 - 37.7%) -- 91.6% chance to 3HKO
252 Atk Ogerpon Low Kick (40 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Light Metal Duraludon: 38-46 (11 - 13.3%) -- possible 8HKO
252 Atk Ogerpon Brick Break vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Duraludon: 68-82 (19.7 - 23.8%) -- possible 5HKO
252 Atk Ogerpon Stomping Tantrum vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Duraludon: 68-82 (19.7 - 23.8%) -- possible 5HKO

As you can see, it would not be able to break Duraludon unless it used knock off prior and then hit it with Superpower, which has drawbacks especially for non sd sets.

Tera flying is to get rid of two weakness whilst retaining a grass immunity.

Wouldn't Knock Off Ogerpon cripple Duraludon's bulk, or is it bulky enough to not need Eviolite? I feel that Knock+U-Turn Ogerpon would beat it long term with hazards, but I suppose you could build around that. Body Press seems like an interesting idea, with that much defense. Did you run any calcs on it, or did other moves work better?

 

[Excalibuwrath]

This post does an excellent job at highlighting an issue I think I've really been having with SV OU tiering policy recently, which is the word "uncompetitive". This word is pretty much a massive gray zone and allows for things to get banned with no real explanation other than "we didn't like this". Even then, the "we" is quite broad as this "we" can actually just be about half or less players in the metagame. It makes it hard for players who aren't as active like myself to understand why something was truly banned. Sleep in general is a controversial ban that relied on the reasoning of "uncompetitive" to pass through and many players wonder why it was banned instead of the few mons that abuse the mechanic. Likely this is also going to cause divisiveness and confusion in the metagame as some may really disagree with the ban and wonder why the most prominent tera blast abusers werent banned instead.

Its a lot more clear to see why Baton Pass and OHKO moves are more fundamentally broken. OHKO moves sort of speak for themselves almost, while Baton Pass has had endless revisions yet has never been healthy for a meta. I strongly disagree with using the Sleep ban as a precedent for future decisions, and I feel like, if TB does get banned, this will also be used as a precedent for future discussions when tiering surveys have shown most people don't think Tera Blast to be an issue. I really don't understand the idea of banning something most of the playerbase doesn't find problematic that also cannot be proven to be broken.

I know in the initial post (which i do think was well written) Avira highlighted the same thing. But it does lead me to believe this about other bans generally considered "uncompetitive". Is there more of a barrier for something to be considered uncompetitive? I'd understand it if this was intrinsically tied to high player support, but as we're speaking now the phrase uncompetitive is just too nebulous of an area in my mind to be explicit tiering policy. Its something that sounds to me like it can neither be tracked (through community support) nor proven (in a way a broken thing can be proven with missing counters)

"I take issue with this being framed as "do we ban sleep?" by a lot of people here (including the post right below), because what we have in OU right now is not the actual effect of sleep. Sleep is very objectively broken in singles if you don't look at it through the lens of an extremely arbitrarily applied, and entirely impossible to replicate, clause. This is the status condition that let Vivillon, a low tier mon with our mod, become a household name in an Anything Goes format and force players to prep substantially for it. That should say enough. Even with the mod attempting to solve the issue, it's still only arguably balanced and almost certainly uncompetitive, so what's the point of keeping Sleep around and upholding this singular, unique blemish on our modern Standard ruleset if it literally isn't doing its job of balancing sleep? Especially if doing away with it allows us to free Darkrai, who players mostly seem to think is a good and balanced addition without it being able to flip a weighted coin to become broken."

Okay, I want to highlight something really important, which is that you're very correct that "uncompetitive" gets thrown around a lot in tiering discourse and rarely gets defined precisely, and so I agree with you that talking about a Tera Blast ban on the basis of being uncompetitive is operating on unprecedented ground, but that's because literally no SV OU bans have been made to this point on the basis of something being uncompetitive (putting aside certain universal bans like Evasion, OHKO moves and Moody, anyway, which I'm not sure about but also predate SV OU as a tier).

Sleep was not banned for being uncompetitive. Sleep was banned because without the Sleep Clause Mod, sleep is uncontroversially considered broken. Now, I'm not disagreeing that there was controversy over the sleep ban, because while the tiering action itself isn't the controversial part, you can argue about whether removing the mod was necessary, whether just banning the handful of abusers would have gotten rid of the issue in a neater way, whatever, I think the way things were handled was the right way and the mod shouldn't exist, but that's not the point of this post. I'll highlight xavgb's post in that policy thread but to be clear, sleep specifically became an issue because multiple mons were highlighted as doing broken things with it (Rai, Val, Lilligant, that stupid Red Card Amoonguss set). Sleep wasn't banned because of some official position that giving yourself a chance to roll for good outcomes or bad outcomes is uncompetitive or whatever, it got banned because multiple mons straight up didn't have reliable counterplay if you have to plan around the sleep move, and if sleep is going to continue to be an issue even in the presence of a game mod that exists specifically to nerf it, then it makes sense to take action on it. And again, you can disagree with that conclusion, you can argue that Hypnosis Val is a fake problem, but that's all tangential to the main point that that ban wasn't made on the basis of sleep being uncompetitive because in a game like Pokemon that's a real stretch to argue.

Anyway, I'm not really arguing with you here because you're not arguing that Tera Blast is banworthy. I'm just trying to point out that Ausma tried to argue that Tera Blast was broken (which I think most people are pretty skeptical of), while leng loi focused on it being unhealthy (which to me is too imprecise and subjective, too reliant on a gut feeling about certain metagame phenomena being undesirable). Neither of them tried to argue that Tera Blast is uncompetitive because that's the least plausible point to argue; Tera Blast doesn't take the game out of the players' hands any more than any lure set that you could possibly run. I'm open to somebody making an argument on the basis that it's unhealthy, that it exacerbates the threat saturation and potential over-importance of matchup in the builder, or that it's different than any other lure set you can run because it's just better, too good. All that is fine. Any controversy about banning Tera Blast versus the abusers is going to come up no matter what the reason is anyway. But I think it's worth at least reassuring your concerns about nebulous bans being made on the basis of uncompetitiveness because such bans, when they've occurred in Smogon tiering, are really rare and reserved for egregious cases. Sleep wasn't one of them, and I heavily doubt Tera Blast would be one of them either even if the consensus was there to ban it.

 

[Welcome to mars]

Wouldn't Knock Off Ogerpon cripple Duraludon's bulk, or is it bulky enough to not need Eviolite? I feel that Knock+U-Turn Ogerpon would beat it long term with hazards, but I suppose you could build around that. Body Press seems like an interesting idea, with that much defense. Did you run any calcs on it, or did other moves work better?

Body press is not boosted by eviolite, so it would not that much compared to dragon pulse which 3hkos wellspring or thunder wav which ruins it entirely. Pivot sets would also do too little damage to it to beat with u turn spam and hazards, especially if its teammates gets caught by a thunder wave whilst its switching out. I feel body press would only work when paired with iron defense here.

 

[DartTamarin519]

Body press is not boosted by eviolite, so it would not that much compared to dragon pulse which 3hkos wellspring or thunder wav which ruins it entirely. Pivot sets would also do too little damage to it to beat with u turn spam and hazards, especially if its teammates gets caught by a thunder wave whilst its switching out. I feel body press would only work when paired with iron defense here.

How come Body Press doesn't calculate Eviolite bulk? I've never heard of that. Huh.
It may be a calculator error, have you checked in game?

 

[EpicGuy321]

I'm bringing back AV Blaziken. I decided to forgo mixed and just go with 4 physical attacks. It's working awesome now, and it lets me actually invest in its bulk. Set is confidential for now. Hopefully I can make it to 1700s this time.

Also Ting-Lu is goated. Rocks + Spikes into Knock into Spinblock wins games. Luv it

 

[Komodo_Drogo]

Why are people arguing whether Tera blast is broken? Thats not the point of contention, its whether its a healthy element to the game. Its generally agreed its not broken. Y'all seem either genuinely confused about the terminology or conflating the two, I'm not sure. These terms have come into existence for a reason.

Edit: Yes, this does matter. Because it essentially seems like both sides are talking past each other and not really engaging in the discussion. You're just repeating the same points. Like bring in top tier games to break it down, why you believe its unhealthy, or healthy.

 

[Kibo]

Not gonna make a high effort post but gotta say I hope terablast goes, that thing is evil it self please let's ban it so I can't cry a little less everyday toxic ahhh move I can make low effort posts right?? Anyway I am in full support of a suspect and for it to go!!!

Btw, most of the sprites in the first post broke rip

 

[TurquoiseLink]

I'm not quite sold on this being good but I wanted to talk about a synergy I've been playing a lot of lately.

Maushold + Tinkaton.

Tinkaton is Stealth Rock, Thunder Wave, Encore, Gigaton Hammer with HP and speed ev's.

Pickpocket + Air Balloon steals every rocky helmet in the meta with ease. The main ones are Lando-T, Corviknight and Great Tusk.

Lando-T and Corviknight both can't touch Tinkaton and are a safe switch in while she has a balloon. 90% of the time she will steal their rocky helmet on the u-turn out. Great Tusk desperately wants to spin on the rocks she sets up, but has to pay with his helmet to do so.

The other big threat to Maushold is the popularity of Hex Dragapult these days. Tinkaton is great against these, Thunder Wave is crippling so Dragapult just doesn't have the time to set up status then start blasting. Tink doesn't really care about wisp, and thunder wave into encore can really mess them up.

Some lessons I've learned from the Maushold side of things too:

I liked thunder wave over encore on Maushold. You need your core of pop bomb, bite and tidy up, but encore leans too hard into Maushold as a momentum driven setup sweeper. Thunder Wave gives a way to make more reliable progress. It also lets you scout for rocky helmet without risking a faster threat coming in on the bite. They have to eat the para into pop bomb. Lastly, it lets you make progress on Corviknight which otherwise blanks Maushold.

For this same reason tera normal has been my favourite tera. Most of OU will sweep after one dragon dance, there's no reason to run garbage like Maushold if you're just trying to play it as another dragon dancer. Maushold's big strength comes from its wall breaking prowess and tera normal lets you click the funny move immediately.


This pairing has felt really solid. I haven't been able to get a rest of a team together that I'm happy with.

Corviknight has been the slow pivot to bring your breaker in. It also provides the hazard removal, and Maushold can tidy up once on Gholdengo in an emergency.

I've also been on Garganacl for a few reasons. Maushold loves the kind of chip damage it provides. It switches in on all the ghosts and steels really well, with tera water to help. It also switches in on non-energy ball Iron Moth which Tinkaton is terrified of. The main reason though is Garg obliterates the type of booster speed hyper offence that both Maushold and Tinkerton tend to blank against.

Love to hear anyone elses thoughts on it all.

 

[I'm Tapu Bulu]

I think Tera Blast should stay because I don't wanna see SV OU devolve into ZapKingLu balance hell. This vocal minority might be slowly getting its way and I'm a bit sad to hear that. As a low tier mainer i do not like where this is going.

Please leave Tera Blast alone. Tera Blast is too fundamentally tied to Tera as a whole, and since it's been established we aren't touching that mechanic in CG, banning Tera Blast sounds like a complex ban because it makes like 2 pokemon a bit more problematic. I hated DLC1 so much... and we have evolved with the new tools, to the point where current SV is my favourite generation to play.

To be fair, I understand why people want to ban Tera Blast as a result of it contributing to high variance among offensive Pokemon, but I'd rather play this over ZapKingLu.

I understand you want Volcarona back (hot take: it was never broken even with tera blast imo) but this is a very fundamental change that will surely affect the lower tiers in unforeseen ways, too. Collateral damage, so to speak. I don't agree with offense tools getting banned and I don't think a tera blast ban would help improve the metagame.