Apologies for not posting here thusfar. I feel like I should have given I'm one of the councilmembers who supported this motion. My thought process is mostly that Tera Blast doesn't contribute anything good to the metagame and is in some cases very bad for a competitive format.
That being said, I think after gauging public opinion on this, it seems unlikely that tiering action will happen on TBlast. That's fine by me, as I was fairly middle of the road on it. I will play and enjoy SV OU with or without the presence of uncompetitive elements.
I will, for the sake of transparency, write out some thoughts on the move:
We have very well established tera dynamics in most matchups. Offense seeks to force tera from less aggressive teams, often by using their own offensive tera or flipping a matchup with a defensive tera to remove a check, whereas reactive teams like balance (with some exceptions like Garganacl) seek to tera late once they have fewer things to deal with and overwhelm offensive cores are taken care of. Tera blast sweepers ignore this dynamic (tera blast breakers are more or less the same dynamic, but tend to rely more on "surprise"). Offenses that use things like DD Tera Blast Kyurem and Dragonite can't rely on tera breakers to power through their checks, so they're often restricted in the builder. I've tried articulating why this is weird and quasi-uncompetitive a few times but I end up stumbling over my words. Basically, it throws a wrench in things. It's kind of like fighting a southpaw in a combat sport. Throws off the rhythm of a game in a way that you can't necessarily anticipate. I think this is why the "unpredictability" of tblast is actually an issue. Differentiating which tera dnite is between flying/fairy/ghost isn't always that hard, or even consequential (if you lose to one you often lose to the others in a given gamestate). It's a matter of having to change up how you play your tera. It forces even offenses and bulky offenses to save that defensive tera far longer than they otherwise would in the matchup, which puts strain on a game, even if there isn't actually a terablast dnite in the back and it's instead another set.
Idk, just some musings on why the move is frustrating.
tl;dr I think people are identifying the wrong aspect of unpredictability with terablast sweepers like dnite. The existence of the move leads to guesswork in long-term gameplanning, especially in offense vs offense matchups.
As for whether or not it should be allowed to be suspected, I think it should be treated more as a mechanic than a move and I agree with most of ausma's points on its suspectability, though I think we shouldn't have to apply such strict requirements to do so. However, I don't think that's the most relevant at this point as it seems unlikely that the community wants a test.
That being said, I think after gauging public opinion on this, it seems unlikely that tiering action will happen on TBlast. That's fine by me, as I was fairly middle of the road on it. I will play and enjoy SV OU with or without the presence of uncompetitive elements.
I will, for the sake of transparency, write out some thoughts on the move:
We have very well established tera dynamics in most matchups. Offense seeks to force tera from less aggressive teams, often by using their own offensive tera or flipping a matchup with a defensive tera to remove a check, whereas reactive teams like balance (with some exceptions like Garganacl) seek to tera late once they have fewer things to deal with and overwhelm offensive cores are taken care of. Tera blast sweepers ignore this dynamic (tera blast breakers are more or less the same dynamic, but tend to rely more on "surprise"). Offenses that use things like DD Tera Blast Kyurem and Dragonite can't rely on tera breakers to power through their checks, so they're often restricted in the builder. I've tried articulating why this is weird and quasi-uncompetitive a few times but I end up stumbling over my words. Basically, it throws a wrench in things. It's kind of like fighting a southpaw in a combat sport. Throws off the rhythm of a game in a way that you can't necessarily anticipate. I think this is why the "unpredictability" of tblast is actually an issue. Differentiating which tera dnite is between flying/fairy/ghost isn't always that hard, or even consequential (if you lose to one you often lose to the others in a given gamestate). It's a matter of having to change up how you play your tera. It forces even offenses and bulky offenses to save that defensive tera far longer than they otherwise would in the matchup, which puts strain on a game, even if there isn't actually a terablast dnite in the back and it's instead another set.
Idk, just some musings on why the move is frustrating.
tl;dr I think people are identifying the wrong aspect of unpredictability with terablast sweepers like dnite. The existence of the move leads to guesswork in long-term gameplanning, especially in offense vs offense matchups.
As for whether or not it should be allowed to be suspected, I think it should be treated more as a mechanic than a move and I agree with most of ausma's points on its suspectability, though I think we shouldn't have to apply such strict requirements to do so. However, I don't think that's the most relevant at this point as it seems unlikely that the community wants a test.
