Finally, I want to make a separate post on this logic — we do not tier this way. The onus is always on the side opposite the status quo to prove their point. “Why is Tera Blast broken?” would be the probing question, not “What do we even gain by keeping Tera Blast?” and so on. [/spoiler]
But if something can be discussed as broken but be sidelined, then there is clearly a benefit to holding onto it and prioritizing elements besides it.
What makes tera blast a positive addition to the tier? Even outside of suspect context... does it improve pokemon, make teambuilding easier, or does it create of a web of possibilities difficult to account for in every matchup and obviously the strongest are going to cannibalize the weaker versions of the problem... we've already seen that with roaring moon then dragonite, and we may get to a point where nothing broken sticks out eventually but that does not answer the question if tera blast is healthy and definitely not broken. Hidden power doesn't compare mainly cause 1: the variance is halved by being a special move, 2: it was so weak it basically only was useful specifically for 4x weaknesses meaning a random 'hidden power flying' wasn't going to be egregious and half the time a 120BP stab not very effective would create better calcs.
Like I said, you could hash it out entirely with a single test, instead of digging a hole deeper if it happens to get banned, or creating weird biases off a survey where the community is not going to vote with the understanding of tiering policy but what most recently pisses them off. Dragonite is going to take more skew then tera blast yea... cause tera blast itself is being gatekept anyways and removing dragonite effectively nerfs the reasoning tera blast is so egregious to begin with, dragonite is a faster reaction cause again its been 4 years of the echo chamber. I'm sure if you put on the survey "you can keep dragonite+volc+eleki+roaringmoon+espathra or keep tera blast" you'd see a wildly different result from "vote 1-5 on dragonite, now vote 1-5 on tera blast".
How you define “health” or how I define “skill” or how the next person defines “reasonable” and so on are largely arbitrary, falling within the confines of individual opinion. This is why we work within more proven, defined terminology and we do not play the “but why not” game.
Yet this are terms directly sourced from the tiering framework. Its not arbitrary at all to identify unhealthy/uncompetitive elements and evaluate why they may be negatively impacting the game. That's the goal of a test to put that on trial but we've spent the past 4 years doing that in a general OU thread where mods can cut off the discussion cause 'its not relevant, come to DMs and convince one of us to make a PR thread'.
Tera blast has reasons its negatively impacting the game; too much variance on every pokemon in a way that it can flip games in ways they normally should not be allowed to accomplish (tera fairy volcarona, tera fire kingambit when at its prime), precedent that fine pokemon in ou would be far less egregious and either healthy, weak, or a lot more debatable to keep in the tier without the guaranteed coverage option and added frustration of guessing which type of tera blast it may wield,
Otherwise, we would litter the banlist with undesirable Pokemon. Toxapex and Clefable would’ve been banned from prior generations, the crusade against Booster Energy from earlier this generation may have come to fruition, and so on. It’s not a popularity contest or a “I dislike this so we can do without it” game so much as it’s an assessment of what is or isn’t banworthy.
Except you can make argument why those were healthy... ok pluck out pex and clefable; all hell breaks loose, stall and balance sucks over hyper offense. Energy booster might've been a discussion but players
know who and what can use energy booster. Would iron bundle/flutter mane/roaring moon be in the tier? Probably not they're just broken even without energy boost... roaring moon was fine with energy booster - until tera blast optimizations.
And as an aside, it’s not possible to argue Tera Blast as unhealthy without taking major characteristics of its most prominent abusers into account. Tera Blast is not unhealthy on Enamorus, Iron Moth, Serperior, Zapdos, etc. — the vast majority of users are well within acceptable confines.
Baton pass isn't unhealthy on ariados, swagger isn't unhealthy on furret, but we know those moves on optimized pokemon for them are cancerous and removed them. You're trying to see tera blast as arena trap/shadow tag/moody and that's just not the case, its going to be power neutral on weak mons yeah... tera serperior isn't going to go nuts when tera dragonite sits infront of it and tera serperior has to leaf storm for 3 turns, iron moth is well above its real tier without it and has teetered being a top ou threat and falling UU depending on how the current environment looks. This does not make serperior any less frustrating, this just makes it not the spotlight of the problem.
You can't tunnel vision on it being specifically 1 mon at a time or "it has to break magikarp too", it is an unhealthy element and deserves the test.
A Tera Blast suspect is not currently on the table per the PR thread above
The SV OU tiering council recently discussed Tera Blast's place in our flagship metagame. While we are not close to a suspect, three members of the council --
leng loi,
ausma, and
TPP -- are in favor of tiering action while some others wish to see how the informed community feels. This post will outline Tera Blast's history in tiering discussions, place in the metagame, and potential for future tiering action. The hope of this thread is for active SV OU players to comment their thoughts on the move in the metagame.
Please note that this does not mean other potential...
Why. Which post suggest its not on the table. This is at worse a 50-50 on whether its worth testing and half the anti-test is split between "it may not be legal to test" and arguments why it should stay (which is usually "its uncompetitive but skillful at the same time"). The closing post by you even said the door isn't shut... so why does it feel shut?
