I thank
Finchinator and everyone else who worked to make the latest OU tiering survey a possibility. As Tio Chico alluded to not that long ago, I'm writing a post on threat saturation in SV OU, and I will also ensure to highlight why acting on Tera Blast has the appeal it does to a minority of players (I was one of those players), but nonetheless, we should move on to more productive discussion since acting on Tera Blast will never gain traction.
I know that tiering administration has completely shot down an outright ban on Tera, and I may not like that, but I have accepted it to be the reality with it being ironclad that the Terastal mechanic will never be banned this generation or even post-Generation. Having said that, that doesn't mean I can't talk about Tera's effect on the meta. As everyone who has touched this meta knows, being able to permanently change your base typing is a huge departure from previous generations of mainline Pokemon games. While there is defensive merit to using the Terastal mechanic since you can stop a problematic sweeper or otherwise threatening mon from making significant progress against your team through your own use of the mechanic, the Terastal mechanic has more offensive applications by allowing offensive Pokemon to overcome their counterplay. Examples would be mainly set-up sweepers or mons with power boosts of some kind using Tera to change their typings to tank attacks from Pokemon that would otherwise check them, which while is using a defensive Tera is still an offensive use of Tera by allowing them to brute-force through their counterplay, Pokemon using offensive Tera Types to brute-force through opposing teams due to the power of 2x STAB attacks or newly gained 1.5 STAB attacks from moves they didn't previously have STAB on, and using Tera Blast so that many mons gain coverage they normally wouldn't.
On the surface, you may think this is a post whining about why offensive playstyles are stronger than defensive playstyles in SV OU, but it isn't. As anyone who has played previous generations of OU would know, offensive mons are much more likely to be banned than defensive mons, and the reason this has been the case is because top-tier offensive mons tend to have much stronger effects on a game-to-game basis than top defensive or support mons due to having more offensive attacks and also due to them being more likely to have boosting moves, which makes them more effective progress-makers since they handle more of the meta than defensive or support mons do. This why defensive or support mons, exceptions being mons such as Wobbuffet, Deoxys-Defense, and Mega Sableye, were only rarely banned in the past as offensive mons that can snowball with boosts or through sheer coverage had larger game-to-game effects than their defensive or support counterparts with defensive or support roles unless they possessed something ridiculous such as Shadow Tag, one of the most broken and uncompetitive Abilities to ever exist (Wobbuffet), ridiculous bulk and speed for a hazard setter as well as Taunt (Deoxys-Defense), or made setting hazards much more difficult with Magic Bounce while being obnoxious with the 12.5% chip from burns (Mega Sableye), although I still to this day don't believe it was Mega Sableye's fault that stall was ridiculous at some point but Dugtrio's 'cause of Arena Trap, which is Shadow Tag's little brother and is nearly as broken and uncompetitive. To throw a bone to people who hate fat mons and to not make it seem that I just have a hateboner for offensive mons, Pecharunt itself contributes to threat saturation despite having an overall stabilizing effect on SV OU due to how many Pokemon it blanket checks because it has such titanic physical bulk and is able to be a boosting threat itself that a lot of teams need to prep for it or risk losing given its strengths both as a defensive mon and an offensive threat.
This is why a mechanic that results in many top offensive Pokemon having many different Tera Types (5+ for Dragonite, Kyurem, Kingambit), not to mention sets with or without Tera Blast, increases the number of threats significantly as you not only have to account for them changing their base typing but also the power and breadth of their coverage options, sometimes to the point it feels like you're facing an entirely different mon, and it's not just those three mons that can do that but much of the rest of the format. Meanwhile, individual players only have one Tera Type for each of the 6 mons on their teams and have to account for a laundry list of Pokemon with multiple Tera Types, and while defensive Pokemon tend to have fewer Tera Types, you still have to account for them in the builder. So Gamefreak significantly increased the number of threats one has to prepare for while limiting the means for fighting back against Tera, such as by allowing for the use of 7 Pokemon on any given team instead of 6, which of course never happened. SV OU currently has 40 OU mons by usage, but in practice, 'cause of Tera, it feels like you're playing so many more than that due to the many different Tera Types top mons make use of necessitating to prep for each individual mon you may face in more than one way either through multiple mons or through your coverage moves, and when so many mons in the tier require multiple mons to check, it overall has.a constraining effect in the builder due to just how much prep one needs to do to build a consistent team. The volatility of SV OU is still high even after Roaring Moon's ban and further work needs to be done.
Tera Fairy Tera Blast Kingambit flips its counterplay against mons such as Zamazenta, Great Tusk, Iron Valiant, and mons with Fighting-type coverage all while improving its defensive profile in many ways while improving its match-up against a number of threats. Dragonite and Kyurem have so many sets, nearly all of which do work if you're supporting them right, many of which can completely dunk on mons that should otherwise check them. I'm not saying that high set variety in and of itself is a bad thing. Landorus-Therian in previous generations had a long list of viable sets, none of which strained the meta since all of them had good counterplay. But SV OU introduced many high-power Pokemon or mons very effective at making progress, such as the the best of the Paradox Pokemon, Kingambit, Ogerpon-Wellspring, Gholdengo, Ting-Lu, not to mention the introduction of previously Uber or dexited mons such as Zamazenta, Kyurem, Darkrai, and Gliscor, all of which are very good or high-tier progress-makers with or without Tera, while removing or nerfing heavily previous tier staples that served as good blanket checks to many mons such as Ferrothorn, Toxapex, Slowbro, and Buzzwole among others, and this is while buffing a previously good mon such as Dragonite to the very top of the meta, whereas a number of the defensive Pokemon this generation such as Dondozo, Clefable, and Corviknight have a pretty big issue, such as being reliant on Rest, relying on weather-dependent recovery move, or being Gholdengo's bitch and easy to counterpick in tours. This makes it much harder to account for the huge increase in number of threats as a result of the Terastal mechanic. Too many Pokemon this generation have have a large variety of unique sets that each require their own specific counter play, and these sets as a collective strain the metagame a lot, which is why so many players find SV OU to be a tough tier to build for or outright refuse to play SV, referring to it as a meme tier 'cause of how volatile it is.
Yes, scores for enjoyment and competitiveness increased for the latest OU tiering survey, but it's also the case that as player activity drops off as a generation ages, it's moreso the players who enjoy the meta who stick with it, so it should be a given that there's a bump in enjoyment and competitiveness, so I question how much of the recent survey score increase is the meta actually improving as opposed to people who don't enjoy the meta choosing to dip out. Screens HO becoming really good is a testament to how big of an issue threat saturation is in SV OU. Since there are so many threats to account for in SV OU, using Screens to both give yourself cover against your opponent's team and also amplify the threat level of all the mons on your teams is an effectively way of playing SV OU's ladder since it gives you more options to work with and more time for you to play the game you want by limiting your opponent's options while also not being the most interactive playstyle to play against, and the rise in Screens HO may in part be a reaction to the volatile nature of SV OU with players trying to find a consistent team archetype to use in addition to Ceruledge being an insane mon despite not being on every Screens HO team due to the role compression and power it provides.
As for Tera Blast, I get the appeal behind banning it. Back when Hidden Power was a playable move, it was held back by its low Base Power, and most mons didn't use more than two Hidden Power types, but Tera is 2x stronger if you commit to it given it's 80 Base Power + STAB when Terastalized, and both physical and special mons can use it, whereas Hidden Power was solely a special move, meaning Tera Blast overall has a much more swing-y effect due to how many boosting set-up sweepers there are in SV OU given you get a strong effectively 120 Base Power coverage move that can delete the counterplay to your sweeper if they don't have the right defensive Tera. This is before going into how a few mons have multiple Tera Blast sets, such as Dragonite, Kyurem, and Iron Moth, whereas many Pokemon at least have one usable Tera Blast set. For people who believe a meta with Tera has too much threats and even some who don't dislike Tera, they see Tera Blast as something that increases the volatility of SV OU, and given banning Tera Blast was deemed the only acceptable tiering action against Tera due to it not fundamentally altering how the mechanic is played, the appeal for those players is clear. However, every Policy Review thread on Tera Blast has basically flatlined in terms of demonstrating support for Tera Blast's ban, and tiering administration already deemed that Tera Blast doesn't meet the critera for a move ban in a Policy Review thread based on the current tiering framework, so I personally believe that keeping Tera Blast on future OU tiering surveys does a disservice to people who are unhappy with the meta since having Tera Blast on them decreases the survey score of every mon with a Tera Blast set, most notably Dragonite, which most likely had such a large score decrease since many people innately tie Dragonite being problematic to Tera Blast, which
Finchinator even said was the case when people included more thoughts in their survey responses for the October 2025 survey. Given support for acting on Tera Blast has been decreasing with each subsequent survey by the qualified demographic, it's clear Tera Blast will never have the support for a ban or even a suspect test, so I believe now is the time to stop beating a dead horse as including Tera Blast on OU Tiering Surveys will only serve as a poison pill to any further tiering action in SV OU.
The reason why enjoyment and competitive scores for SV OU are quite a ways lower than SS OU is 'cause of the volatility and swing-y nature of SV OU due to Tera and also 'cause of powercreep. This is why so many people want to ban at least one mon, yet there's no actual consensus on what to target 'cause one's opinion on what needs to go is dependent on their building patterns and style of play. To make building less of a chore and reduce the volatility of SV OU a ban on one or more of the mons that can swing matches easily the most should be the ideal tiering action(s). Moving forward I believe the best targets for tiering action are either the mons that snowball easily, stomping entire playstyles without changing their movesets or with a minimal change in moveset, or mons with so many sets that it's ridiculous to reasonably cover for most of them, and the ones I have in mind are Ceruledge, which is an extremely cheap mon when piloted right that shares much of the same traits other Gen 9 mons were banned for such as being able to boost its Speed and Attack and heal itself, only Bitter Blade heals Ceruledge while also having high Base Power off of a top attacking type, and Dragonite and Kyurem for how hard it is cover all of their sets (including Special sets for Kyurem), including Tera Blast sets for both, and the ridiculous number of Tera Types they have that can make facing them a crapshoot. These are the mons whose bans would do the most to alleviate threat saturation in my opinion and would have the most positive effect on the builder.
right now?
, mainly for it being a better spinblocker while still being a good 
check and being a CM wincon at the cost of matching up worse against some variants of 
, but is still that: a niche. I think that the best teams with 
this guy is neat. Sorry if this was nonsensical or ignorant just wanted