Announcement np: SV OU Suspect Process, Round 18 - Blast Off

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone, the OU tiering council has decided to test Tera Blast!

Tera Blast has been the elephant in the room of SV OU for some time now, occasionally sticking its trunk out for a policy discussion or two before retreating. After some elapsed time, a recent tiering thread aimed towards finding consensus had players coalescing around Tera Blast. While many Tera Blast users are balanced and we must accept this premise to proceed in good faith, Tera Blast has been the common thread in multiple Pokemon bans and is a key component of controversial Pokemon in current SV OU.

Banning moves, rather than Pokemon, does not tend to be Smogon's MO unless they prove to break an overwhelming portion of users. However, a universally distributed move like Tera Blast has muddied the waters. It is true that there are a myriad of healthy users of Tera Blast within the context of OU. For example, nobody is calling Iron Moth or Enamorus problematic. There are other users of the move that regularly surface in tiering discussions such as Dragonite, Kingambit, and Kyurem though. In addition, you can point towards Tera Blast when discussing the bans of Volcarona, Regieleki, and arguably other Ubers as well. Moreover, it became clear that Tera Blast afforded certain Pokemon a disruptive offensive option that made accounting for them in teambuilding a challenge. With this link and the recent uptick in community support kept in mind, the OU council unanimously supported shifting our focus to Tera Blast. A suspect felt like the most appropriate way to proceed from there.

Many people who are in favor of acting on Tera Blast will argue that the additional coverage warps defensive counterplay. You can find examples within historic OUs with Espathra using Tera Blast Fighting or a plethora of options on Volcarona, but the best use of this suspect would be to focus on current OU! Dragonite uses Tera Blast Fly to give it powerful Flying type STAB that it otherwise lacks; this allows for Dragonite to become more immediately threatening and limits the pool of would-be checks to other variants. Tera Blast Fairy Dragonite also must be respected in-game due to occasional use. Kingambit uses Tera Blast Fairy to flip the match-up against frequently encountered Zamazenta, Great Tusk, and others. You can continue going through examples like Dragon Dance Kyurem or Swords Dance Ceruledge, who have both surfaced in tiering discussions, in the current metagame as well. The common thread between them all would be that normal switch-ins suddenly get disposed of by a timely Tera Blast, allowing for a sweep or irreperable damage to the game's state in some cases.

On the contrary, some players will note that Tera Blast comes with a large opportunity cost, can be predicted in advance given the many common uses of it, and arguably does not break many Pokemon in the tier as things stand. It is true that Tera Blast does cost both your Terastallization for the battle and a valuable moveslot on an offensive centerpiece; in the event that it does not work out, this can prove costly. Tera Blast without commitment is essentially a dead moveslot after all. On top of this, the aforementioned users of Tera Blast like Dragonite and Kingambit have been staples in the metagame for over a year, allowing for players to do their best at accounting for them in the builder and grow familiar with their lines against them in the battle. Finally, no Pokemon have stood out as undoubtedly broken, with or without Tera Blast, in recent history. Dragonite could qualify for a suspect test and potentially get banned, but nothing else in the metagame registers as particularly close despite Kingambit, Kyurem, Ceruledge, and plenty of others using Tera Blast often and effectively. You can argue this alone is enough to take away from the case that Tera Blast is the element warranting a ban.

No matter which side you stand on, Tera Blast is at the center of many strategies in our metagame. It can help circumvent counterplay for already threatening Pokemon, but it does mandate sinking your resources into executing the strategy. Multiple past Pokemon have been banned largely due to abusing Tera Blast and some argue Dragonite or others could be broken now as a result of Tera Blast. However, a vast majority of Tera Blast users are seen as balanced in the landscape of SV OU. This suspect test allows our playerbase to determine the fate of Tera Blast as we move forward with an additional year of SV OU!

The instructions to participate in this test are as follows:

• Create a new account on PS. You do not have to follow any specific naming convention, but your suspect account must have never played a game in OU before this suspect test went up or you will not receive valid requirements (resetting W-L does not count for this -- the account you use must never have played OU before the test, full stop.)
• You can use /rank to check if your alt is allowed to get requirements. Whenever in doubt, type /rank and it will tell confirm if you are eligible or not
• At any point on your new account, use the command /linksmogon on Pokemon Showdown! You will receive instructions on what to do once you run this command
• Double check that you're listed as a voter here
• If you aren't listed as a voter despite having valid reqs, please contact Finchinator and Ruft
• If you have any questions about this new process, feel free to PM Finchinator and Ruft!
• The requirement to vote in this suspect retest is a ELO of 1750 and GXE of 80! This was done after discussion in this thread. The deadline for getting requirements will be April 24th at 11 PM GMT-4. Good luck to all!

• No unhelpful one liners nor uninformed posts;
• No discussion on other potential suspects -- if you wish to discuss another Pokemon, we encourage you to do so in the metagame discussion thread, but this thread is strictly to discuss if Tera Blast is banworthy or not;
• No discussion on the suspect process -- this includes testing Tera Blast vs other potential suspects;
• You are required to make respectful posts;
• You are required to read this thread before posting;
• Failure to follow these simple guidelines will result in your post being deleted and infracted without any prior warning;
• Please also take a moment to read over some suggestions from the OU Council and the OU Moderation team for posting in this thread; adhering these will help out our time moderating the thread and present your arguments better and more educated;
• Do not argue because it's your favorite Pokemon. This should be common sense, but please don't do this, because we will delete posts like this;
• You do not need a boatload of experience to have an informed opinion, but please try to minimize the theorymon aspect and use your experiences watching and playing. Playing some on the ladder before posting is plenty if you're concerned about this;
• Do not flame, belittle, or be disrespectful to users in this thread. While not everyone will read this post in its entirety nor will everyone have an informed opinion, please be sure not to be disrespectful. If there's an issue, bring it up to a moderator;
• Do not use the argument of broken checking broken. Should your argument rest on your opinion that banning the Pokemon or mechanic being tested in this suspect test will make a Pokemon or mechanic broken, overpowered, and/or uncompetitive; don't. If something needs to be banned because of the result this suspect, then so be it;
• This thread is not to voice complaints about the suspect process or decisions of the council. While we are more than open to hearing complaints that may arise, this isn't the place for it. I suggest you message our Tier Leaders, Finchinator and Ruft, or make a post in Senior Staff requests, should you have a badge.

Should you have any questions about the suspect test, feel free to message the OU Council. And if you have any questions about the moderation of this thread, feel free to message the OU Forum Leaders.

Keep in mind that our suspect tests are decided by the community; anyone who rightfully achieves voting requisites is allowed to vote. The outcome is up to you.

Check your reqs here!

 

[Finchinator]

Locking this for 24 hours so people can collect their thoughts. Enjoy laddering!

 

[Finchinator]

This thread is now open!

 

[Professor Suicune]

I never liked Tera Blast. I think the best part of Tera as a mechanic is flipping your typing to reverse the momentum of a battle and/or set up a sweep. That is very hype to me. But, I never thought every Pokemon should have access to infinite coverage. It doesn’t feel fair having to account for that many possible situations when facing one of the many deadly sweepers in the tier. Therefore I will vote Ban. Thank you.

 

[I'm Tapu Bulu]

Due to time constraints I will probably not participate in this suspect test, but I hope Tera Blast stays.

Notice how it very specifically tends to be Fairy Tera Blast that is the common denominator between stuff like Dragonite, Gambit and Roaring Moon while also showing up on other controversial mons. This highlights that Fairy+Dark and Fairy+Ground is extremely powerful. Banning Tera Blast would therefore be basically shooting the messenger imo because it's a very subset of setup mons that causes problems, namely the bulky mons (at least on one side) that can boost their attack and speed/use priority and use Fairy or Dark as one of their stab moves.

For the record, me personally am dnb on all three mons mentioned above, since I've always favoured more offensive metagames. However, a Tera Blast ban at this point in time does not seem like the right way to tier at the end of the generation. Therefore I'm endorsing a DNB

Side Note

Perhaps a little bit related to the above, I predict that Tera will at one point be fully banned once this gen is no longer CG, because Gen 9 will be seen as legacy and thus people would put it in a similar bag to SS. This topic has been, is, and will continue to be very controversial. But because it's been agreed tera is staying until the end of the gen, I think it should stay in full. Tera Blast feels like a bit of a complex ban, a half assed attempt at restricting this infamous offensive mechanics.

 

[serperiorr]

DNB

Firstly I'd like to state that I think both tera and terablast are 'broken' to some extent, but I urge people who agree with that take to differentiate between what you consider broken and what needs to be banned. For comparison I think rocks, pivoting moves, para to be 'broken' and yet it would be sacrilegious to suggest these banned. You could argue that the 3 examples I gave are problem solvers in the builder whilst tera/blast are the problem, but my point is that ultimately the addition of terablast allows for very creative teams that are importantly unique to this gen.

People on the ban side focus on how terablast makes you lose mons to random coverage but it's become the identity of gen 9 that you can't handle everything defensively consistently since day 1. Of course that's mostly from tera and definitely meta-warping but I just view it as gen 9 playing differently from typical gens. There's the added resource war of tera which can be planned around from preview ('how will I force tera', 'what are his best mons to tera') and it's a genuine skill in game and in the builder to avoid getting cheesed by tera/blast. Losing a mon isn't that bad because whilst you lost a mon, they lost tera. Terablast sweepers lose out since they go all in on that 1 sweeper which makes your gameplan less flexible/more telegraphed. In general, tera has changed gen 9 so it's very beneficial to run blanket defensive options (generic fat mons like ting-lu, phazing, twave) or use the plenty of options to outoffense, not saying to run offense (the teamstyle) but fatter teams should have ways to outspeed, neutralise threats and threaten to win before them. Fattier teams have dozo, bliss, etc.

For concrete examples, terablast dnite has extremely little defensive counterplay overtime vs offense, except when you consider your own tera (e.g. gambit, bolt) to survive and hit it hard, in any case you probably need healthy mons to beat this. It doesn't really OHKO neutral hits with terablast, maybe if you're running sharp beak flying (pixie plate fairy comes close) so defensively checking this as offense isn't hopeless. Taunt and encore are still ways to play around this (e.g. taunt woger after it's traded into something) and there's random stuff like healthy air balloon mons, twave, booster crown (underrated). Terablast lets dnite get around stuff like tusk but so does tera in general? That leads me to the next point that banning blast won't make dnite less broken, this thing will farm offense forever unless tera was gone. Remember it will still be able to run sub, lefties, encore, etc. and ruin your day. Next are terablast kyu, gambit, and moth. Kyu needed to go so I don't think this should be considered for a terablast ban, terablast gambit is not broken lol, same with moth. There are way more terablast users but they're all completely fine, the random ones that are kinda stupid (e.g. gmolt) fuck skilless screens let's just ban light clay. For the ubers mons, moon will still be broken, volc will still be broken (do you guys seriously want this back???????), we lose out on eleki a great spinner unfortunately.

Speaking of spinners this how I'd change gen 9: unban terapagos (not allowed to use god form), ban kyu, ban light clay
Keep tera/blast coz it's fun asf

 

[Thunder Pwoell]

made sure to get requirements before doing this.
I'm voting ban for sure.
The amount of nonsense one is able to do w/ tera is downright despicable, and tera blast is the icing on the cake. it almost unilaterally is slapped onto sweepers (or wannabe sweepers) adding into their momentum for things you cannot even account for. In some ways this is good, some mons now have viable sets which they would not have been useful before -- which I am for. However in this game, that is not what things tend to trend to. It's almost always makes strong mons, particular the most used sweepers even more powerful. Strong sweepers being even more broken due to infinite or random strong coverage is actually the basis for a most of the bans here, and even many people's arguments for keeping certain mons here since they check broken (broken checks broken). This type of thinking seems to be common, but is nonsense usually geared towards some unreasonable notion of "we have to use this gimmick." This is just not true. It's not made for our style of play and if you want to use them and your oko moves VGC is door #3 over there.

If anyone has any argument that is so staunchly pro-tera blast being kept, share it; I'd love to hear it. The obvious problem is tera itself, and htis is just nerfing it just a little bit.

 

[Chorley Cakes]

Do Not Ban

First time i've ever achieved voting requirements so please forgive me if my following reasonings and ramblings are not up to the calibre of the usual people who achieve them!

I can definitely see the contention behind Tera Blast but I personally didn't think Tera Blast was broken at the start of this process and I'm still of that opinion now. Most of the time it is a reasonably balanced tool to benefit more niche mons by filling in gaps in their move pools (Ice/Flying on Thundurus-T for example). There is only 1 Pokémon I view that is a toxic presence with access to Tera Blast and that was Dragonite, which I believe would still be borderline broken even without access to Tera Blast as I feel it's abuse of Tera overall is a far greater issue. It would be a crime for others to pay for the sins of Dragonite in particular and that is why I believe Tera Blast is a tool that should remain in OU and why I vote to not ban it.

 

[7ak]

This is the most abstract suspect test I've seen so far, so dumb it made me decide to engage in ladder once again somehow.

Almost every mon that uses Tera Blast in its set has little to no coverages, of course there are clear exceptions such as Dragonite or Kingambit but I just don't see the point in banning the move that saves other mons from falling off just because there are little counterplays to one of them. Seriously, why do we want to kill Iron Moth or Serperior? Those are not a harm for the tier at all, but since Dragonite thrives in part thanks to Tera Blast then banning it feels right. If you feel like a particular mon is strong due to the move, just suspect that one mon and not the move, because you don't need to be a genius to realize it can be really balanced when other Pokémon use it, since Tera Blast is quite predictable in situations where they need to use it plus you are forced to waste your Tera just to do so.

Most cases of overpowered Tera Blast users have a lot of viable sets that don't involve the move, such as the infinite Dragonite and many other Roaring Moon ones. That shows even more clearly how the real problem are the users and not the movement.

In many cases I've seen people complain about terastalization due to it being apparently broken, which I consider nonsense. Unlike the dynamax mechanic which could flip the result of any match with much more ease, this one just forces people to play better since it encourages trying to read the opp's plays and scouting possible trump cards they may have instead of going for the middle ground play every single time, and actually matters in the final result of a match much less often. Most of the people who want to ban terastalization don't even know why it should be banned, matter of fact, one of the most common replies to the Tera Ban in the National Dex tier at the time was "It feels impossible to build Balance teams with that crap being in the tier" which I find really funny since there used to be at least three Balance sample teams and when terastalization got banned all Balance teams were suddenly gone for several months.

All in all, there is no point on banning one move that enhances some mons more than the average instead of addressing the actual problems in the tier. I think that you all should focus more, for example, in the one meta defining threat that walls almost everything while setting up hazards and doing decent damage, because it is carrying me to get the reqs since it is always cheap to use (of course I'm talking about stupid ass Ting-Lu).

 

[Unknownhuman_evil]

Okay so, after doing some thinking I just don't think tera blast should be banned. Sure, abusers like Dragonite and Kyurem are pretty broken, but if there are pokemon that abuse tera blast too well, why don't we just ban those specific pokemon? We've already done so in the past so I don't see the issue of doing it again. And really just in general there are so many pokemon that use tera blast that aren't problematic at all (Iron Moth, Enamorus, Thundurus Therian, Galarian Moltres) just to name a few. Banning tera blast in its entirety is just ridiculous, unnecessary and would even kill some pokemon because of this. For this reason, I will vote DNB once I get the requirements.

 

[658Greninja]

I’m most likely gonna be too busy to get reqs. (School + YT stuff)

But I’m on the ban side for Tera Blast and it goes beyond the move simply being uncompetitive.

People can make the argument that the issue are the abusers, the main ones who stick out are Gambit, Dnite, and Kyu. However banning these three would not only take longer, but would lead to major drawbacks. Gambit keeps Pech/Ghold and other annoying mons/strats in check. Dnite is a blanket check for a whole slew of mons. Kyurem is less important but still serves a vital role in breaking offense + trading. Banning these keystone mons would only lead to more chaos which could be resolved with more suspect tests, but this late into the generation, we don’t have the time.

Consider that banning Tera Blast would be the best outcome to preserving important mons in the tier, reducing the MU fishy nature of SV OU, and led to a balanced metagame. Dragonite was never on players’ radars until Tblast sets started catching steam. Gambit would become far more managable if it didn’t have the option to nuke Zama and Tusk with Fairy Blast. DD Kyurem would also not be on people’s radars if it only had EP to hit Steels.

We can go deeper with Volcarona who was helpful for checking Gholdengo, Fairies, and Gambit. It would not have gotten the ban hammer if it didn’t have the option to hit Dragons or Fire types. The meta we’re in is more equipped to handle a non-Tblast Volc than back in early 2024.

Even Roaring Moon could be argued to be fine. There wasn’t a push to suspect test it until Tblast Fairy sets started gaining traction in SPL. Plus Roaring Moon would help alot with Ceruledge. I’m not saying Moon wouldn’t be broken without Tblast but Tblast is what pushed for action to be taken.

Would it be a huge nerf to mons like Moth, CB Pult, and Scarf Enam? Yes. Would we lose interesting niche Tblast options like Thundy-T and Kommo? Yes, but I would prioritize the health of the tier than worrying about gutting Frosmoth.

 

[arisu]

I rarely discuss competitive Pokemon with others and only occasionally watch tournaments, but I think I have played enough ladder games recently. I'm surprised to see so many people calling for a ban/test of Tera Blast, and some of them are top players I deeply respect. I have never felt Tera Blast is a problem, basically, I'm one of the players that Finch mentioned: "some players will note that Tera Blast comes with a large opportunity cost", so I wouldn't repeat what Finch said. I started playing SV OU after was banned, I can't participate in discussions about whether too many mons were banned because of Tera Blast, so there isn't much I can say. I'll focus on just two questions: Is Tera Blast used too much? Is Tera Blast too easy to win with?

In my opinion, the more common Tera Blast users are: () (physical dd) (has its Tera Blast usage dropped in recent months?) and . There is no question, Dragonite draws the most complaints among these. Kingambit is probably next, but I think people are used to dealing with it, even without Tera Blast, it's a threat you must account for when teambuilding. Most of the rest are predictable or acceptable, too. Some people mentioned Tera Blast Fairy and so on, GXE also used a Tera Blast Water in high ladder, but in last month's 1695 usage stats, 's Tera Blast usage was only 7.3%, 's was 6.5%, and 's Tera Blast appeared under "Other" with usage lower than Psyshock's 3.9%... Yeah, these sets make sense, but the usage simply isn't high enough. If a set were truly powerful and splashable, it would either see very high usage or have a very high win rate (more on that later), right? I played 44 games to get reqs, if I recall correctly, I encountered Tera Blast only once, in the final game, on a Tera Flying .

Of course, I can't just rely on my personal experience, that wouldn't be very persuasive. We can look at tournament data, games from SCL V, SPL XVII, and OST XXII (Round of 16 to semifinals, since the finals haven't finished yet (edit: the finals finished while I was writing this)). There are 374 games total, which should be enough (Thanks to Replay Scouter):
https://pastebin.com/8ewEScXM

+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| Rank | Move               | Use  | Usage % |  Win %  |
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| 24   | Tera Blast         |  135 |  18.05% |  46.67% |
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +

https://pastebin.com/sngMMjFZ

+ ---- + ------------------------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| Rank | Moves By Pokémon                     | Use  | Usage % |  Win %  |
+ ---- + ------------------------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| 51   | Dragonite: Tera Blast                |   51 |   6.82% |  52.94% |
| 173  | Kingambit: Tera Blast                |   19 |   2.54% |  57.89% |
| 227  | Kyurem: Tera Blast                   |   13 |   1.74% |  38.46% |
| 282  | Dragapult: Tera Blast                |   10 |   1.34% |  30.00% |
| 293  | Iron Valiant: Tera Blast             |    9 |   1.20% |  33.33% |
| 330  | Enamorus: Tera Blast                 |    7 |   0.94% |  42.86% |
| 439  | Moltres-Galar: Tera Blast            |    4 |   0.53% |  25.00% |
| 448  | Iron Crown: Tera Blast               |    4 |   0.53% |  50.00% |
| 586  | Excadrill: Tera Blast                |    2 |   0.27% |   0.00% |
| 612  | Darkrai: Tera Blast                  |    2 |   0.27% |  50.00% |
| 620  | Landorus-Therian: Tera Blast         |    2 |   0.27% |   0.00% |
| 625  | Raging Bolt: Tera Blast              |    2 |   0.27% |  50.00% |
| 626  | Iron Moth: Tera Blast                |    2 |   0.27% |  50.00% |
| 640  | Tornadus-Therian: Tera Blast         |    2 |   0.27% |  50.00% |
| 641  | Volcanion: Tera Blast                |    2 |   0.27% | 100.00% |
| 673  | Lilligant-Hisui: Tera Blast          |    1 |   0.13% | 100.00% |
| 688  | Hoopa-Unbound: Tera Blast            |    1 |   0.13% | 100.00% |
| 697  | Heatran: Tera Blast                  |    1 |   0.13% |   0.00% |
| 698  | Zapdos: Tera Blast                   |    1 |   0.13% | 100.00% |
| 714  | Blaziken: Tera Blast                 |    1 |   0.13% |   0.00% |
| 725  | Ceruledge: Tera Blast                |    1 |   0.13% |   0.00% |
| 845  | Gliscor: Tera Blast                  |    1 |   0.13% |   0.00% |
+ ---- + ------------------------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +

Only a handful of mons actually use Tera Blast frequently. Notable observations include 's 57.89% win rate with Tera Blast, 's Tera Blast usage being surprisingly high on the list. 's win rate is a bit higher, but its usage isn't that high overall, and there are other combinations with win rates around 57.89% or even higher. The win rates for other mons are clearly within acceptable ranges.

To sum up, I don't think Tera Blast's splashability, usage, or win rate in the current metagame are high enough that it should be banned. I don't believe it is significantly negatively affecting the tier, and people seem capable of handling this threat. The bigger issue likely is itself (I don't think should be banned tho). I find Tera Blast about as enjoyable as Terastallization itself, and I like seeing less common Tera Blast sets succeed. I will vote Do Not Ban on Tera Blast. Since I lack teambuilding experience, I’d love to hear more specific examples from those who feel the threat of Tera Blast is too restrictive in teambuilding. That would be very helpful for the discussion.

 

[toshimelonhead]

Leaning DNB.

Probably not getting reqs for this one and I appreciate at least some suspect on Tera. I've laid out my opinion on Tera as a whole elsewhere and won't repeat it. The only question that matters for this suspect is if removing Tera Blast alone is worth improving the tier regardless of any downstream options that would happen as a result of the ban. Tera Blast itself is not broken. The second order effects of what Tera Blast enables are what make it a problem and trickier to legislate. If Tera Blast on its own were just a souped up Hidden Power, this suspect test would be unnecessary. It's maybe the 5th or 6th most lethal component of Terastallization itself. Flipping types to ensure the sweep is the more frustrating part of the mechanic and Tera Blast is often the salt on the wound that enables this.

There is a legitimate tradeoff for Tera Blast users that don't have a legitimate coverage move alternative (Hisuian Lilligant, Serperior, Galarian Moltres) and those who use Tera Blast to expand their movepool beyond reason (Dragonite, Kyurem, Kingambit). It's not worth a complex ban a la Draft League with Tera Captains to pick and choose. An 80 BP Normal move isn't scaring anyone on its own, but that's like saying Baton Pass doesn't scare anyone if it's used without passing boosts. Tera Blast is a symptom and not the cause, but the cause isn't on the table now (or likely ever). I just don't see enough of the move itself to want to remove it.

As to address the teambuilding question from the prior post -- it's a patch not a load bearing object or restrictive at all. I don't know of any pokemon that builds their entire identity around abusing Tera Blast even with the pokemon I mentioned. Regieleki would be the closest if it were still in SV OU. Kingambit abuses Tera but does not need Tera Blast to do its dirty work.

 

[AquiIo]

Not seeing anywhere in this thread that the qualified discussion is linked, so I'll repost my thoughts here, but I would recommend anyone who's on the fence checking this out, especially when others more qualified than I start posting! I always find it useful to see the thoughts of people who are better at the game than I.

Just got reqs in a 38-3 run so I figured I’d share my thoughts. Tera Blast certainly deserves a ban in SVOU, though it’s certainly an atypical offender. There’s very little precedent to go off of banning universally distributed moves, save for say Hidden Power in a slough of draft formats, but I’m here to make the case that Tera Blast is broken in large part BECAUSE of its universal distribution.

The pokemon pushed over the edge by Tera Blast are rather immediately clear - Dragonite and Kingambit are the big two offenders, but even mons like Ceruledge and Enamorus are capable of using Tera Blast to easily blast through matchups they frankly should not be (see ima vs Silent Waltz in OST). Although this doesn’t tie into my reasoning for voting ban, I find it important contextually to note the history surrounding this move and past mons its been broken on - Regieleki, Volcarona, and Roaring Moon were all banned in large part to Tera Blast (and some have pointed to Espathra and Gouging Fire, both of which I find broken regardless, but I digress).

In the interest of a more complete argument, I’ll try to cover what the do not ban perspective would claim the relevant drawbacks of Tera Blast are. It’s an opportunity cost, a wasted moveslot in games where Tera is demanded by another relevant mon. It’s also usually not great into anything aside from a select clade of designated targets - you’d often be itching for other coverage, perhaps higher bp moves, even after exhausting at a time when it’s worth it. However, I see the “opportunity cost” as a heavily overemphasized element, as the Tera Blast users who use it best often Terastalize into excellent defensive typings that are also great at responding to emergency threats when other Teras would be potentially demanded - take Fairynite, Ghostnite and Kingambit for example. Additionally, in matchups where Tera Blast is less useful, this is often not even a downside - no Tera Blast targets likely means anything you would’ve liked to remove already isn’t posing a threat to you cleaning through an already good matchup regardless.

Some new developments I’ve seen pertaining to Tera Blast that are shaping my opinion are the sheer volume of threats using the move to breeze past checks they shouldn’t be able to, and much more significantly in my opinion, break open holes they shouldn’t be able to for their teammates to breeze through. Take Rillaboom, for example - using Tera Blast Fire, Electric, and even Fairy, it’s able to blow open threats (fat fliers and waters for the former two, Dnite and Zama for the latter) in a way that’s really hard to scout when considering the possibility of a very independently scoutable pool of Wood Hammer, Knock Off, and High Horsepower added to the picture.

My overall thoughts on Tera Blast and the things I’ve looked at to come to this conclusion are simply, what tera brings to the tier - very little other than “fun”, which is immensely subjective and inherently a poor impetus for any assessment, and “more building options”, which I view largely as a guise for enabling unhealthy structures. However, these small positives pale in comparison to the immense stress Tera Blast puts on the builder, the immense stress it puts on navigating gameplay in a reasonable manner, and the immense stress it pushes on healthy metagame components towards being broken.

 

[thebingoo335]

I don't think tera blast is really the problem. Only a couple pokemon make consistent use of it, Dragonite, Kingambit, Kyurem, and Enamorus, and they all have a ton of sets that don't use tera blast. I do understand the argument that tera blast makes already strong pokemon even stronger, one can only imagine the terror Dragonite would bring with a consistent phsyical flying move above 70 base power, and it's one I agree with.
Also I'm not that convinced that without tera blast mons like Volcarona or Regieleki would be perfectly healthy in ou if they didn't have it. Tera as a whole is the reason those mons were banned (correct me if I'm wrong on that).
Overall, I'm not too sure where I'll land when I get off this fence, but I'm leaning towards Do Not Ban.

 

[RoyalDispenser]

Also I'm not that convinced that without tera blast mons like Volcarona or Regieleki would be perfectly healthy in ou if they didn't have it. Tera as a whole is the reason those mons were banned (correct me if I'm wrong on that).

Regieleki would either be terrible for being so one dimensional (look at its movepool, it literally can't hit grounds without hyper beam lol.. it dont get psychic, shadow ball, literally nothing but electric and normal moves.) or debatably strong just as a fast rapid spinner that threatens gholdengo as a spin blocker, which sounds like a massive W considering how mandated HDB is with how much hazard stacking there is (glimmora and samurott being particular offenders of that). The other niche would be as a fast screens setter which you could say we don't need more of but frankly it wouldn't be too different from what we have now, discuss light clay later.

volcarona would be suspect worthy at best, A tier in OU as a solid check to kingambit/iron valiant etc at worse. Tera Ground and Tera Fairy specifically are what broke volcarona due to it blasting would be stone walls like dragapult, heatran, dragonite, etc. Without tera blast you're only concerned with bug/fire/grass/psychic coverage and a lot of the tier can stomache that compared to tera fairy hitting the fatter dragons and ground turning its most checkmate matchup heatran into setup fodder.

 

[ShinyLucarioXD]

Tera Blast occupies a uniquely complex spot in the metagame. At its best, it can be incredibly powerful—as seen with Pokémon like Dragonite, Kingambit, Enamorus, Dragapult, Iron Moth, and Ceruledge, among others. At the same time, there are plenty of Pokémon that can run Tera Blast without becoming overwhelming, and those cases are rarely considered broken.

The core issue, in my view, isn’t just raw power but the way Tera Blast enables coverage that wouldn’t otherwise exist. This creates additional guessing games and introduces a higher-variance environment, where outcomes can hinge on factors that are difficult for the opposing player to reasonably anticipate or control.

With regard to whether Tera Blast should be banned, the issue is far from clear-cut. Much of the concern arises from the interaction between Tera Blast and Terastallization, particularly in how certain Pokémon are able to exploit this combination, rather than from the move in isolation. You will never see a Non-Terastallized Pokémon go for Tera Blast, that just does not happen. Nevertheless, given that the current discussion is focused specifically on Tera Blast rather than Terastallization as a whole, the relevant consideration is whether its removal would result in a healthier OU metagame. In the current state of the metagame, I am inclined to conclude that the tier would overall benefit from the absence of Tera Blast should everything remain the way it is currently.

I most likely will vote BAN unless further information presents itself to warrant another decision.

 

[OatIsHere]

As of now i am heavily leaning on the BAN side of the arguement and I just wanted to share my opinions

Tera blast isn't some insane mechanic to the tier that ‘promotes creativity’, apart from the super niche teras the only tera blasts that you really see are tera flying on mons that want super strong flying stab like lando-t and more importantly dnite, tera fairy for mons that cant hit dark/fighting types like moltres-g and tera ground blast for mons that cant hit steels like kyurem or iron moth. You also see tera ice blast for mons that can’t hit lando/gliscor/tusk. Some other tera blasts are sometimes used like tera stellar on contrary mons or the occasional tera fire but you never see stuff like tera blast psychic or tera blast grass. Sure you see the occasional thing like idk tera water iron moth but most of the time it's just these 4 tera blasts (fairy, flying, ground, ice).This isnt (creative), this just results in mons that are intentionally limited from their lack of coverage to suddenly being crazy sweepers that can muscle past their intended checks which is just not very competitive and doesn't reward good teambuilding.

Tera blast also makes mons which should be accounted for in the builder to be sometimes unstoppable and 'broken'.This mainly revolves around the three main culprits, dragonite, kingambit and kyurem. Dragonite and sometimes kingambit use tera blast fairy to get past physical checks such as tusk & zama (this also goes with tera flying for dnite). This is also prevalent not just on the physical side but also on the special side with lots of mons such as moltres-g and raging bolt which oftentimes abuse tera blast fairy to get past ting-lu which should always be a super strong check to such special sweepers. Ddance kyurem is also a big culprit as it can literally tech on a tera type to beat every single one of its checks, it has tera fire for steel types, tera ground for pech, tera electric for corv etc. There should always be reliable counterplay into mons and not just pray that the sweeper is in fact this tera blast which can just sweep your entire team, sure you can add like 3 checks to every single dragonite tera or something crazy but that super restricts the process in the builder and it makes ladder infuriating sometimes.

Those are my thoughts, this isn't the best written but I hope i get my point across, but in summary tera blast doesnt promote creativity or fun, it just results in mons being over the top insane, a bunch of MU fish and hurts teambuilding and causes problems in the builder that shouldn’t be prevalent.

 

[Cape Canaveral]

Hello, guys.

I am partway through my reqs run mostly playing sample teams.

Part of me says that Tera Blast essentially represents everything there is to dislike about Tera, as it magnifies the extent to which Pokemon can reverse matchups and matchup fish. I also think it results in less creative sets because the ability to blow through checks offensively is just stronger.

Another part knows there are many ways Tera Blast can be dealt with that are on theme for SV OU. Counter-tera, out-offense, blanket checks, etc. Skillful players are naturally the most able to do this in builder and in battle. They are also the most able to incorporate Tera Blast into their builds, as it can be difficult to account for the polarity between having a stab blast and a useless move. It's also cool to see pokemon like Pult and Dnite get their stabs.

I think that the tier would probably reward better players more often if Tera Blast were not a factor? I don't think it's uncompetitive, just less competitive. Whether or not it is broken is not a question I feel equipped to answer.

Will stay posted in this thread. Not sure what should happen to Blast. Will maybe write more when I get reqs.

 

[N ™]

I've hated tera blast from the moment gen 9 dropped but in my opinion getting rid of it is not the move.

1. For a mon to abuse tera blast and be ban worthy it already has to be an egregious abuser of tera as a whole, we see this with roaring moon, gouging fire, arguably volcarona, we see it currently with dnite, and other mons that use tera blast effectively like kingambit, iron moth, or raging bolt also show this pattern. They're all going to have a billion different sets all with different defensive and offensive counterplay weather or not you remove half a set from them. There's only a couple edge cases like regieleki and espathra, but in general removing tera blast from a broken sweepers told doesn't make it any less of a menace, tera is still there to flip matchups and accounting for them in the team builder doesn't get any easier.

2. For you to have a tera blast mon on your team means to either commit to only be able to use tera on that mon or to have wasted a move slot, and this makes actively playing around it more about skill than it is about matchup, because one way ir the other it locks you out of very important options. The sweepers that make tera blast problematic usually can't get away with wasting a move slot like that which makes those tera blast sets very inflexible and it means that more often than not tera blast is just a gimmick that might cheese one or two opponents on ladder out of 10 and you would be better off using a different move that doesn't lock you into a set plan, and this is reflected in tera blast's overall low win rate. The mons that instead can get away with running tera blast without hogging tera are different in nature, these are your choice band pult or choice scarf enamorus and you'll be hard pressed to find good players arguing that those uses are uncompetitive. In these cases tera blast helps these mons git on more structures than they would otherwise and patch important offensive holes, and I think removing these uses would be a negative for the metagame.

I will be voting Do Not Ban.

 

[Ultraman1]

This is the 1st time I've ever joined a suspect test and also completed it so I am extremely thrilled, definitely choose DNB.

 

[Pkel SweeTforU]

Tera is the heart of gen9. I will tell a short story about myself and then reveal why I'm gonna vote the way I do. It's been a year and a half since I started playing SV and it was quite a big change for me, since the latest gen I played was gen4. Didn't take long for me to fall in love with the tier. I enjoy offensive metagames and SV was no exception. I heavily rely on predictions in my game play and after some time playing gen9 I realized why I clicked with it in such a short period. Tera adds another predict aspect to the gameplay. Trying to guess when and which mon is gonna tera was fascinating to me. Then, I understood tera blast. Tera blast meant that without hidden power I finally had a tool to hit complete counters. Made the game much more interesting and less 'stale'. In my eyes, that makes it healthy. So if I said at the beginning that tera is the heart of gen 9, then tera blast are the veins. And a heart is useless without it's veins.

I will obviously be voting Do Not Ban!

 

[Xeggutor]

...
The core issue, in my view, isn’t just raw power but the way Tera Blast enables coverage that wouldn’t otherwise exist. This creates additional guessing games and introduces a higher-variance environment, where outcomes can hinge on factors that are difficult for the opposing player to reasonably anticipate or control.
...

...
Tera blast isn't some insane mechanic to the tier that ‘promotes creativity’.
...
This isnt (creative), this just results in mons that are intentionally limited from their lack of coverage to suddenly being crazy sweepers that can muscle past their intended checks which is just not very competitive and doesn't reward good teambuilding.
...
Those are my thoughts, this isn't the best written but I hope i get my point across, but in summary tera blast doesnt promote creativity or fun, it just results in mons being over the top insane, a bunch of MU fish and hurts teambuilding and causes problems in the builder that shouldn’t be prevalent.

These are my favourite arguments for a Tera Blast ban.

Tera already adds unnecessary variance to the game, and Tera Blast basically takes that variance to the extreme, without adding "creativity".

The argument that is commonly thrown around is that a good player can effectively read what Tera typing the opponent has, and maybe if they carry Tera Blast, but that is nowhere near true. You can probably narrow down to 1 or 2 types, but the "correct" play into each of the types is often different. A good advise that many good players go by is to avoid making hard reads and go for middle ground plays if possible, but Tera Blast is an antithesis to that. With the threat of opposing Tera Blast, middle ground plays are narrower, some hard reads are forced, and hard reads are more impactful. This is imo not representative of a healthy metagame.

There is also the issue of creativity. Slapping Tera Blast to bait what is otherwise a check is decidedly not creative, nor does it have a great opportunity cost. Power Herb Fly Lando-T breaking Buzzwole for Garchomp in SS is a creative set with an actual opportunity cost. The Buzzwole player, on team preview, would know that in a Garchomp team, if there is a lure for it, it's probably going to be Lando, and a good player can play around that. Tera Blast Fairy Dragonite beating Great Tusk, on the other hand, is not. You are just adding a universally strong coverage option for a mon you are going to Tera 80% of the time anyway. If I’m running Tera Blast Dragonite/Kingambit/Kyurem whatever and I use up my Tera on something else it’s because I deem Teraing the other mon to be more game winning to begin with.

All in all, Tera Blast is banworthy not because it's broken (it's not), but because it's unhealthy, and being unhealthy is more than enough a reason to ban something.
The common anti ban argument of “If Dragonite is broken with TB then ban Dragonite” doesn’t apply here because while it’s true that it’s only broken on a handful of outliers, I’m arguing that TB is unhealthy independent of whether it’s broken.