140 BP is the adaptability boost from tera dark, 177 base attack is the sword of ruin boost, it IS both at the same time
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np: SV OU Suspect Process, Round 1 - Oops!...I Did It Again
- Thread starter Finchinator
- Start date
- Status
Pro Tera arguments have been "adhere to what has been 6v6 policy for a decade." Was anyone desperate for a Protean ban instead of a Greninja ban? How about a Last Regards ban instead of a Houndstone ban?
How come banning 6 pokemon due to Tera is an unnaceptable overreach when there are far more than 6 in Limbo? We also have hundreds of pokemon ready to fill up a niche, banning a top OU sweeper will not leave anyone lacking defensive or offensive options.
As for the argument that the next best will fill the tier, why not try to Tera normal another extreme speed user? I'm sure Arcanine can't fill in these shoes.
Protean didn’t get banned because of keckleon, which was perfectly fine and would have its performance in lower tiers crippled, and cinderace was the only abuser of it last gen.
Houndstone is a shit argument because we DID want a last respects ban, but because of process, were unable to prove that houndstone wasn’t making it broken.
If you learnt how bans and Smogon process actually worked before making this post I wouldn’t be saying this, but not only does this just come off as salty, but also pretty dumb.
Because it’s more than 6 that are broken, and the mons that can potentially replace afformantionned defensive niche probably suck, like defensive dnite vs defensive salamence.
And again, a new wave of overly potent Tera abusers will be found and banned, which will lead to a slower paced metagame as the best abusers of Tera are defensive mons, these bans will be like snorlax in gen 2, and won’t stop the mechanic from being overbearing.
Ignoring that this contradicts your earlier statement, I would like to remind you that some people used lucario on ladder early on for an ekiller set.
If tera dark (which is what i said in the original post), sucker punch is a 140 bp cause of 2x stab (70 bp + 2x stab - normally it's a 105 bp, without tera dark). The base attack stat (176 to be exact) stems from factoring in the ability sword of ruin [it's 372 attack (with 252 evs to its, in name only, 120 base attack stat + adamant nature) * 4/3= 496. It's the exact same process people followed to calculate chi yu's base spa, which comes in at 197. The only difference in the calculation process between the 2 is that in chien pao's case, u go with a +attack nature cause it can afford to thanks to priority, whereas chi yu always runs timid, even on scarf sets]. So, if tera dark, it's both 176 base attack (that means a 744 attack stat with a choice band) AND 140 priority move at the same time. To visualise what that means for opposing offensive pokemon, consider the following: 252+ Atk Choice Band Tera Dark Chien-Pao Sucker Punch vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Baxcalibur: 340-400 (91.6 - 107.8%) -- 50% chance to OHKO (the calculation is with a 176 base attack to simulate sword of ruin). Baxcalibur, one of the bulkiest offensive mons, has a legit chance to get ohko'd from full, not even considering rocks or spikes. Imagine what that means for other offensive mons with less bulk than it. That's why i said lockdown of the offense if played correctly, especiallly late game where most mons have been cheaped. And, to top it off, anything slower than 369 (chien pao's speed with a neutral nature) must deal with a 160 bp crunch (80 bp + 2x stab. And that doesn't take into account potential defence stat drops from crunch) AND 120 bp ice spinner (or 127,5 bp icicle crash, which,btw, has a 30% flinch rate), not to mention dark and ice have very few, if any, monz that can resist both (azumarill on top of my head). And finally it also has another priority move, albeit weaker (ice shard, 60 bp factoring stab), which is especially relevant versus some of the best offensive mons in the tier (dragons) and sacred sword (which, as mentioned before, ignores opponent's stat stage changes, such as garganacl at +2 with an iron defence). So, if played correctly (which means,among other things, clear the field of hazards), tera dark choice band adamant chien pao both locks down offense and is a nuke against defense (or to be more precise, to anything slower than 369 speed). And fyi, it doesn't need to sweep, just to either break a hole in ur team or revenge kill some of ur offensive threats (or both). That's all it is, but it for sure ain't deoxys attack
(although not far behind)
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Hmm I disagree and I think some people had good reasons as to why it was banned.
Ah, thank you.
Banning Dynamax did not set off any bad precedents or negative ripple effects in our tiering; in fact, it was clean and pretty clear cut. I find some of the other things you deem analogous to be false equivalencies due to outstanding circumstances — if you want, I can break them down 1 by 1, but this suspect thread does not feel like a place for that as we are getting further from the topic.
There's a big difference between items and terastallization - items don't allow you to become a different type, for one. Second, items can be knocked off, among other things. Third, some items actually have negative effects.
Honestly, revealing tera types is nothing but a band-aid solution imho - you alleviate the guessing games as to what tera types your opponent's mons are, but the part where you don't know when they'll terastallize remains untouched.
Espathra is hardly the only abuser of tera that becomes problematic. On a general scale, any mon X that is checked by Y because Y can hit X super effectively can just blank their check and turn them into setup fodder instead because terastallization exists. That's disgusting, and is, in my book, a good case for tera to gtfo.
I strongly disagree - there were good reasons why Dynamax had to go. Like the ones you yourself stated, for example.
Something else worth mentioning with the items debate is opportunity cost:
You lose out on the immediate power that a choice band provides you if you decide to use a hdb scizor instead, for example, however if you choose choice band, you get worn down by hazards and can’t run swords dance anymore.
And especially with more niche items like yache berry and (debatably) AV, yache berry chomp loses out on recovery and runs the risk of being ohko’d through it, something actually plausible now which wasn’t back in gen 4 upon its introduction, and AV gives you better special bulk for pivoting, but doesn’t provide a hazard immunity and has a direct downside which prevents all forms of reliable recovery (which chomp lacks regardless), which makes you wonder why the fuck wouldn’t you just use leftovers on chomp instead.
I just wanna note your argument includes “broken with tera” and “broken in general”, but misses the super important “broken because of Shed Tail allowing free settup”. Imo removing shed tail would also curb espathra as much as removing tera, tho on a different axis (it becomes weak to status moves instead of to defensive dark types)
I've already made my stance on Tera known so I don't wanna rehash anything and this post isn't an attempt to say it should stay or go. Instead, I'd like to talk about the idea of 1 Tera user per team (also known as a "Tera captain") and why I think it's the worst of the options that are being seriously considered right now.
First off, we have the elephant in the room: it is the most arbitrary by a landslide. Whether or not you care about this is up to you to decide, but all the other options (full ban, no ban, team preview) have at least some official or unofficial backing behind them. This is a much further break away from how the game should work in an attempt to make it "just like Megas or Z-Moves" - which is silly, mind you, because a) it isn't like those mechanics to begin with, and b) you could use two Megas or two Z-Moves on a team if you wanted, you just couldn't use both in the same match... the exact same way Tera works right now. This even happened with Z-Moves on multiple successful teams!
Secondly, it would not solve the current issue most Tera ban voters seem to have, which is the highly offensive and unpredictable nature of the metagame. A lot of what keeps offensive Tera balanced is defensive use of Tera, and by enforcing a Tera captain, you effectively remove the idea of defensive Tera from the metagame. Save for perhaps stall teams, realistically players are just going to use offensive Tera users if they are forced to only use one in the builder, further pushing the metagame into an offensive direction and making it even more difficult to handle Pokemon like DD Roaring Moon as options like Tera Fairy Skeledirge or Garganacl are all but removed from the metagame.
Some other arguments I've seen from those who argue in favour of a ban are that the issue with Tera is that the timing of it is what makes it impossible to fully handle - if you believe this to be true, then I think you would agree already that 1 user per team does not help to solve this issue. I've also read that it's the unpredictability of options that makes Tera too much, and I don't really buy that this solution would help that either; yes, now I know that Annihilape is going to be the one to Tera, but I still don't know if it's going to be Water, Steel, Fairy, Flying... it'd get stale fast.
Others have also commented on preserving the spirit/intention of the mechanic; I don't really want to talk about those because they're more nebulous concepts and I prefer to think about this kind of thing in a more grounded way. This isn't to say those arguments are invalid, though; wanting to play the game the way it's given to you is completely fair, and while bans, restrictions and clauses of some kind are certainly necessary for a truly competitive metagame (even the official formats do this!), it is definitely valid to say that we should be more conservative with them.
Anyway! What this will eventually lead to is players being upset that the metagame is too offensive (and they'd likely be right) because this change further pushes offensive options while removing defensive ones almost entirely. This would very likely result in a full ban of the mechanic later on as we claim to have "fully explored our options" - I do not believe this would be true whatsoever, since it's effectively just shoehorning in an arbitrary restriction in the hopes of fully banning it later on. Fully exploring would be iterating through options like Team Preview or whatever first.
Mainly because of reason #1, I think only three options should be fully entertained: an outright ban, no action, and showing Tera types on Team Preview. All of these have official backing or precedent in our rulesets and aren't arbitrary restrictions that take away options from players in a confusing and unsatisfactory manner. I hope reading this sways anyone in favour of Tera captains to reconsider; it's a very undesirable change to have in the ruleset imo, and even as an avid Tera fan, I'd rather nuking it outright if it came down to that or Tera captains.
Thanks for reading.
First off, we have the elephant in the room: it is the most arbitrary by a landslide. Whether or not you care about this is up to you to decide, but all the other options (full ban, no ban, team preview) have at least some official or unofficial backing behind them. This is a much further break away from how the game should work in an attempt to make it "just like Megas or Z-Moves" - which is silly, mind you, because a) it isn't like those mechanics to begin with, and b) you could use two Megas or two Z-Moves on a team if you wanted, you just couldn't use both in the same match... the exact same way Tera works right now. This even happened with Z-Moves on multiple successful teams!
Secondly, it would not solve the current issue most Tera ban voters seem to have, which is the highly offensive and unpredictable nature of the metagame. A lot of what keeps offensive Tera balanced is defensive use of Tera, and by enforcing a Tera captain, you effectively remove the idea of defensive Tera from the metagame. Save for perhaps stall teams, realistically players are just going to use offensive Tera users if they are forced to only use one in the builder, further pushing the metagame into an offensive direction and making it even more difficult to handle Pokemon like DD Roaring Moon as options like Tera Fairy Skeledirge or Garganacl are all but removed from the metagame.
Some other arguments I've seen from those who argue in favour of a ban are that the issue with Tera is that the timing of it is what makes it impossible to fully handle - if you believe this to be true, then I think you would agree already that 1 user per team does not help to solve this issue. I've also read that it's the unpredictability of options that makes Tera too much, and I don't really buy that this solution would help that either; yes, now I know that Annihilape is going to be the one to Tera, but I still don't know if it's going to be Water, Steel, Fairy, Flying... it'd get stale fast.
Others have also commented on preserving the spirit/intention of the mechanic; I don't really want to talk about those because they're more nebulous concepts and I prefer to think about this kind of thing in a more grounded way. This isn't to say those arguments are invalid, though; wanting to play the game the way it's given to you is completely fair, and while bans, restrictions and clauses of some kind are certainly necessary for a truly competitive metagame (even the official formats do this!), it is definitely valid to say that we should be more conservative with them.
Anyway! What this will eventually lead to is players being upset that the metagame is too offensive (and they'd likely be right) because this change further pushes offensive options while removing defensive ones almost entirely. This would very likely result in a full ban of the mechanic later on as we claim to have "fully explored our options" - I do not believe this would be true whatsoever, since it's effectively just shoehorning in an arbitrary restriction in the hopes of fully banning it later on. Fully exploring would be iterating through options like Team Preview or whatever first.
Mainly because of reason #1, I think only three options should be fully entertained: an outright ban, no action, and showing Tera types on Team Preview. All of these have official backing or precedent in our rulesets and aren't arbitrary restrictions that take away options from players in a confusing and unsatisfactory manner. I hope reading this sways anyone in favour of Tera captains to reconsider; it's a very undesirable change to have in the ruleset imo, and even as an avid Tera fan, I'd rather nuking it outright if it came down to that or Tera captains.
Thanks for reading.
I just want to add that, in addition to all of this, the way the restriction is worded (I.e. only the first Pokémon on your team can tera) will create a pretty terrible matchup based meta that I don’t think is ideal at all. The problem with only the first Pokémon on your team being able to tera is that you are almost essentially matchup fishing every single game - for example if you want to use Hatt as your water tera user, you will have some games where it just goes crazy because your opps only Hatt answer is steels with no cat. On the other hand, you can have games where Hatt has no business changing its type and your entire team is wrecked by Tera Flying Moon or something and you have no emergency defensive tera to fall back on. Now your chosen tera mon is useless for this game. The only way to make sure it’s never really useless is to always use something purely offensive like tera dark Chien Pao but then you get into what Lily is saying about a super dumb offensive heavy meta.
The person with the favorable tera matchup to start the game is always going to have an immensely huge advantage every single time and I don’t think this is what we should be trying to do. This is much more significant than any previous matchup issues and while you can certainly overcome a bad tera matchup, it’s not an attractive option to be in that position half the time, every time you play. It’s possible that a different restriction where you’re not locked into the first Pokémon as your tera user could work but that’s not how it’s currently laid out - in its current state it’s predetermined before you open a fight which mon will tera and the matchup implications of this will create an awful matchup based meta that we will have to deal with for a few months before everyone gets agitated and wants to axe the mechanic entirely afterwards.
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I won't enter into policy anymore since its not the place for it, but no doubt Tera possibly being axed in 2 months just like a mechanic that was 5 times more broken is a ripple effect.
People in general are under a fallacy that the gold standard of skill and competitiveness is non Tera gameplay. You "beat" your opponent, but he kept a Tera to stop you from winning. Somehow "skill" is the reason why you beat him, but skill is not the reason he kept a Tera to turn the tide.
If your BP Scizor "had the game won" before Chien Pao went Tera Dark then you never had the game won in the first place.
As far as i know, im allowed to think Dynamax was the dumbest mechanic ever put in the game, and also think that banning it may have been a long term mistake.
I won't enter into policy anymore since its not the place for it, but no doubt Tera possibly being axed in 2 months just like a mechanic that was 5 times more broken is a ripple effect.
People in general are under a fallacy that the gold standard of skill and competitiveness is non Tera gameplay. You "beat" your opponent, but he kept a Tera to stop you from winning. Somehow "skill" is the reason why you beat him, but skill is not the reason he kept a Tera to turn the tide.
If your BP Scizor "had the game won" before Chien Pao went Tera Dark then you never had the game won in the first place.
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I would be personally surprised if the result of this test was an outright ban.
I think that you are grasping at straws here and the useful life of this interaction is probably over.
I would be too, but the road for that possibility has certainly been paved.
I'm just late to the party, as this has probably been covered in Policy Review and between the council before this suspect even began. I just wanted to gather my thughts and post them this time. Thank you for reading and replying either way.
I think regardless of what happens. An outright ban would be probably be the worst decision. I can understand where pro-ban players come from. Where some games it feels like even you are the better "player". Your opponent using terra can negate everything. However, I still feel some people are going to have to accept that this game isn't 100% skills. There's going have to be some randomness and chance apart of the game. Is it fair that you can simply lose a game just because you can't break through mon you didn't predict would terra. Hell no. Or you get swept like four turns in. No. However what the alternative? You remove mechanic that just been introduce into the game. And several mons with the option to terra who aren't close to broken. Lose the option to. Restrictions or reveal makes the most sense. I end it on this. I don't think tournament players opinions are any more valuable than someone who plays the standard ladder. I'm aware if you build a certain team and make it far. And you lose just because your opponent pulls out an uno reverse card it's going to feel terrible. But there's a reason why not every move is not 100% accurate. There going to be some chance. You have to accept that
the road may be paved, but it doesnt mean people will walk on it
just saying
Anyone who meets the suspect reqs gets an equal vote. Being a tournament player doesn't grant you anything here, Also it's very accessible for anyone to sign up for a tournament.
I think you don't understand what I'm saying. I'm just because terra can greatly effect the outcome of tournaments we shouldn't just look at it through that light.
The game has always had matches that ended because of a lucky burn, para, or confuse. The random effects of some moves makes some RNG a constant and this talk of Tera being so 'random' (I personally think it's telegraphed fairly often), forget the effect gen 5 scald had. Scald alone elevated a lot of pokemon just over a 30% burn chance. Tera is only 'random' because you don't know when they are going to tera, but it balances because your opponent doesn't know when you will tera either.
I think some people don't like tera because yeah, it is strong. That's the point. Not everything has been explored yet in the meta though, and every day new ideas are being tested and the meta is still very fluid. Also new mons are slowly being introduced into the meta (Looking at you Cinderace) which should help the meta and tera feel more stable as the meta progresses. I've noticed most Meta games tend to start very fast paced and offensive, then slow down a bit.
Hopefully people realize how much RNG and randomness is involved in every game, and tera isn't as insane as some seem to think. I doubt it will be banned, and hopefully we can find a good mid ground.
Even worse than banning non-STAB tera? Because I'd think that would be even worse than just gutting it altogether, as tera pretty much has its defensive use killed and thus only becomes used as an offensive tool unless you're a dual-type, in whose hands it can still cause some nasty guessing games. Then people start complaning about the metagame becoming too offensive.
I managed to get reqs. Used a hatterene gholdengo balance team.
I’ve made it clear before that I don’t believe that Tera is banworthy and I’ll be voting that way. It feels practically no different than playing in other generations once you are used to it to be honest. I know what to expect out of each mon and their expected tera type just feels like part of their kit at this point. If I’m preparing for dragonite in the teambuilder, I’m clearly preparing a check that can handle it if it goes normal type.
My favorite part of tera is the way it makes teambuilding feel so much stronger. Being able to recognize a weakness against a certain mon and then add a fringe tera type to your team to cover it feels amazing. I had a water tera gholdengo so that I had some sort of gameplan against BD azumarill lol.
I’ll be voting no action. For the ranked choice portion I’ll be voting the following:
1. Team Preview
2. One per team
3. Only STAB
4. Full ban
I’ve made it clear before that I don’t believe that Tera is banworthy and I’ll be voting that way. It feels practically no different than playing in other generations once you are used to it to be honest. I know what to expect out of each mon and their expected tera type just feels like part of their kit at this point. If I’m preparing for dragonite in the teambuilder, I’m clearly preparing a check that can handle it if it goes normal type.
My favorite part of tera is the way it makes teambuilding feel so much stronger. Being able to recognize a weakness against a certain mon and then add a fringe tera type to your team to cover it feels amazing. I had a water tera gholdengo so that I had some sort of gameplan against BD azumarill lol.
I’ll be voting no action. For the ranked choice portion I’ll be voting the following:
1. Team Preview
2. One per team
3. Only STAB
4. Full ban
So I've finally got an account that's on track for reqs. I'm like 10 (if I'm really lucky) to 30 (more realistically) games away. I'll try really hard in the next day or so to take it to that 80 GXE mark. If I don't I don't, I guess it's whatever. Skill issue, as the kids say.
For the people just skimming to get a sense of where people are voting: I will probably vote, if I manage to make reqs:
- no restriction on question 1
- tera on team preview > tera captain > full ban > same stab tera on question 2
As frustrating as doing the suspect ladder has been for me, it's has given me new clarity around the issue.
I've always been very much pro tera. And I still am, as you can see based on how I've said I'm hoping to vote. But I will say I have a lot of sympathy towards the ban crowd now.
When it was the very start of the generation, and I was primarily building my own teams, coming up with new strategies, just seeing what worked and what I liked, tera was really fun, interesting, and deep. I was using tera water on SpDef Garchomp super early in the meta, just before it caught on. Making the determination of going "the SpDef chomp from gen 8 as a bulky water seems crazy good" and then doing it, and then having it work was super satisfying.
But then comes time for the suspect test, and now my goals are different. I'm not using my own teams because I haven't proven my ideas in high ladder. And I'm not just playing to try things out, I'm playing to win as much as possible as quickly as possible. And now it's easier to see the problems.
Situation A: I'm playing this game where I recognize hazards pressure + my CB Chien Pao break my opponents team down. I notice my opponent recognizes this and is trying her best to keep hazards off her side of the field with Great Tusk. I call the switch to Tusk and manoeuver in my Chien Pao. Check. Adamant CB Chien Pao has no switch ins. I click Ice Spinner, and take a free kill.
Right?
Wrong.
Actually the Tusk was tera water, takes 10%, and nukes me with body press.
I still won this match, so my issue isn't even that I lost. My issue is being punished for playing correctly. What was I supposed to lose the momentum I built up to that point JUST to scout for tera? Especially in a situation where it's not like my opponent suspiciously went into Tusk on Chien Pao, I caught her on an aggressive prediction. This is, like, fuck you for playing well.
Or, another example, I see a team that's mono weak to my Iron Baliant. I lead Iron Valiant, he leads Garchomp, one of the SIX WHOLE POKEMON weak to Iron Valiant. I use Moonblast instead of Focus Blast because I don't want to miss and it KOs the opponent anyway. The chomp tera steels turn one, tanks Moonblast, and kills me.
Another game I ended up winning. But another game where it felt like I was being punished for playing correctly and with intention. What was I supposed to risk Focus Blast missing and take needless damage? Or scout, lose momentum, and let the chomp SD or stack hazards? I don't get it.
Situation B: Any set-up pokemon is brutal with terastallization. The trick with set-up pokemon is to check them before they spiral out of control. But how exactly are you supposed to do that if every set-up mon can tera past its own checks and gain an extra free turn. My main example is Hatterene. I never had trouble with Hatterene in gen 8. It's bulky, sure, but it's slow. You just hit it. But now it's like, "oh it's a water type now, randomly". "Oops it's a flying type". And then of course what about the real heavy hitters like Dragonite, Volcarona, hell even Quaquaval?
It's gotten to the point where I feel like running a team without Skeledirge or Dondozo is a risk, and running a team with neither Unaware or phasing is suicidal. Or, rather, you're condemning yourself to a very stressful race to set up your guys first. I don't think there's any other metagame where it's felt like the concept of set-up sweeping puts so much pressure onto you to never lose momentum even once or you're fucked.
Situation B-2: Another unfortunate thing is I think we're transitioning away from the more creative tera types to people realizing that you can low-key slap flying, water, or fairy on any halfway bulky pokemon, ghost on any hazards setter, or grass on any fire type and have it be good. It's a lot less inventive than I had imagined.
"Okay wait, then why'd you say you're voting against making any restrictions??"
I think what I've realized is that your position on tera is less about an "objective" analysis on how "competitive" the metagame is, and more what you value as a competitive player.
I love team building. And I love micro optimizing teams for specific situations. Weird EVs are my shit. The weirder the EVs, the better for me really.
One of my favorite teams from gen 8 was this team with a SpDef Rillaboom EV'd exactly to live one uninvested SpDef Heatran magma storm from full, swords dance, and KO with drain punch. And then later, I got a game where that exact thing happened, it worked exactly as planned, and it was fuckin sick. Now I have tera: a whole new dimension to micro optimize teams with. I still think it's cool and valuable to have around.
As much as my Chien Pao/water Great Tusk interaction sucked, doesn't my opponent also get credit for, in the team builder, seeing her team was weak to Chien Pao, and building in an escape valve for the situation where Tusk got caught by a Chien Pao trying to spin? Is that not also strategy? I think it is.
It boils down to what you value as a player. Terastallization makes a game where you sacrifice realistically knowing the outcome of every single possible turn for the ability to be way more flexible in your gameplay and turn common difficult situations into victories, just by spending a few extra moments in the team builder.
I think if you've mostly been using other people's teams, tera feels a lot worse, a lot more random, and a lot less fun.
My preferred outcome here is showing tera types on team preview. I think it fixes those "punished for playing right" situations I've found frustrating but keeps what I love about the mechanic. But, I think some of the options I'm the restrict side, such as only stab tera, are so bad I'd stop playing the tier if they came to be. So I'm voting no restriction to prevent that. I think the ban/restrict votes have the votes they need anyway
For the people just skimming to get a sense of where people are voting: I will probably vote, if I manage to make reqs:
- no restriction on question 1
- tera on team preview > tera captain > full ban > same stab tera on question 2
As frustrating as doing the suspect ladder has been for me, it's has given me new clarity around the issue.
I've always been very much pro tera. And I still am, as you can see based on how I've said I'm hoping to vote. But I will say I have a lot of sympathy towards the ban crowd now.
When it was the very start of the generation, and I was primarily building my own teams, coming up with new strategies, just seeing what worked and what I liked, tera was really fun, interesting, and deep. I was using tera water on SpDef Garchomp super early in the meta, just before it caught on. Making the determination of going "the SpDef chomp from gen 8 as a bulky water seems crazy good" and then doing it, and then having it work was super satisfying.
But then comes time for the suspect test, and now my goals are different. I'm not using my own teams because I haven't proven my ideas in high ladder. And I'm not just playing to try things out, I'm playing to win as much as possible as quickly as possible. And now it's easier to see the problems.
Situation A: I'm playing this game where I recognize hazards pressure + my CB Chien Pao break my opponents team down. I notice my opponent recognizes this and is trying her best to keep hazards off her side of the field with Great Tusk. I call the switch to Tusk and manoeuver in my Chien Pao. Check. Adamant CB Chien Pao has no switch ins. I click Ice Spinner, and take a free kill.
Right?
Wrong.
Actually the Tusk was tera water, takes 10%, and nukes me with body press.
I still won this match, so my issue isn't even that I lost. My issue is being punished for playing correctly. What was I supposed to lose the momentum I built up to that point JUST to scout for tera? Especially in a situation where it's not like my opponent suspiciously went into Tusk on Chien Pao, I caught her on an aggressive prediction. This is, like, fuck you for playing well.
Or, another example, I see a team that's mono weak to my Iron Baliant. I lead Iron Valiant, he leads Garchomp, one of the SIX WHOLE POKEMON weak to Iron Valiant. I use Moonblast instead of Focus Blast because I don't want to miss and it KOs the opponent anyway. The chomp tera steels turn one, tanks Moonblast, and kills me.
Another game I ended up winning. But another game where it felt like I was being punished for playing correctly and with intention. What was I supposed to risk Focus Blast missing and take needless damage? Or scout, lose momentum, and let the chomp SD or stack hazards? I don't get it.
Situation B: Any set-up pokemon is brutal with terastallization. The trick with set-up pokemon is to check them before they spiral out of control. But how exactly are you supposed to do that if every set-up mon can tera past its own checks and gain an extra free turn. My main example is Hatterene. I never had trouble with Hatterene in gen 8. It's bulky, sure, but it's slow. You just hit it. But now it's like, "oh it's a water type now, randomly". "Oops it's a flying type". And then of course what about the real heavy hitters like Dragonite, Volcarona, hell even Quaquaval?
It's gotten to the point where I feel like running a team without Skeledirge or Dondozo is a risk, and running a team with neither Unaware or phasing is suicidal. Or, rather, you're condemning yourself to a very stressful race to set up your guys first. I don't think there's any other metagame where it's felt like the concept of set-up sweeping puts so much pressure onto you to never lose momentum even once or you're fucked.
Situation B-2: Another unfortunate thing is I think we're transitioning away from the more creative tera types to people realizing that you can low-key slap flying, water, or fairy on any halfway bulky pokemon, ghost on any hazards setter, or grass on any fire type and have it be good. It's a lot less inventive than I had imagined.
"Okay wait, then why'd you say you're voting against making any restrictions??"
I think what I've realized is that your position on tera is less about an "objective" analysis on how "competitive" the metagame is, and more what you value as a competitive player.
I love team building. And I love micro optimizing teams for specific situations. Weird EVs are my shit. The weirder the EVs, the better for me really.
One of my favorite teams from gen 8 was this team with a SpDef Rillaboom EV'd exactly to live one uninvested SpDef Heatran magma storm from full, swords dance, and KO with drain punch. And then later, I got a game where that exact thing happened, it worked exactly as planned, and it was fuckin sick. Now I have tera: a whole new dimension to micro optimize teams with. I still think it's cool and valuable to have around.
As much as my Chien Pao/water Great Tusk interaction sucked, doesn't my opponent also get credit for, in the team builder, seeing her team was weak to Chien Pao, and building in an escape valve for the situation where Tusk got caught by a Chien Pao trying to spin? Is that not also strategy? I think it is.
It boils down to what you value as a player. Terastallization makes a game where you sacrifice realistically knowing the outcome of every single possible turn for the ability to be way more flexible in your gameplay and turn common difficult situations into victories, just by spending a few extra moments in the team builder.
I think if you've mostly been using other people's teams, tera feels a lot worse, a lot more random, and a lot less fun.
My preferred outcome here is showing tera types on team preview. I think it fixes those "punished for playing right" situations I've found frustrating but keeps what I love about the mechanic. But, I think some of the options I'm the restrict side, such as only stab tera, are so bad I'd stop playing the tier if they came to be. So I'm voting no restriction to prevent that. I think the ban/restrict votes have the votes they need anyway
So... we should bend over backwards to keep a gimmick that you just admitted is unfair just because it's new or because other Pokemon can use it?
Tera =/= status conditions in terms of the suboptimal strategies they require to deal with or the Pokemon who can exploit them. You know you'll have to deal with a Toxapex as soon as you see it in Team Preview. You won't know what will Tera, what it will Tera into, or when it will Tera until something actually does.
Both players could use Dynamax as well; that didn't save it from being banned.
I assure you that "yeah, it is strong" is not the be-all and end-all criticism we have. Care to explain to me how it makes sense to have to run two checks to one Pokemon both pre- and post-Tera, or having to skirt around something on the chance it might Tera that turn? Even knowing something's Tera type beforehand won't fix that (see Volcarona vs. Meowscarada here for an example). The problem isn't merely Tera being "strong" or "random", or whatever else. The problem is the sheer amount of suboptimal gameplay Tera encourages.
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The “only STAB Tera” option isn’t winning. Almost every post that’s mentioned it has been talking about how bad of an option it is, and even plenty of No Action people are ranking it beneath a full ban. If you want it restricted at all—which, based on the rest of the post, you clearly do—don’t vote No Action, even if you think the Action camp has enough votes already.
That's ignoring full Ban though, which is a possibility. From the way they're talking about this, I think it's apparent there also against full ban, which is one of the most likely outcomes.
That said, it's up to you what you want and what you're willing to risk for it.
Finch doesn’t think Full Ban will win and neither do I. I’m in support of a full ban and I think as many people as possible should be voting for it as their first choice, but almost all of the No Action camp is going to be putting it in third or last place in their votes. Unless the Action camp massively outnumbers the No Action camp, which isn’t the case if the qualified survey results are anything to go by, Full Ban will probably wind up in second or third place.
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