Suspect SV NFE Suspect #1: My Type (Terastallization)

[Greybaum]

The SV NFE Council has decided to put up Terastallization for a suspect test!
​

Suspect Test Reasoning
As a reminder of how the mechanic works: Both players have a one-time Terastallization activation, giving the Pokemon on the field its Tera Type and removing its previous typing. Offensively, this Pokemon will gain STAB on its new typing, while also retaining its prior STAB. In the instance where a Pokemon's Tera Type matches one of its original typings, its STAB bonus will be amplified, rising from a 1.5x boost to a 2x boost. Pokemon can only have one Tera Type each, which is decided while building.

Terastallization can flip 1v1 matchups on their heads, with Pokemon like Tera-Ice Pikachu, Tera-Ground Sneasel, and Tera-Water Murkrow using it to gain coverage for would-be answers like Foongus, Tinkatuff, and Naclstack, which some players believe pushes numerous offensive Pokemon into a banworthy state. Bulkier set-up sweepers like Fraxure, Misdreavus, and Vigoroth can similarly use Terastallization's defensive merits as an aid to garner multiple boosts against Pokemon that would otherwise force them out, while simultaneously blocking off traditional offensive counterplay.

Other players, however, believe that the majority of these Pokemon are still manageable even with the support of Terastallization, and that threats like Sneasel and Fraxure should be banned independently to preserve the mechanic. In addition, the defensive use of terastallization has been brought up as a positive addition to the tier, with some belief that the use of the mechanic on walls like Crocalor and Naclstack can help balance out the more offensive threats in the tier when used intelligently.

All in all, the NFE council believes that Terastallization is certainly contentious enough to justify a Suspect Test.

Suspect Test Information

• To qualify, you must play a minimum of 25 games and reach a minimum GXE value of 75.
• You must use an account created after this thread has gone live with the prefix NFETER, such as "NFETER Greybaum". Please do not attempt to impersonate other users, as this may lead to an infraction.
• Terastallizing will be legal on the ladder during the suspect period.
• The suspect test will be live for roughly two weeks and will end on Monday the 16th of January (11:59PM GMT).
• Please feel free to use this thread as a means of discussing your views on Terastallization when posting. This is however optional - you are free to post evidence of qualification and nothing further.
• You must provide clear evidence of account ownership - please post a picture of your account meeting requirements with your Smogon name featured.

Good luck!

 

[fluff!!]

tera broken will be voting ban cya :)

 

[blinkboy]

Confirming.
I will be voting on banning tera! I think this was the right way to approach it rather than attempting to ban the pokemon first. The more knowledgeable i become on the meta the more uncompetitive tera seems. I Won’t go into detail because the basis of it is covered by greybaums post. What is said there really does align ever so closely with what i believe to be the very definition of uncompetitive in regards to pokemon.
Also lol missed a crash on final turn of g25 to lose and tilt below 75gxe.

 

[FranziskaSkye]

More enjoyable than the OU suspect at least lmao. Anyway gonna be voting ban (despite how much I like FairyMissy and GhostStack), mainly because it means stuff like Pika and Sneasel don't have much defensive counterplay. Usually the go to is to tera naclstack, however thats just because the things which can usually check them can't anymore.

Plus between NFE, UU and RU, I need a safe haven away from Tera Steel DD Sweepers. (There's a reason Arceus-Steel is the only steel type to ever get dd iirc)

 

[ong]

confirming as nfeter roar

 

[Lyna]

Confirming ~

 

[5Dots]

confirming

 

[OranBerryBlissey10]

Tera is not balanced. Since scarfers are rare it is too easy to lose your offensive counterplay to threats (like tera steeling Gabite vs Sneasel and proceeding to sweep), games can hinge off of 50/50's while even some defensive tera applications like tera fairy Naclstack are constricting.

Here's the team I used for the entirety of the reqs run:
-----
It matches up well vs the current meta trends while also using generally good stuff (enhanced even further by tera). Gabite and Fletchinder specifically seem underrated, their buffs are quite significant.

 

[AL]

 

[TheFranklin]

I don't see a reason to ban tera when OU hasn't banned tera. It works exactly the same here as in OU; all core mechanics are present in both metas (unlike most other OMs or monotype, which have additional mechanics). In my opinion it therefore just makes zero sense to ban tera here, while keeping it in OU. Now I do agree that some pokemon are unbalanced with tera (just like in OU), and hence those pokemon should be banned, not tera.

On another note: This was by far the worst suspect laddering experience ever. It was normal to have to wait 20-30 min for 1 game, but sometimes it took way longer. I can't even imagine the struggle when you are actually close to 75% gxe and every game matters/you have to go beyond 25 games.
Ladder itself also just doesnt work properly:

prime ladder experience

I strongly advise to look for other/additional ways to qualify for future suspect tests in nfe (something like live suspect tours)

 

[Greybaum]

shoutout to oran for ruining the perfect run.

voting ban, see here for my reasoning and below for a quick summary

I don't see a reason to ban tera when OU hasn't banned tera. It works exactly the same here as in OU; all core mechanics are present in both metas (unlike most other OMs or monotype, which have additional mechanics). In my opinion it therefore just makes zero sense to ban tera here, while keeping it in OU. Now I do agree that some pokemon are unbalanced with tera (just like in OU), and hence those pokemon should be banned, not tera.

1. i voted ban in the OU suspect. it's broken there too.
2. this isn't OU. a lack of recovery on many of our best pokemon, the scarcity of our hazard control, and the tightened speed tiers makes the "poke" game of NFE omnipresent compared to tiers like OU where HO has far more room to breathe. we also have no unaware users, and very few 'blanket' answers even before you give every pokemon a third STAB. every set-up sweeper viable enough to make it to Mid viability or up becomes banworthy with tera support because of how it flips 1v1 matchups on its head; getting an instant victory because i turned my misdreavus into a fairy type in the face of a gabite or tinkatuff is not engaging gameplay to me. again, this isn't OU.
C. i would argue that other OMs have just in much in common with OU as NFE does, if not more similarities in the case of STABmons. i think "the mechanics are the same" is quite frankly a silly position to take when, from a playing perspective, mix & mega is the only primary OM that genuinely introduces new mechanics; AAA, GG, STAB, and BH cease being different as soon as you've finished building and loaded up a battle; as soon as this happens the only difference to "normal tiers" are the pokemon available, and frankly NFE has by far the fewest options of them all and by extension is just as unique.

On another note: This was by far the worst suspect laddering experience ever. It was normal to have to wait 20-30 min for 1 game, but sometimes it took way longer. I can't even imagine the struggle when you are actually close to 75% gxe and every game matters/you have to go beyond 25 games.

I strongly advise to look for other/additional ways to qualify for future suspect tests in nfe (something like live suspect tours)

i understand your frustration; i spent an hour waiting on a wednesday with 0 games before realising i should just wait until weekend (i got all 25 of my games done today. it really isn't that bad if you wait until the weekend tbh).
i am personally a huge fan of the idea of alternative reqs; my personal dream is to have automatic reqs for anyone who made further than an x% of players in any relevant tournament where the suspected subject was present in the tier in, say, the last 3 months. unfortunately, this is not possible under the current system.
to have your suspect test be official, i.e. exist in policy review, and count towards the tiering contributor badge, it must follow official smogon guidelines. this means no automatic reqs, no suspect tours, no method of getting reqs is permitted at all except the tradional way through ladder. i hate laddering, and frankly i think it's a poor way of judging a players' knowledge of the tier, but unless smogon changes its policies there is no alternative.

i'm happy with the number of voters we got here, especially considering the general public opinion of "this tier sucks when is home being released" which i certainly empathise with even if i'm personally still having fun, but if we reach a point where we don't have enough voters to have a legitimate test and activity is a serious concern i and the rest of council will certainly be looking towards alternatives. thanks in advance for your understanding.

ban tera

 

[Lechen]

most of my losses were from queuing for 30+ min and timing out cuz i was afk lol

 

[IoSonoNeon]

reqs

 

[RoFnA]

Confirming as NFETER RoFnA

Most likely going to vote ban.

 

[Shing]

Were supposed to go for another alt account with a 25-0 score and posting many teams, but I were too busy with irl traveling so I'll have to go with this weak alt unfortunate.

My take is that terastallization isn't really broken as a whole and I would love to see SV NFE have this in some or another. However SV NFE in this case seems to not favour terastallization as a positive thing and could lead in a worse state. There are many reasons to point out, but I'll go to the root on those ones I think that has reasons that is much different from the other tiers. First of all, a lot of defensive/support pokemon are actually quite weak to damage back which means they'll have to rely on like encore, roar and toxic to disrupt them. But that makes them quite passive and relies on them having the super effective typing to keep them in check. Tera invalidates this counterplay which makes it the counterplay feel like you really don't have one, especially there are barely any bulky mons that also hits hard. I've also tried with scarfs mons such as Foul Play Tink, Krokorok and Encore Quaxwell etc, in order to give more counterplay. There's a obvious issue though. Those sets has those flaws where the meta lacks knock off which makes it not consistent against everything. And tera can still prepare against them if they ever became more common, which makes it not a really true counterplay.
If the meta had stronger, faster and bulkier wallbreakers that could punish more Tera types like OU, then I would have been fine with it. Unfortunately, most NFE mons lacks power and heavily relies on setup in order to do damage.

While you could just ban the abusers, there comes to the point that wakes up my biggest concern: Which are the ones and how many of them? Because I believe we're in a postion where every offensive mons has way too restricted counterplay where if one gets banned, others will thrive and could make it worse. Ban Sneasel, Fraxure, Misdreavus and Pikachu, and then you could have Gabite, Girafarig, Dunsparce, Vigoroth simply to thrive which could be simply be held back by those moms above alone. I do not prefer this domino effect where it could end the meta in a hazard stacked meta with favouring extremely defensive gameplay as offense may not be good to progress anymore, ending up a slower pace gameplay that may turn off a lot of people. Tera simply gets rids off offensive mons's important weakness which shows to be a big problem as the meta does not simply have good enough tools to handle this.

Terastallization is not broken nor a bad thing and I would LOVE to see it revisited back in other new patches in adding older ones via Home. But I don't think I like it right now. I prefer to ban such a iconic mechanic if we're able to use more pokemon because NFE is already limited, so right now banning more mons does not help with NFE's case right now.

I'm voting for ban, but would love to look it back in next updates. Terastallization has a lot of depth I take dearly, but unfortunate it's too much for SV NFE right now.

 

[UT]

Voting is live, PM if you have issues: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/sv-nfe-suspect-1-terastallizing.3714584/