Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 ( NEW SURVEY UP, POST 20,700 )

[Bold School]

Since we are talking about Tera again, I'll just state that it pretty obviously helps offense more than defense. Like most things in gen 9. Outside of Tera Blast, which is purely offensive and has been a recent discussion, the same type Tera sets get a significant boost in power that can help break through defenses. Even defensive Tera often allows setup sweepers an extra setup turn. And many Tera types like Fairy or Ground can be used for both offense and defense, further helping setup sweepers.

So to summarize:

Extra STAB = Helps offense
Double STAB = Help offense
Tera Blast = Helps offense
Defensive Tera = Helps defense, but also setup sweepers.

Basically, every aspect of Tera helps offense in some way. Only defensive Tera helps defense, but it can still be used to help offense.

I think I would appreciate Tera a lot more if there was something to balance this like an item requirement. Stacking bonus multipliers from items and/or abilities for free with almost no limits also just inherently favors offense.

The main bonus multiplier items for defense are Eviolite, Assault Vest, and the terrain seeds. The first two come with severe downsides and a vulnerability to Knock Off. The seeds are good items, but conditional and only proc once. Even Booster Energy is used for offense the majority of the time because it is typically a superior use of it.

The gap between offense and defense is further exacerbated by Tera only giving bonus multipliers for offense and not really for defense. Although the type change helps, and can half, quarter, or even in some cases nullify damage from specific attack types, it's not the same as the threat level of offensive bonus multipliers stacking with Tera's multipliers. The math definitely favors offense in most cases.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

can you give any examples?

have you read anything in this thread? we've listed countless examples but stubborn people like you refuse to listen

 

[Rekka's Backend]

how is that the same thing as hax lol.

I'll bite since I have 20 minutes before work

You will absolutely get matches where a Gambit has something like Tera Grass or something equally ridiculous, you might lose to this but its a fact of the tier as it stands. As with any generational mechanic however, you gotta put in some homework to feel out what a Tera Type might be based on their build.

A facet of team building this generation is being able to look at what team comps are and what potential Tera Types will benefit them; For example, I like to run Tera Ground on my Gouging Fire to deal with Thunderclaps/Fairy usages. I do not use Outrage, so I do not require Tera Dragon. If someone were to look at my (Sun Comp) due to the team they would be able to do some guesswork I would not have Tera Dragon as a type due to stacking weaknesses because of multiple Fairy/Dragon weak types.

Ergo, that cuts down one potential tera for my enemy to work around and they can expect me to defensively Tera instead. I do the same thought process for my enemy; If a Gambit looks like it would play more offensively with Dark Glasses due to comp I play with the expectation that it'll try to Tera Dark to break thru my walls or revenge kill, etc.

Make no mistake the Tier is difficult and has a immensely higher skill floor, but as someone who has steadily gotten thru the ranks to get better its simply a fact of the mechanics for this gen. I would much prefer if power levels were scaled down, but I feel that is more of a Mon issue than a raw Tera issue. It simply makes the symptoms worse.

also gambit is perfectly balanced, it has a exploitable typing. The issue is that it can change it lol.

If you do not plan around Gambit changing its types when it has saved its Tera the entire game you deserve to lose. I don't click Earthquake into a last stand Gambit for a reason. No other way to really put it, if you don't plan around them using their resource you're going to lose. Whether that resource is 'fair' insofar is another matter, but that's all there is to it. I had to learn this lesson and change my usual method of play too.

Also on paper you can guess the tera type, but in practice so you really can't dude

Can't guess IV spreads either, can't guess moveset coverage either. Hell, can't guess item until you see what happens either. There are known unknowns and unknown knowns, but as with all things in Pokemon you have to scout and plan around the potential accordingly. Sometimes you have to throw a Wisp into a Lum berry, sometimes you are the one with the lum berry. Cost vs reward factor and making midground plays is what allows you to increase your chances and lessen your enemies for a reason.

 

[JackRG]

I'll bite since I have 20 minutes before work

You will absolutely get matches where a Gambit has something like Tera Grass or something equally ridiculous, you might lose to this but its a fact of the tier as it stands. As with any generational mechanic however, you gotta put in some homework to feel out what a Tera Type might be based on their build.

A facet of team building this generation is being able to look at what team comps are and what potential Tera Types will benefit them; For example, I like to run Tera Ground on my Gouging Fire to deal with Thunderclaps/Fairy usages. I do not use Outrage, so I do not require Tera Dragon. If someone were to look at my (Sun Comp) due to the team they would be able to do some guesswork I would not have Tera Dragon as a type due to stacking weaknesses because of multiple Fairy/Dragon weak types.

Ergo, that cuts down one potential tera for my enemy to work around and they can expect me to defensively Tera instead. I do the same thought process for my enemy; If a Gambit looks like it would play more offensively with Dark Glasses due to comp I play with the expectation that it'll try to Tera Dark to break thru my walls or revenge kill, etc.

Make no mistake the Tier is difficult and has a immensely higher skill floor, but as someone who has steadily gotten thru the ranks to get better its simply a fact of the mechanics for this gen. I would much prefer if power levels were scaled down, but I feel that is more of a Mon issue than a raw Tera issue. It simply makes the symptoms worse.



If you do not plan around Gambit changing its types when it has saved its Tera the entire game you deserve to lose. I don't click Earthquake into a last stand Gambit for a reason. No other way to really put it, if you don't plan around them using their resource you're going to lose. Whether that resource is 'fair' insofar is another matter, but that's all there is to it. I had to learn this lesson and change my usual method of play too.



Can't guess IV spreads either, can't guess moveset coverage either. Hell, can't guess item until you see what happens either. There are known unknowns and unknown knowns, but as with all things in Pokemon you have to scout and plan around the potential accordingly. Sometimes you have to throw a Wisp into a Lum berry, sometimes you are the one with the lum berry. Cost vs reward factor and making midground plays is what allows you to increase your chances and lessen your enemies for a reason.

what do you think about tera being shown in team preview?

 

[viivian]

Lets say theres a kingambit threatening to sweep. I switch in fully healthy Zamazenta, a pretty hard answer, while it SDs on the switch. I go for body press to force it out, but then it randomly just turns into a ghost type and gets up ANOTHER swords dance.

if you don't go for iron defense or roar when kingambit hasn't revealed its tera then you 100% deserve to lose that interaction. attacking directly into kingambit as it just clicks its tera and sets up an SD just puts you in an awful position for absolutely no reason

 

[JackRG]

if you don't go for iron defense or roar when kingambit hasn't revealed its tera then you 100% deserve to lose that interaction. attacking directly into kingambit as it just clicks its tera and sets up an SD is how you get swept by any pokemon in this metagame, that's just how the game is

lets just ignore in any other gen that would be a optimal play

 

[Rekka's Backend]

what do you think about tera being shown in team preview?

Personally I think it'd be an 'interesting' experiment to try. It'd let players get more used to remembering common Tera Types on mons, and it would reduce at least some cheese. But I feel like it'd introduce a new level of guessing due to "Will Roaring Moon tera this turn or bait me and kill me the normal way" which may or may not increase blood pressure for a small selection of the populace.

As a whole though, I'd try it as a ladder to see how it plays. I have no strong opinions about Tera, so I'm speaking from a place of 100% "It'd make some games easier and some games worse" due to the problematic mons still existing regardless.

 

[viivian]

lets just ignore in any other gen that would be a optimal play

clicking iron defense or a phazing move in front of a setup sweeper is also an optimal play in every other generation so i don't get your point here. the meta has become well-adapted to not just kingambit but terastallization as a whole, so this all just feels like beating a dead horse

 

[JackRG]

Personally I think it'd be an 'interesting' experiment to try. It'd let players get more used to remembering common Tera Types on mons, and it would reduce at least some cheese. But I feel like it'd introduce a new level of guessing due to "Will Roaring Moon tera this turn or bait me and kill me the normal way" which may or may not increase blood pressure for a small selection of the populace.

As a whole though, I'd try it as a ladder to see how it plays. I have no strong opinions about Tera, so I'm speaking from a place of 100% "It'd make some games easier and some games worse" due to the problematic mons still existing regardless.

back to the roaring moon example, if I could see it wasn't tera ghost, I could espeed safely, vs if I know its ghost I know I can't go for that safely

 

[JackRG]

clicking iron defense in front of a setup sweeper is also an optimal play in every other generation so i don't get your point here. the meta has become well-adapted to not just kingambit but terastallization as a whole, so this all just feels like beating a dead horse

what do you think about the roaring moon example

 

[viivian]

tera ghost roaring moon is strictly worse than tera flying or fairy in every possible scenario except for the dragonite MU. even then most teams tend to have at least 2 backup answers to RM so it's not like dragonite is gonna be your only failsafe against it. it just seems way too gimmicky and specific to be a realistic scenario

 

[solrock the great]

Since we are talking about Tera again, I'll just state that it pretty obviously helps offense more than defense. Like most things in gen 9. Outside of Tera Blast, which is purely offensive and has been a recent discussion, the same type Tera sets get a significant boost in power that can help break through defenses. Even defensive Tera often allows setup sweepers an extra setup turn. And many Tera types like Fairy or Ground can be used for both offense and defense, further helping setup sweepers.

So to summarize:

Extra STAB = Helps offense
Double STAB = Help offense
Tera Blast = Helps offense
Defensive Tera = Helps defense, but also setup sweepers.

Basically, every aspect of Tera helps offense in some way. Only defensive Tera helps defense, but it can still be used to help offense.

I think I would appreciate Tera a lot more if there was something to balance this like an item requirement. Stacking bonus multipliers from items and/or abilities for free with almost no limits also just inherently favors offense.

The main bonus multiplier items for defense are Eviolite, Assault Vest, and the terrain seeds. The first two come with severe downsides and a vulnerability to Knock Off. The seeds are good items, but conditional and only proc once. Even Booster Energy is used for offense the majority of the time because it is typically a superior use of it.

The gap between offense and defense is further exacerbated by Tera only giving bonus multipliers for offense and not really for defense. Although the type change helps, and can half, quarter, or even in some cases nullify damage from specific attack types, it's not the same as the threat level of offensive bonus multipliers stacking with Tera's multipliers. The math definitely favors offense in most cases.

ngl, I think it would be a neat thing if there was a rule that you cant tera a mon unless it is holding a tera shard for its tera type. It'll never happen, but it could be a neat way to balance it. (inb4 someone complains about unconventional tiering stuff)

 

[JackRG]

tera ghost roaring moon is strictly worse than tera flying or fairy in every possible scenario except for the dragonite MU. even then most teams tend to have at least 2 backup answers to RM so it's not like dragonite is gonna be your only failsafe against it. it just seems way too gimmicky and specific to be a realistic scenario

you are missing the point, its a viable tera type it can run. Also even these "answers" can't handle roaring moon once it has a couple boosts

 

[Rekka's Backend]

back to the roaring moon example, if I could see it wasn't tera ghost, I could espeed safely, vs if I know its ghost I know I can't go for that safely

I think it boils down to a probability issue; Tera Ghost isn't super common on Roaring Moon. you will get games with this, but by a large margin Moon either likes to defensively Tera into something that outright resists its weaknesses or blows them up.

The issue I see with tera ghost sets is that it helps you Sometimes vs Zama, etc but it makes you unbearably weak to Gambit. Something Moon is often good to bring in on due to resisting Sucker/Kowtow; if someone were to break out Tera Ghost Roaring I'd consider it more of an anomaly or sheer insanity and discredit it.

For another example, back when Iron Boulder was the new hotness it often would Tera into fighting. A guy I was fighting at the time saved it+Tera till he was down to three mons and tried to up Swords Dance on my Psychic terrain team. Since I saw the position he was in, and knew he was likely to Tera Boulder due to it, I kept my Indeedee in and just clicked Expanding Force. Upon immediately dying and then forefiting, he cussed me out saying I never could have predicted it and said it was the worst play he ever saw.

Despite the fact by all metrics if he *didn't* Tera fighting right then and there it'd make less sense. But since Indeedee was my last Psychic type and he likely expected me to switch to my Mousehold, it simply meant he was trying to rely on pure surprise factor despite Fighting being the single most common Tera on it at the time. Probability meant that clicking Expanding force with the expectation of the most common Tera meant that was the safest midground play even if it wasn't Fighting right then.

 

[SittinGamer]

you are missing the point, its a viable tera type it can run. Also even these "answers" can't handle roaring moon once it has a couple boosts

Maybe if seemingly everyone arguing against you have missed the point, the point is either poorly construed or conveyed. And it certainly hasn't been poorly conveyed.

 

[viivian]

you are missing the point, its a viable tera type it can run. Also even these "answers" can't handle roaring moon once it has a couple boosts

literally who is using tera ghost roaring moon though. it's blatantly worse than its other common tera types so i don't get why you'd ever use it unless your team just has a really shit matchup into dragonite

and as for answers? on balance/fat you have sticky barb clefable, ID skarmory/corviknight, alomomola can help pivot around it, dondozo hardwalls it, etc etc. all are common methods of counterplay against roaring moon on bulkier playstyles and all have been proven to work against it. offensive teams can just run kingambit and/or lando-T and make it extremely difficult for RM to actually sweep

 

[JunkoAJ]

lets just ignore in any other gen that would be a optimal play

This is completely irrelevant btw idk what the point is here, no single generation plays the same as another and each generation has its own flavour of bullshit that warps what seem like favourable type matchups

 

[JackRG]

literally who is using tera ghost roaring moon though. it's blatantly worse than its other common tera types so i don't get why you'd ever use it unless your team just has a really shit matchup into dragonite

and as for answers? on balance/fat you have sticky barb clefable, ID skarmory/corviknight, alomomola can help pivot around it, dondozo walls it, zapdos and moltres can status it, etc etc. all are common methods of counterplay against roaring moon on bulkier playstyles and all have been proven to work against it. offensive teams can just run kingambit and/or lando-T and make it extremely difficult for RM to actually sweep

I've ran into it multiple times, also lando-T still struggles to switch into roaring moons knock off

 

[viivian]

except that's not how it works. you come in as it DDs and click u-turn. either you force RM to tera early and go into some bulky priority guy that it's now weak to or it doesn't tera and gets put in range of a priority move anyway. like obviously you're not directly coming in on a boosted knock off

 

[SittinGamer]

I've ran into it multiple times, also lando-T still struggles to switch into roaring moons knock off

Are you going to continue to ignore that this hypothetical +2 Ghost Roaring Moon is weak to, let me reiterate, the single most effective wincon in the Overused tier: Kingambit? You have 8 turns of Sucker Punch mindgames to kill the Moon with either Cleave or Sucker. Again I say, even in this situation where the threat you described is at +2 +2, there are outs in the tier that do not require niche counterplay.

 

[JackRG]

Are you going to continue to ignore that this hypothetical +2 Ghost Roaring Moon is weak to, let me reiterate, the single most effective wincon in the Overused tier: Kingambit? You have 8 turns of Sucker Punch mindgames to kill the Moon with either Cleave or Sucker. Again I say, even in this situation where the threat you described is at +2 +2, there are outs in the tier that do not require niche counterplay.

So I'm now forced to run kingambit on every single team? It being weak to 1 mon is not good justification

 

[SittinGamer]

So I'm now forced to run kingambit on every single team? It being weak to 1 mon is not good justification

You have asked for solutions in multiple posts, and managed to find a way to disregard each and every single one of them when given to you on a silver platter.

whoops! it clicks tera flying and lando-T is now setup fodder!

"you force the RM to tera early and go into some bulky priority guy that its now weak to."
do you even read the posts you're responding to? Holy shit man. Awesome, the RM now lost its DD atk boost, and another Pokemon ranked above B in the viability rankings, Weavile, has super effective priority to threaten the Moon. Perhaps this doesn't matter, as any time someone has an answer to this new Roaring Moon you throw out, you simply go "gotcha! what about THIS tera type?" as we then go and explain counters to this new scenario you've concocted.

 

[viivian]

whoops! it clicks tera flying and lando-T is now setup fodder!

>click u-turn and go into some bulky priority guy that RM is now weak to

 

[JunkoAJ]

because your arguements are insane. you are suggesting 1 mon that doesn't even work aganist other tera types lol

I'm confused like is there something preventing you from covering multiple Tera types in a team

 

[SittinGamer]

this image says it all lol

It might be insane for you to know but you also control 6 pocket monsters which all have the capacity to use the Terastalization mechanic, featured in Pokemon Scarlet Edition and Pokemon Violet Edition on the Nintendo Switch. You have failed to showcase how the mechanic itself is uniquely broken or uncompetitive.