Announcement Tera Blast Suspect Test - Ubers UU.

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Imperial

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:Terapagos-Stellar: Tera Blast Suspect :Terapagos-Stellar:
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(thanks KineSquared )

Hi everyone,

Tera Blast has been an incredibly toxic metagame presence for a long time now. With its ability to give any Pokemon coverage of any type at the drop of a hat, theres no wonder why its been so controversial as of late. Many Top-Tier Pokemon run Tera Blast in the movesets, one way or another, such as Chien-Pao and Zacian using Tera Blast Ground & Fire to get past their counterplay, or Necrozma-DW, Regieleki and Spectrier using Tera Blast Fairy or Ice for the Perfect 2-move Coverage. What makes this move truly controversial, is how uncompetitive it is, often basically having to decide which Pokemon has to die just to scout for the move, which isn't even a sure thing, and it pushes many of our top-tier threats and key Pokemon in this metagame over the edge.

However, you could argue that the only broken one of these abusers is NDW, with the others running Tera Blast are not as overtly overpowered and that they are healthy users of the move, but with the recent survey shows that most people don't agree with this. With Tera Blast at 7.0 unqualified and a whopping 7.7 from the qualified playerbase, it seems clear that the main issue is Tera Blast.

Suspect information:
  • All games must be played on the Pokémon Showdown! Ubers UU ladder on a new alt with the following format: "UUBTB”. For example, UUBTB Imperial or UUBTBroken.
  • You have to reach a COIL of 2770 in order to get reqs. For reference, the B-value for this suspect will be 3.
  • Do NOT impersonate other people in your ladder alt, do NOT use any usernames which are offensive, flame-baiting, or targeting specific users, and do NOT use usernames which could be interpreted as breaking any of the username rules on Pokémon Showdown! Failure to abide to this will result in you being barred from voting in this suspect, and potential infractions.
  • Any form of voting manipulation will result in swift and severe punishment. You are more than welcome to state your argument to as many people as you so please, but do not use any kind of underhanded tactics to get a result you desire. Bribery, blackmail, or any other type of tactic used to sway votes will be handled and sanctioned.
  • Do not attempt to cheat the ladder. We will know if you did not actually achieve voting requisites, so don't do it. Harsh sanctions will be applied.
  • The suspect test will last for 14 days, ending on Friday, Aug 30. 23:59 GMT +1
  • There will be 2 suspect tours in the Unofficial Metagames room on Pokemon showdown! on the 24th and 25th of August at 8PM UTC+1 and 1AM UTC+1 respectively, and the winner & runner up will qualify for requirements.

    Tagging dhelmise and Marty to implement on ladder please! thank you.
 
Hydrametr0nice said:
I just want to point out that 'uncompetitive' is a poor adjective to describe Tera Blast. Volatile? Yes. Broken? Maybe. Uncompetitive? No. It's no more uncompetitive than Hidden Power was.
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except hidden power is 60bp and this is 120bp, making it much more splashable and usable, so your point isnt really logical. youre not gonna ever use hidden power as a sweeping/breaking tool except vs very specific targets like heatran or ferrothorn (using them bc hp was removed in gen 8), whereas tera blast can be a ton of types to target a range of mons and still do really well (see tera blast ground zacian for every single steel type bar corv for example)
 
Clas said:
except hidden power is 60bp and this is 120bp, making it much more splashable and usable, so your point isnt really logical. youre not gonna ever use hidden power as a sweeping/breaking tool except vs very specific targets like heatran or ferrothorn (using them bc hp was removed in gen 8), whereas tera blast can be a ton of types to target a range of mons and still do really well (see tera blast ground zacian for every single steel type bar corv for example)
Click to expand...
That's broken, not uncompetitive. Uncompetitive things are like Moody, and even Paralysis.
From the Tiering Policy:
Uncompetitive - elements that reduce the effect of player choice / interaction on the end result to an extreme degree, such that "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant.
Broken - elements that are too good relative to the rest of the metagame such that "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant.
Click to expand...

People just keep using these terms interchangeably.
 
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Hydrametr0nice said:
That's broken, not uncompetitive. Uncompetitive things are like Moody, and even Paralysis.
From the Tiering Policy:


People just keep using these terms interchangeably.
Click to expand...
no its both. reread what the thread starting post says, it falls into both. its not like these mons dont have other strong options, its rather that tera blast is just so stupid that youd just prefer to run tera blast 90% of the time
 
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hello folks, i have done it, with HYPathra of all things, shoutouts go to flittle and this other guy who copied my team, i will be taking a break from this ladder for about 2 days before turning it into an RNG gauntlet once more, for all interested, i will be voting DNB

checked - mod edit
 
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we got there in the end.

Tera fairy blast NDW is absolutely broken, its nearly impossible to play around because the thing just doesn't die. I also used TB Zacian but its far more feasible to account for and play around, and im not convinced anything else is broken with the move. will be voting DNB on tera blast

mod edit- checked
 
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shoutout to how terrible this ladder was and the comical amount of losses i've had to full paras and hypnosis pathra

tera blast is a fundamentally unhealthy move; i've made my stance on this very clear, to a point where numerous people came to me personally about this suspect. after playing this tier a good deal the past few days, i can say pretty confidently that my stance is no different here. i've seen tera blast chien pao, dawn wings necrozma, zacian, espathra, eleki, etc; all of these pokemon (and more) have warped the way in which i've had to navigate games and mus just like how it does in ou. zacian for instance is kind of a tera blast lottery; ghost, fire, and ground i've all seen en masse.

broken? no. again, this move is not broken, and anybody who says that it isn't in a dnb argument misses the point. pokemon who have consistent pools of checks (chien pao -> mag, zacian -> dengo etc) can be navigated more consistently in the heat of battle and tera is utilized in a more consistent and less polarizing way. if shit like dawn wings remains broken (which it seems to be with or without tera blast) then just following up with another suspect is totally fine. tera blast-less zacian and chien pao are manageable threats and removing this move definitely makes them less problematic. tera blast on eleki is not really a major casualty from my experience against it either; it still does what you want it to do and it can make use of defensive tera to do the things you'd want of it from a utility perspective.

my intrinsic curiosity to see what a non-tb tier would look like and to put some of the anti-tera blast sentiment into practice aside, i think it would just be a net positive to get rid of it

mod edit - checked!
 
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this took far too long, and this ladder feels to quote veti "feels like you're playing spl starters every game". absolutely painful and i am haunted by hypnosis espathra for weeks from now probably.

Anyway quick thoughts on the move, voting ban, incredibly dumb move. Makes at least 1 mon broken, another contentious, others harder than they need to be to deal with, can randomly snipe your pokemon without warning and without you being able to consider it. Just to name a few, there were some extraordinarily dumb tera blasts I saw on ladder, like AV tbground mag to lure and kill your mag, tb water zacian in rain, tb ghost zacian with bulk + sub, tera fire blast espathra for mag & dengo. this move is everywhere and isn't fun to play against, is a very unhealthy presence in this metagame, and is a fundamentally poorly designed move imo.
 
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confirming as uubtb icarus, s/o vlone for ending the 18-0 run when i was at 2769 coil and the espathra user for cteaming me afterwards

as one of the 2 council members who voted to not suspect tera blast, i will be voting dnb on this. i dont believe tera blast to be either uncompetitive or broken and the real broken element in this tier currently is ndw. i think we should be focusing on that mon first since its the only real broken abuser of tera blast before anything else takes place
 
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I made a long post on tera blast already here, and my thoughts are the same still. I think banning tera blast would be a mistake, it would limit the viability of strong pokemon like Regieleki when the only real broken pokemon using it is NDW. I explain in my other post more on things like Zacian and Chien-Pao, how the opportunity cost of tera blast and the general structure of uubers allows for them to not be anywhere close to broken even with unpredictability. NDW is the only exception because it changing type and being locked into one coverage move isn't even a downside it just makes broken pokemon even harder to kill because of its ability and stats.

I will be voting do not ban.
 
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All that ladder suffering was for nothing... fr though it took a while for me to find a solid team and went on a 13-1 run before pausing to wait for the tourneys. I will be voting ban on Tera Blast, for reasons I have mentioned before. I also encourage everyone to go watch ausma 's video on Tera Blast as a whole, very thought-out video that summarizes why this move is problematic and uncompetitive. This tier has exacerbated issues due to many of our best sweepers having poor coverage and needing to dig into Tera Blast to get the perfect coverage that makes them overwhelming. I have yet to hear a proper argument for how the move benefits the tier in any meaningful way to offset this uncompetitiveness (aside from propping up already dubious pokemon like Regieleki) but I am open to hearing more thought-out reasoning.

Edit: Forgot I was going to throw in the paste. Have fun: https://pokepast.es/86fbff5f8d77b2b0
 
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Super fast reqs wee
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Will definitely be voting ban, very dumb move that shouldn't have survived this long. Really not much to say that hasn't already been said in Metagame Discussion thread.

:kyurem-white: : confirmed
 
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