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Metagame Terastallization Tiering Discussion, Part II [CLOSED FOR DLC]
- Thread starter Finchinator
- Start date
- Status
I can't believe you're younger than me. I guess having responsibilities really makes someone mature. Should get some of those.
I will say that we have been shown to ban RNG items just for being RNG and not because they are good in the past: Quick Claw being banned in National Dex is a good example.
Fake Out is not a very good example of flinching not being a problem because it's guaranteed to happen, can't be spammed, and is a very weak move. It's not like Jirachi's Iron Head or Togekiss's Air Slash where it's a higher base power move that can be spammed over and over again. You might also say it's only 60% to work as well but you forget that oftentimes they will do it on mons that are paralyzed and even if you do break out a couple flinches are all it takes to put you in a bad position for the next mon to come in and take advantage of all the racked up damage.
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So this isn't entirely irrelevant to the Tera discussion, I do want to say I see a lot of people prioritizing fun over whether or not the mechanic is unhealthy or broken. This was a big issue back in Gen 8 and I really think that if fun is your main concern, then you might actually have more fun playing the tier without Tera there to act as an unhealthy mechanic. In my personal opinion, Tera is one of those mechanics that's only fun when you're the one getting to abuse it and generally stops being so whenever your opponent turns it around on you.
In general though I just think Tera is unhealthy and promotes the aspect of reversing an entire game on someone because they made a single (potentially unavoidable) mistake too much.
Ok so basically this is kind of late but
I wanted to take a more objective and macro-level look at the impacts of Terastalization, so I've spent the past week and a half or so writing up some code that can take in a replay and output a set of stats indicating the performance of each Pokemon in that game, such as the number of active turns, times brought in, KOs, % damage dealt, and more. More importantly, I also tracked which Pokemon terastallized in a game, enabling us to compare the performance of pokemon that terastallize to those that do not to see if we get any significant results.
For my dataset I used every SV WCoP game after the Urshifu and Volcorona bans, giving a dataset of 232 games to work with; the dataset can be found here. I also dropped all pokemon that had 0 active turns in battle, thus wouldn't even have the chance to tera if it wanted to. For my analysis I did a fixed-effect regression using terastallization as the explanatory variable against several different dependent variables. Simply put, for each pokemon it takes the difference between its performance without terastallization and compares it to its performance with terastallization to compute the overall effect terastallization has on pokemon performance. I also looked at how terastallization impacts the performance of the most commonly terastallized pokemon in WCoP, being Kingambit, Garganacl, Iron Valiant, and Baxcalibur. In light of the incoming Kingambit suspect I also ran the regression on all pokemon excluding Kingambit, to estimate the impacts of Tera in a metagame without Kingambit. The results can be found here.
Surprisingly, terastallization had significant results for most metrics I chose to look at, meaning we can be confident that these results weren't just caused by random chance in our dataset. Notably, on average, terastallization increases the KOs a pokemon attains by 0.679, the % damage dealt by 61.984, hits taken by 0.468, and the number of active turns by 1.642, indicating that terastallization has nontrivial impacts on a pokemon's ability to make progress in a game. However, a pokemon that terastalizes does not have significant effects on the number of times it switches in, supporting the premise that terastallization is mainly utilized for short-term swings and endgame cleanups than to improve a pokemon's longevity over the course of a game.
Looking at some pokemon individually, we first see that Kingambit yields results mostly similar to that of Tera on the entire dataset. From this lens it seems that terastallization may not be as major of a factor in Kingambit's current power levels.
Garganacl's results are also not particularly surprising; Tera lets it sustain more hits and Recover more often than the average Tera user. Offensively, its numbers are rather low since Salt Cure isn't being added to damage numbers currently.
The most surprising results come from Iron Valiant and Baxcalibur's performances. Both of these pokemon don't have significant results for hits taken, but have the highest significant numbers for damage dealt and KOs, showing their ability to suddenly Tera to net a KO during a game rather than utilizing Tera defensively for setup opportunities.
Lastly, the results of the analysis without Kingambit in the dataset are mostly similar to that with Kingambit included, so part of me is skeptical how much a Kingambit ban will actually do for making terastallization healthier.
One thing to note however, these regressions also resulted in low R^2 values across the board, meaning that the effects that terastallization has high variance on the outcome. While this high variance may at first glance imply the inconsistency of the mechanic and the ability to play around it, a look at the actual distributions of our variables argues an opposite story. For instance, take a look at the difference between the number of KOs attained by pokemon that do not Terastallize versus pokemon that do:
Here, we see that despite high variance, the ability of terastallization to net a pokemon KOs is quite consistent, with less than 30% of terastallized pokemon obtaining no KOs at all. This compares to over 50% of non-Tera pokemon getting no KOs in a game. The high variance instead comes into play through a terastallized pokemon's ability to net potentially several KOs in a game. The consistency at which this occurs- more than 70% of terastallized pokemon attain a KO in a game- demonstrates that the mechanic currently is very difficult to play around, even at a tournament level. Because of this, I'm leaning to support some sort of tiering action for Tera. So yeah let me know if you have any feedback or questions or other things I should analyze
I wanted to take a more objective and macro-level look at the impacts of Terastalization, so I've spent the past week and a half or so writing up some code that can take in a replay and output a set of stats indicating the performance of each Pokemon in that game, such as the number of active turns, times brought in, KOs, % damage dealt, and more. More importantly, I also tracked which Pokemon terastallized in a game, enabling us to compare the performance of pokemon that terastallize to those that do not to see if we get any significant results.
Turns Active specifically refers to how many times a Pokemon used a move during battle.
Times Brought is pretty self-explanatory; this includes being the lead, being pivoted in, coming in after a sack, and just raw switching in.
Percent Damage Dealt only includes damage dealt by direct attacks. Chip dealt by hazards, poison, salt cure, etc. are not included in this variable. If a pokemon damages a Substitute that damage is not added to this variable.
KOs is the number of opposing pokemon that were knocked out while the pokemon was active, including damage from direct attacks and indirect damage as well. If an opposing pokemon knocks itself out with Healing Wish, Explosion, etc. this does not count as a KO.
Hits Taken is the number of direct attacks a pokemon sustained, as well as the number of times the pokemon is swapped into a move it is immune to. This aims to be the main metric by which a pokemon's defensive capabilities are measured.
Percent Healed sums all healing done to a pokemon, including passive recovery from Leftovers. If another pokemon passes Wish/Healing wish to the pokemon, the pokemon that received the wish gets its percent healed stat added to.
The Tera indicator variable is a 1 if the pokemon terastallizes during a game, and is 0 otherwise. If a pokemon does terastallize, its stats reflect its overall performance in the game, both before and after terastallizing.
Times Brought is pretty self-explanatory; this includes being the lead, being pivoted in, coming in after a sack, and just raw switching in.
Percent Damage Dealt only includes damage dealt by direct attacks. Chip dealt by hazards, poison, salt cure, etc. are not included in this variable. If a pokemon damages a Substitute that damage is not added to this variable.
KOs is the number of opposing pokemon that were knocked out while the pokemon was active, including damage from direct attacks and indirect damage as well. If an opposing pokemon knocks itself out with Healing Wish, Explosion, etc. this does not count as a KO.
Hits Taken is the number of direct attacks a pokemon sustained, as well as the number of times the pokemon is swapped into a move it is immune to. This aims to be the main metric by which a pokemon's defensive capabilities are measured.
Percent Healed sums all healing done to a pokemon, including passive recovery from Leftovers. If another pokemon passes Wish/Healing wish to the pokemon, the pokemon that received the wish gets its percent healed stat added to.
The Tera indicator variable is a 1 if the pokemon terastallizes during a game, and is 0 otherwise. If a pokemon does terastallize, its stats reflect its overall performance in the game, both before and after terastallizing.
For my dataset I used every SV WCoP game after the Urshifu and Volcorona bans, giving a dataset of 232 games to work with; the dataset can be found here. I also dropped all pokemon that had 0 active turns in battle, thus wouldn't even have the chance to tera if it wanted to. For my analysis I did a fixed-effect regression using terastallization as the explanatory variable against several different dependent variables. Simply put, for each pokemon it takes the difference between its performance without terastallization and compares it to its performance with terastallization to compute the overall effect terastallization has on pokemon performance. I also looked at how terastallization impacts the performance of the most commonly terastallized pokemon in WCoP, being Kingambit, Garganacl, Iron Valiant, and Baxcalibur. In light of the incoming Kingambit suspect I also ran the regression on all pokemon excluding Kingambit, to estimate the impacts of Tera in a metagame without Kingambit. The results can be found here.
Surprisingly, terastallization had significant results for most metrics I chose to look at, meaning we can be confident that these results weren't just caused by random chance in our dataset. Notably, on average, terastallization increases the KOs a pokemon attains by 0.679, the % damage dealt by 61.984, hits taken by 0.468, and the number of active turns by 1.642, indicating that terastallization has nontrivial impacts on a pokemon's ability to make progress in a game. However, a pokemon that terastalizes does not have significant effects on the number of times it switches in, supporting the premise that terastallization is mainly utilized for short-term swings and endgame cleanups than to improve a pokemon's longevity over the course of a game.
Looking at some pokemon individually, we first see that Kingambit yields results mostly similar to that of Tera on the entire dataset. From this lens it seems that terastallization may not be as major of a factor in Kingambit's current power levels.
Garganacl's results are also not particularly surprising; Tera lets it sustain more hits and Recover more often than the average Tera user. Offensively, its numbers are rather low since Salt Cure isn't being added to damage numbers currently.
The most surprising results come from Iron Valiant and Baxcalibur's performances. Both of these pokemon don't have significant results for hits taken, but have the highest significant numbers for damage dealt and KOs, showing their ability to suddenly Tera to net a KO during a game rather than utilizing Tera defensively for setup opportunities.
Lastly, the results of the analysis without Kingambit in the dataset are mostly similar to that with Kingambit included, so part of me is skeptical how much a Kingambit ban will actually do for making terastallization healthier.
One thing to note however, these regressions also resulted in low R^2 values across the board, meaning that the effects that terastallization has high variance on the outcome. While this high variance may at first glance imply the inconsistency of the mechanic and the ability to play around it, a look at the actual distributions of our variables argues an opposite story. For instance, take a look at the difference between the number of KOs attained by pokemon that do not Terastallize versus pokemon that do:
Here, we see that despite high variance, the ability of terastallization to net a pokemon KOs is quite consistent, with less than 30% of terastallized pokemon obtaining no KOs at all. This compares to over 50% of non-Tera pokemon getting no KOs in a game. The high variance instead comes into play through a terastallized pokemon's ability to net potentially several KOs in a game. The consistency at which this occurs- more than 70% of terastallized pokemon attain a KO in a game- demonstrates that the mechanic currently is very difficult to play around, even at a tournament level. Because of this, I'm leaning to support some sort of tiering action for Tera. So yeah let me know if you have any feedback or questions or other things I should analyze
I do have a bit of criticism for the above. I don't really know if there's a specific hypothesis you can pose that will have a meaningful result statistically on whether tera is broken or not. There's likely evidence to show "Tera users get more KOs than non-tera users" but I don't know if that leads to Tera needing a ban. Additionally, I think its fairly hard to decouple the reasons that Tera users get more KOs. Tera, as a one turn power spike, obviously does help securing KOs, or reversing matchups, and that naturally leads to getting more KOs. However, at the same time, you're often Tera'ing a wincon, or just a mon that's already strong in the matchup, and its hard to decouple the mon's strength in the matchup, in a like vacuum sense, from its performance as a tera user, least from a stats standpoint.
Additionally I don't find it surprising that 50% of non-tera mons fail to get KOs, compared to 30% of post-tera mons. Tera's often saved until the late game, and well, you cannot Tera a dead mon.
This ain't to detract from the above, its just really hard to like statistically show stuff on whether tera's broken or not, and having data on the relative number of KOs some of the stronger mons get is useful.
Edit:
W.r.t. RL's post below
252 Atk Protosynthesis Great Tusk Head Smash vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Pelipper: 308-364 (95.3 - 112.6%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO
The replay really just shows a lure working, Head Smash would have also prolly killed the Peli.
W.r.t. Buzzwole's post 2 below, Darek also does give the increase in % damage done, ~62%, though I think a comparison of the distributions of damage dealt could be helpful for proper comparison.
Additionally I don't find it surprising that 50% of non-tera mons fail to get KOs, compared to 30% of post-tera mons. Tera's often saved until the late game, and well, you cannot Tera a dead mon.
This ain't to detract from the above, its just really hard to like statistically show stuff on whether tera's broken or not, and having data on the relative number of KOs some of the stronger mons get is useful.
Edit:
W.r.t. RL's post below
252 Atk Protosynthesis Great Tusk Head Smash vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Pelipper: 308-364 (95.3 - 112.6%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO
The replay really just shows a lure working, Head Smash would have also prolly killed the Peli.
W.r.t. Buzzwole's post 2 below, Darek also does give the increase in % damage done, ~62%, though I think a comparison of the distributions of damage dealt could be helpful for proper comparison.
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As someone who’s played semi-competitively since the days of shoddy battle, I just find Tera to be an uncompetitive mechanic unlike what has existed in other gens. While I acknowledge there is some skill to get the best use out of it, it often throws the game into a degree of awkwardness and variability that you just cannot prepare for. No matter what. I don’t know what the proper course of action is. I just think occasions like this admittedly ridiculous low-ladder game should not exist in competitive Pokémon:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1910151827
Forgive my eloquence, but this just feels… wrong.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1910151827
Forgive my eloquence, but this just feels… wrong.
i've gotta respect the work that went into this statistical analysis, but i also have to point out that it's much more difficult to actually determine which mon is most responsible for kos sometimes than can be done with simple statistics. how should you factor in hazards, or residual damage? (not factoring them in at all is probably not the best practice.) if something dies to salt cure while garganacl isn't on the field, who do we attribute that to? what if a mon does 90% to the opponent and dies, then some weaksauce stallmon comes out and takes the other 10? we know which one got the ko, but which one was really responsible for it? who put in the work?
additionally, as quziel said, this statistic also doesn't really point to the mechanic needing a ban, though i do also support tiering action. i'm sure there are a lot of other things you could run the numbers on and come out to the same conclusion that it helps net kos more easily. i bet at least one choice item has similar numbers
I'm not here to comment on what you said, but more on that replay.
omm You are just horrible at this game. they tera into electric, kill your main mon and you just forfeit?
before tera that typa stuff just existed. people faint someone's main mon and they forfeit, that jus how the cookie crumbles lil bro
What a great contribution to the discussion.
I say that and then comment on tera, jus ignore that part
Tera didn't invent that type of main issue that are you are talking about. People used to mega first turn and kill with the increased stats and someone forfeited, people got z-moved first turn and forfeited, people got dynamax swept within the first turns and got swept
Some are more fair, some are less fair but the fact is tera didn't add that much to that factor
Sidenote: if great tusk ran a coverage move, it could have ohkoed anw so Tera isn’t even an excuse
252 Atk Protosynthesis Great Tusk Head Smash vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Pelipper: 308-364 (95.3 - 112.6%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO
When you start with an asinine insult, what do you expect.
The whole point of even saving the replay was to show how ridiculous the mechanic is. Tera Electric Tusk makes no logical sense to serious players, but the fact that it can type change, gain a new STAB + coverage, and turn what is conventionally a hard check to Great Tusk into minced lunch meat is the point of the replay.
It’s a silly argument and premise. Mega’s are limited to select Pokémon, have a defined typing and stats, and are easily identifiable in team preview.
Z-moves were also limited to defined move strength and typing, did not change the user’s typing, and could be used only once per game.
Thank you for citing a mechanic that was quickbanned because of how stupidly broken it was.
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I agree with you that Terastal is a horrible mechanic, but Tera Electric on Great Tusk absolutely and unequivocally does have its legitimate uses.
It allows Tusk to spin freely vs. Zapdos without getting static paralyzed and to set up on it with Bulk Up if one chose to do that. It allows Great Tusk to more easily facetank boosted Iron Heads from Kingambit, overall reducing the amount of damage a Tera Electric Great Tusk takes over 2 turns compared to a base Great Tusk hit by Iron Head and then Sucker Punch. Tera Electric allows Great Tusk to live a +2 Tera Flying Acrobatics and OHKO Sneasler back if Great Tusk has invested a lot in Attack and uses Ice Spinner. It allows Great Tusk to take a Wave Crash from Floatzel in the rain as long as Floatzel hasn't Teraed. It allows Great Tusk to revenge kill a +6 Azumarill since it can take an Aqua Jet if it no longer has its Ground-typing. Tera Electric Great Tusk can survive an Enamorus Moonblast and hit it back hard with Ice Spinner.
Just because you don't have the imagination to see what use it has competitively doesn't mean that Tera Electric Great Tusk makes no sense. It is a perfectly fine Tera Type for Great Tusk to use even if it may not be the best one. And I hate Terastal more than most people. I'm not here to defend this mechanic as I want it banned more than almost anyone here.
So, given these three things, you can probably understand why the community, which doesn't hate Tera half as much as it hates Dynamax, might want to try a Tera Blast ban, as a serious first step, rather than an outright removal of the mechanic. Tera Blast wasn't really a serious proposal before more the recent discussions, but it's hard to argue that.. well, if you removed Tera Blast? A gamestate like this couldn't occur.
That said, this is just a cheese set. People have gotten blown out on turn 1 by cheese sets for most of Pokemon's life at this point, and Tera is just a new avenue to get blown out by the worst team-building you've ever seen. Surely you're familiar with the jokes about low ladder being a living, breathing organism?
Honestly, after seeing that turbo ragequit game, it really shows to me that you have A LOT to learn about the series as a whole. Tera is nowhere near as bad as Dynamaxing or Z-Moves; Both of which BREAK THROUGH PROTECT. (But not Max Protect in the case of DMaxing, or immunities.)
You lost to a cheese set on low ladder and are using it to try and ""justify"" that Tera is an uncompetitive mechanic. That's just the textbook definition of mad because bad. Tera isn't anywhere near as bad as you think it is. I guarantee you that if that were a STANDARD Tusk, they would be sweating bullets and needing to switch from that Tusk to probably Chomp and needing to eat a Rain Boosted Surf/Hydro Miss, or take a Hurricane (if the Gambit wasn't AV.)
I've lost to cheese sets. I've ran cheese sets. I personally find Tera to be an enjoyable mechanic on both ends of the game, as it can suddenly shift the checks and counters for a Pokemon, or make them way more scary than they usually would be. Cheese is cheese is cheese. I'd hate to see how you'd fare against a whole gimmick team.
I’ve been a member of this forum for over 15 years and I can’t ever remember the community being this forward with personal attacks.
I don’t know how this is competitive.
Z Moves were fine, in play and objectively. They were restricted by requiring an item and needing a move in the learnset in the first place. This is distinctly different from tera, which requires no item, allows the mon to keep previous stabs, and even power them up if it desires. And with Tera blast allows for mons to have the desired coverage at the cost of a slot which some mons don't mind.
Besides, the mechanic no longer exists so it holds no actual sway when talking about gen 9 and tera.
i hate to break it to ya but these aren't personal attacks, we're all just baffled. you ragequit, recorded yourself ragequitting, posted it on a highly trafficked forum thread, and are now having a very public meltdown about tera. you couldn't pay me to embarrass myself like that. if you've been here since 2006 and you're still ragequitting over niche sets, you need to sit down and do some serious self-evaluation over the place that competitive pokemon holds in your life
i think z-moves were kinda bullshit and they broke a lot of mons, but they didn't deserve the banhammer because they weren't broken in and of themselves. now why does that sound familiar
Z-Moves didn't really break a lot of mons. Blaziken was the only mon banned in theory 'cause of Z-Moves with no option for a test. Stupid mons like Naganadel and Pheromosa were broken even without Z-Moves. Kartana, which should have been banned in Gen 7 because of Z-Giga Impact, was the only other mon that a Z-Move was broken on.
Tera overall has a much higher impact on battles than Z-Moves and breaks more mons than Z-Moves did although banning Tera Blast would trim the list to an extent since the move's impact with Tera resulted in 3 mons being banned (Tera Fighting Espathra, Volcarona, and Regieleki). For me personally, I consider Terastal broken whereas I found Z-Moves fine. Z-Moves didn't give you set-up opportunities on what should be your checks or counters like Terastal does, amplifying the threat level of every top threat in the meta.
I still consider banning Tera Blast the only legitimate Terastal restriction aside from an outright ban since banning Tera Blast doesn't change how the mechanic works and doesn't give players information they shouldn't have that leads to more unwinnable matchups.
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i dont usually comment as much anymore but this right here is the rationale for us banning stuff isnt it? usually we are a lot more analytical about mons who are able to smash their checks and counters by swapping the moveset but if we use this rationale to defend tera, then we are being hypocritical about our past actions no?
altho i do feel that, tera is a really fun and interesting mechanic, (i say this knowing that this option has largely been discussed to death), i feel that tera preview will truly make it easier for us to justify living with tera.
Touche. Very little.
As someone who's played competitive since late ORAS, maybe I don't have as much room to speak here, but to hell with it I'll throw my two cents in.
Tera to me should not be banned. I think it would be an extremely poor decision for the tier as a whole, and that it sets a precedent for pretty much saying "can't figure it out so it has to go".
While it is true that some mons were broken by tera, and it does have the ability to flip matchups on their head, it isn't as black and white as that. This generation has probably one of the highest skill ceilings due to it requiring the knowledge of how and when to use tera in order to get the most value from it. Sure, you can run lure sets and yes you can lure things outside your normal movepool, but in almost every case this is a massive opportunity cost either by forcing a dedicated tera early or by sacrificing another, more consistent option that you can no longer fit because of tera blast. I personally have never lost to a lure that I felt didn't make sense, and honestly I've rarely lost to them at all. Not never, but rarely.
That being said, ignoring the lure capabilities of tera for a moment, let's focus on the rest of the mechanic. At this point, a lot of teras are extremely common and are readily expected even. Most mons don't have more than a couple they can run effectively and consistently, and those variables can often be discernible through team composition by a trained eye who knows what weaknesses need to be covered, I.e a team with only one water resist or without one would likely have tera water on garg to alleviate that pressure. Because of this there actually is a level of predictability that players of a certain level can exploit. Tera also allows more freedom in team composition as a whole, due to the fact that you can build in a way that would normally be unviable(no water resist for this example again) yet if you want to you can dedicate a tera slot to that weakness. This is also not without opportunity cost and I think it deserves mention because like previous generational gimmicks, the fact that it can only be used once per battle puts more pressure on you to utilize it effectively. It's rarely a simple case of "click button, power up stab and win" except in fringe cases such as Baxcalibur (who I believe to be broken but that's for another conversation), and it forces constant awareness of the game state not just on your side but the opponent's as well. These interactions, while I can understand they can be frustrating, are not inherently uncompetitive at their core but quite the opposite. They add a layer of awareness that is rarely required in any other generation.
In conclusion I don't believe tera should be restricted whatsoever, but if a tera blast suspect is the best middle ground I would be open to trying it. I personally don't find tera lures to be overwhelming due to the opportunity cost they often present, and in hundreds of games, including numerous high ladder games, I have not once lost to a tera blast lure in a way that wasn't due to my own misplays, and I have never used one to overwhelming effect either, although I've been experimenting with something cool lately. Might reveal that later.
Sorry for text wall just sharing my thoughts.
Tera to me should not be banned. I think it would be an extremely poor decision for the tier as a whole, and that it sets a precedent for pretty much saying "can't figure it out so it has to go".
While it is true that some mons were broken by tera, and it does have the ability to flip matchups on their head, it isn't as black and white as that. This generation has probably one of the highest skill ceilings due to it requiring the knowledge of how and when to use tera in order to get the most value from it. Sure, you can run lure sets and yes you can lure things outside your normal movepool, but in almost every case this is a massive opportunity cost either by forcing a dedicated tera early or by sacrificing another, more consistent option that you can no longer fit because of tera blast. I personally have never lost to a lure that I felt didn't make sense, and honestly I've rarely lost to them at all. Not never, but rarely.
That being said, ignoring the lure capabilities of tera for a moment, let's focus on the rest of the mechanic. At this point, a lot of teras are extremely common and are readily expected even. Most mons don't have more than a couple they can run effectively and consistently, and those variables can often be discernible through team composition by a trained eye who knows what weaknesses need to be covered, I.e a team with only one water resist or without one would likely have tera water on garg to alleviate that pressure. Because of this there actually is a level of predictability that players of a certain level can exploit. Tera also allows more freedom in team composition as a whole, due to the fact that you can build in a way that would normally be unviable(no water resist for this example again) yet if you want to you can dedicate a tera slot to that weakness. This is also not without opportunity cost and I think it deserves mention because like previous generational gimmicks, the fact that it can only be used once per battle puts more pressure on you to utilize it effectively. It's rarely a simple case of "click button, power up stab and win" except in fringe cases such as Baxcalibur (who I believe to be broken but that's for another conversation), and it forces constant awareness of the game state not just on your side but the opponent's as well. These interactions, while I can understand they can be frustrating, are not inherently uncompetitive at their core but quite the opposite. They add a layer of awareness that is rarely required in any other generation.
In conclusion I don't believe tera should be restricted whatsoever, but if a tera blast suspect is the best middle ground I would be open to trying it. I personally don't find tera lures to be overwhelming due to the opportunity cost they often present, and in hundreds of games, including numerous high ladder games, I have not once lost to a tera blast lure in a way that wasn't due to my own misplays, and I have never used one to overwhelming effect either, although I've been experimenting with something cool lately. Might reveal that later.
Sorry for text wall just sharing my thoughts.
You could argue Tera actually makes certain mons easier to deal with if anything. Could you imagine how difficult it would be to handle Bax if you couldn’t Tera Steel or Fairy a random mon? You can’t just brainlessly sweep because the opposition can still terastilize.
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