I think its pretty clear that no restriction could feasibly win, 35% of the qualified playerbase voted in favour of it in the last survey which really isn't that far off the votes needed to keep status quo. I would guess that the two most popular options in a split vote (ie keep unrestricted tera, tera preview, ban tera blast) would be unrestricted tera and tera preview so it makes most sense to me to vote on that first and have a separate vote on tera blast, assuming an outright ban isn't on the table. There's no way you can have a suspect vote where maintaining the status quo isn't on the table. In an ideal world I think people who want an outright ban would also be able to vote for that but I think its clear that an outright ban won't happen and including it accomplishes nothing. Binary choice > ranked choice imo.
Respectfully, I disagree.
Even the most ardent Tera supporters I know realize Tera in its current form isn't as healthy as it should be.
However, compromise is our only way out of this mess as a community, and if we need to add No Action to the vote then so be it.
The vote could easily look like this:
- No Action
- Team Preview
- Ban Tera Blast
- Team Preview + Ban TB
If needed, we could give players two votes, but I would rather avoid that. But again, I'm open to anything.
Team Preview is the obvious outcome of this suspect- my only question is if TB also gets removed.
So, I want to talk about Tera Team Preview. I'm pro-ban on Tera (and still am), but in the previous suspect test, I decided I favoured Tera Team Preview to No Action. "Even a mild restriction on Tera is better than nothing", I thought to myself.
But having played and watched the metagame for a few more months, and seen Tera's impact on high-level play, I no longer believe Tera Team Preview is a good restriction. On the contrary, I earnestly believe it would be significantly worse than No Action.
First, let me go over the merits of No Action. Though I do think Tera's existence lowers the skill cap along some axes, it also undeniably raises it in other ways.
CBB gives a fantastic defense of this viewpoint in this post, and while I disagree with the balance of the final calculus coming up in favour of Tera, it would be erroneous to discount this aspect entirely. The existence of Terastallize adds multiple axes for skill expression, like:
- needing to predict your opponent's Tera types based on team structure and how they're playing,
- needing to account for ambiguity in whether a given situation is capable of being a win condition (e.g. you might not be able to guarantee an endgame Baxcalibur sweep if there's a Tera Water Tusk in there),
- needing to answer threats proactively,
- being unable to rely on a single Pokemon or a straightforward counterplay as a foolproof bulwark against a given threat (e.g. you can't just smack a Dondozo on your team and be 100% safe vs physical Valiant, you need to have contingencies in place for Tera Electric),
- rewarding creative teambuilding using well-tailored sets (e.g. decisions about Garganacl's Tera type), unusual sets, and targeted lures,
- allowing contingencies for the neutralization of bad matchups through a niche Tera option (say, maybe there's a Pokemon that would sweep you if not for a super niche choice like Tera Ground on your Rotom-W or something),
- rewarding picking good moments in the match to Tera, and
- creating a new form of skill expression in how effectively you pressure your opponent to Tera preemptively.
Now, you can dispute many of these individual points. For example, I would argue that the ability of Tera (or at least Tera with Tera Blast in existence) to create devastating matchup-fishes like Tera Water/Fairy/Rock/Fighting Volcarona or Tera Electric/Water Valiant or Tera Fire Baxcalibur outweighs the positive matchup-negation of #6, or that #4 is just a fancy way of saying "you can't be sure what counters what anymore and have to rely on your team 'accidentally' checking offbeat sets". But I think it's undeniable that Tera facilitates and promotes at least
some level of skill, and that if we are to vote to keep Tera in the tier, we should prioritize preserving that skill aspect.
And this is why I think Tera Team Preview is a terrible option.
Though I dislike Tera, I do concede that just because something "makes Tera 5% less powerful" does not mean it makes the metagame better as a whole. If we decide to not ban Tera, we ought to instead try and create a metagame that nurtures and celebrates the skill that Tera does promote, rather than actively suppressing it. So if that "make Tera 5% less powerful" actively removes a large chunk of the skill expression from Tera, it is worse than the status quo; it preserves the problematic parts of the mechanic while neutering the positives. And I believe Tera Team Preview does this.
I do not claim the list I provided above is at all exhaustive, but it can still serve as a good rhetorical heuristic for determining the potential negative consequences of restrictions on Tera's skill expression. Let me go through point-by-point and assess the impact of Tera on each access of skill expression I outlined (which is, again, not exhaustive).
- needing to predict your opponent's Tera types based on team structure and how they're playing — Tera Team Preview eliminates this.
- needing to account for ambiguity in whether a given situation is capable of being a win condition — Tera Team Preview vastly reduces this by making it far more clear what a win condition looks like (though the presence or absence of Tera Blast as well as ambiguity about what will Tera and when still plays a role).
- needing to answer threats proactively — Tera Team Preview does allow for less "ambiguity" in whether something needs to be answered proactively, but also makes it more straightforward how to do so. You could argue this makes for more strategic and specific gameplay, but I think on net we can say that Tera Team Preview slightly reduces this as it means that you only need to answer threats proactively under certain restrictions.
- being unable to rely on a single Pokemon or a straightforward counterplay as a foolproof bulwark against a given threat — Tera Team Preview barely affects this except perhaps in generally nerfing offbeat forms of Tera and thereby reducing the full range of options to account for (see the next point).
- rewarding creative teambuilding using well-tailored sets, unusual sets, and targeted lures — Tera Team Preview vastly reduces this, particularly by strongly disincentivizing more niche options and making lures essentially ineffective.
- allowing contingencies for the neutralization of bad matchups through a niche Tera option — Tera Team Preview somewhat reduces this as the way many of these options work is via the element of surprise suddenly stopping a sweep or crippling an opposing Pokemon.
- rewarding picking good moments in the match to Tera — Tera Team Preview significantly increases this by giving a skillful player more information to use in making the decision, but also somewhat decreases this by removing ambiguities in the decision-making process. On net, I would be inclined to think Team Preview's effects on this point are overall positive.
- creating a new form of skill expression in how effectively you pressure your opponent to Tera preemptively — Tera team preview increases this by allowing you to identify under what situations a Pokemon might want to Tera and being able to bait it out, but also slightly decreases this by discouraging preemptive Teras (for example, your opponent might Tera a Pokemon and go for a strong neutral Tera Blast as a midground between your Kingambit Tera'ing or staying unTera'd — Nat mentions in this post not losing to a Tera Kingambit even once in recent memory, and I think being able to make midgrounds like this is a large part of that). Again, on net I think Tera Team Preview is positive towards this point, but it's unclear to me.
Going through my list (which is, of course, imperfect — it's incomplete, some aspects of Tera are effectively repeated in multiple options, and different points ought to have different weights — so don't take it as gospel, just as a rough heuristic to think about the different positive effects of Tera on the metagame), we find that, for most points, Tera Team Preview seems to lower skill expression. The two points I found where Tera could arguably increase skill expression (#7 and #8) were both somewhat ambiguous, with positive and negative effects, and in fact I only included #8 on the list in the first place out of a good-faith attempt to find situations that justify Tera Team Preview (I think most players would agree that #8 is the weakest point in the list).
Ultimately, I think Tera Team Preview comes at significant costs to the positive aspects of keeping Tera in the tier, while being unclear as to what extent it addresses the negative aspects. For this reason, I think Tera Team Preview would be a terrible choice, and favour No Action over it.
By point of comparison, allow me to look at an option I originally clowned on — banning Tera Blast. I originally did not like this, and while I still don't think it addresses many problematic points of Tera, it does reduce a significant amount of the mechanic's potential for matchup-fishing which is, in my experience and from what I've read of other players, the most unambiguously uncompetitive part of Tera (it led to Volcarona's ban, for example).
- needing to predict your opponent's Tera types based on team structure and how they're playing — banning Tera Blast affects this by reducing the amount of viable offensive Teras, but it's unclear to me whether that affect on skill expression is positive or negative. I think it's overall positive, since looking at Volcarona for example, there were a lot of situations where Volcarona's potential Tera choice given the matchup was, like, 6 options long, and this would reduce the overall delta of choices and make it more feasible to account for the full gamut of possibilities. Unclear, but I lean banning Tera Blast having a slight positive effect.
- needing to account for ambiguity in whether a given situation is capable of being a win condition — banning Tera Blast does not affect this "on your side" (i.e. you still know whether your own mon is a win condition) but somewhat reduces this "on the other side" (eliminating Tera Blast as an option makes it easier to rule out a lot of potential sweeps).
- needing to answer threats proactively — banning Tera Blast likely does not significantly affect this (at least not disproportionately — when I say "does not affect", of course there are knock-on effects from its impacts on overall gameplay and on the overall metagame, but those are largely accounted for in the other points I list, and the impacts not addressed are very hard to predict from a tiering perspective).
- being unable to rely on a single Pokemon or a straightforward counterplay as a foolproof bulwark against a given threat — banning Tera Blast reduces this.
- rewarding creative teambuilding using well-tailored sets, unusual sets, and targeted lures — banning Tera Blast mostly reduces this, though it does slightly increase creativity by encouraging players to scour the movepools of Pokemon to find coverage options that gain STAB with Tera, rather than relying on Tera Blast every time (think of how people ran weird coverage just to use it as a lure with Z-Moves).
- allowing contingencies for the neutralization of bad matchups through a niche Tera option — banning Tera Blast likely does not significantly affect this since most bad-matchup neutralization relied on the defensive profile of Tera users rather than their offensive potential.
- rewarding picking good moments in the match to Tera — banning Tera Blast likely does not significantly affect this, or might even have a slight increase in effective skill expression due to an emphasis in Tera being done for general utility rather than "see Pokemon Tera Blast hits SE, click Tera Blast".
- creating a new form of skill expression in how effectively you pressure your opponent to Tera preemptively — banning Tera Blast likely does not significantly affect this, though this particular point is very unclear to me and I could see it going both ways.
As we can see, the impacts of banning Tera Blast on Tera's created opportunities for skill expression, though existent, are far less severe. Of course, banning Tera Blast's effects on the negative aspects of Tera are also much subdued compared to more aggressive action. Obviously, it only affects Tera Blast users, which slightly reduces the power level of the mechanic and might salvage a couple Pokemon from getting banned, but really is mostly an attempt to reduce the MU-fishing nature of Tera. Still, even if I personally believe it to be inadequate at addressing most of the problems with Tera, it does seem that banning Tera Blast comes out favourably in comparison to both Tera Team Preview and to No Action. This post isn't meant to be a defense of banning Tera Blast so I won't hammer this point too much — I just wanted to mention it for comparison.
My current "preference" list of the options that currently have nonnegligible support is Ban Tera > Ban Tera Blast > No Action > Tera Team Preview. None of the other options proposed so far seem feasible to me, neither in terms of effectiveness nor in terms of conformance towards tiering policy (even Tera Team Preview is on shaky ground in this regard, as that VGC "precedent" isn't really much precedent at all — it's transparently meant to be an anti-cheating measure, not a balancing measure, as evidenced by it only applying to tournament play rather than online play).
I'm probably one of the few ppl who is going to read all this thoroughly and absorb it, because I spent the better part of an hour basically making your same post before deleting it. I have many posts on different threads saying the restrictions are stupid and barely fix anything, but in the past 2 weeks I realized something.
As someone who is also very pro-ban it's time we face the music.
This goofy shit isn't going anywhere- straight up.
There is too much propaganda, and it's too ingrained in player's minds.
It's a weird mix of some top players who love the complexity and the giant skill gap increase so they can shit all over players
And lower skill, semi-casuals who love their insta-win MU fish wins with their Fairy Garg or Flying Gambit.
Then you just have a crazy number of players who think banning Tera would instantly turn SV into SS.
Also can't forget the posers who say banning would kill the meta- more propaganda, of course, but effective.
Full Ban would get a respectable amount of support, but nowhere near enough to counteract all our opposition.
Full Ban camp's only chance was for council to handle the initial suspect properly, which wasn't done.
A separate ladder w/o Tera was our only real shot, because players don't know the amazing meta we're missing out on without the shadow of this terrible gimmick.
I firmly believe if a separate test ladder was implemented, and ppl could feel how much better this meta is, we could ban this gimmick, but council won't do that.
I don't think any council member supports full ban whatsoever.
If some do, they definitely don't want to unwashed masses screaming about "Big Stall" and how council is tyrannical for the next 2 years.
Full ban will get zero support from our tier leaders.
If you need proof council wants nothing to do with a full ban- then I can tell you the story of how I had double the requirements needed to create a No-Tera room on PS! where we would hold tours w/o the gimmick. If we wanted to make a room about crocheting or bird watching, we would have one, because again, we literally exceeded all the requirements laid out. Yet our (50+ players, several OU mods and an OU room owner) request was denied with no actual reason besides "it's not the right time" and basically 'try discord big bro lmao'.
Council doesn't want full ban, and we don't have enough votes, for various, unfortunate reasons.
I say this to you and everyone else who fundamentally despises Tera: we lost.
Will we be proven right years later? Absolutely. But it won't be during this meta.
But yes, in some ways, in many ways, the restrictions are useless, but it's the best we're going to get, and our team needs to accept this and throw our weight into banning TB and implementing Team Preview.
I doubt No Ban will be an option on the suspect- if it is, it's a trap. It's a "waste my vote" button that allows the no restriction camp to easily win.
So yeah
Even if restrictions solve 5% of the problems, that's better than nothing, kings.
Preview lets me know if my opp has Fire Gambit I can't Wisp, or if the Nite is standard or some Tera Fire Encore shit.
That's better than not knowing.
Banning TB stops me from loading up against some goofy screens G-Cuno with SP+ Fighting TB. It's one less Fairy Gambit TB.
Again, better than nothing.
We gotta take the L, and do whatever we can to mitigate the issues caused by this awful gimmick.
Countering one of the common claims against terastalization, that it "got a bunch of mons banned to Ubers," this is both inaccurate/dishonest (depending on the exact claim) and completely irrelevant going forward, because those mons aren't coming back anyway.
If a mon is banned 'because' of tera, whether it was the sole problem (unquestionably the case with Regieleki) or a major factor (Volcarona), then it'd come back down to OU if the mechanic is banned: to phrase it another way, if it doesn't stand ready to return with a full ban, then it wasn't a reason for the ban. Yes, tera might have been mentioned in the suspect or ban posts, but that's because those posts cover everything; nobody is going to claim that Substitute is a problem even though it was a major factor in Espathra's power after the Shed Tail ban.
To give an example of what I mean, Palafin was banned because the Bulk Up sets had minimal counterplay for defensive teams; they couldn't status it due to a fast Taunt or Substitute, nor chip it down due to Drain Punch, nor easily wall it due to Bulk Up. It was also packing a BST of 650 and had every tool it needs - the STABmons sample set is running the same four moves as the former OU standard, even - and probably would have eaten a ban due to general power in time, but it was the oppressive matchup into defensive counterplay that led to the early ban.
In a metagame where tera is fully banned, Palafin...has exactly the same problems. He's still able to set up on most defensive mons and muscle his way through, has strong priority to contribute versus HO, a great defensive typing and good bulk to match up respectably into balanced teams, and has a respectable enough movepool to adapt to defensive counterplay. Acrobatics, Zen Headbutt, even Wave Crash or a cheeky mixed set (106 SpA isn't amazing, but a STAB Surf will 2HKO PhysDef Great Tusk or Landorus-T) never had a chance to be explored, but they're available techs. Palafin isn't coming back, and thus he isn't a casualty of terastalization.
Really, we get three mons back from Ubers if we ban tera: Regieleki, Espathra, and Volcarona. Regieleki isn't even good in that scenario, with eight freaking Ground types in OU proper ready to wall it forever, and Espathra might get booted again since it'll still do unkind things to stall under screens, with nothing able to take Stored Power if it has a chance to set up.
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On a side note, it's notable how the go-to example for undesirable 50-50s is Kingambit versus Great Tusk, which does make sense since those are two of the most dominant mons in the tier, but I have to ask: is the problem there tera, or is the problem how few mons can even theoretically check a healthy last-mon Kingambit? You can have a healthy tier that's centralized entirely around one mon, we've seen that with both Primal Groudon and Snorlax, but most players still consider it a problem.
Losing mons is just a fraction of the anti-tera argument, but you still have good points.
But moving on,
Even without Tera, this meta would have a good amount of problems, tbh.
We have such a strange mix of mons that this meta has always felt off to me in some ways.
Val has basically no answers sometimes, but we can't get rid of it or Gambit and Pult become too strong.
Gambit is insane, clearly broken, but we can't get rid of it or Pult and Gold (just dark and ghost in general) become too strong.
Fairy/Water Garg is the easiest to pilot win-cons I've ever seen. Literal children can win by pressing Curse/ID and spamming Salt Cure/Recover. I've seen washed up players win tour games from turn 1 with it- but we can't ban it or Pult becomes too strong.
Etc.
Banning Gambit would create a domino effect that would make an already mid meta even worse.
Even if Val, Tusk, Gambit, Pult, Garg, and Gold were magically removed today, all that would do is give rise to Enam, Moon, Bax, etc.
I highly doubt we will see any more bans this generation, excluding some random OP DLC mon.
I'd put hard money on Gambit never being banned.
The only way some of these borderline/clearly broken mons would ever be balanced would be banning Tera, but that won't happen- so the next best thing is to try and semi-balance them with Tera restrictions.
