Metagame Terastallization Tiering Discussion, Part II [CLOSED FOR DLC]

[Finchinator]

if the goal of tiering is to create a more skill-based meta, would not the question of "is the meta better (i.e. more skill-based) without this" be a pertinent one to ask?

If you are going to construe this single line that mentions nothing specifically about what you are arguing as cause for a comparative tool, then can you explain where it says this should apply to only core mechanics? If we construe it this way, shouldn't every suspect ever be met with a second ladder with an identical metagame without the Pokemon then? And shouldn't every close Uber be subject to semi-regular retesting for the sake of clarity for a metagame with and without it? And shouldn't the same be applied to certain clauses? And so on.

This mission statement being construed loosely as reason to back your highly specific argument without any attention to tiering context is nonsense. You are scraping at the very bottom of the barrel for the sake of finding SOMETHING by quoting an out-of-context line that does not mention your objective at all and not considering the awful slippery slope it would enable, which also is not touched on.

The person who is in charge of the same tiering framework, who is above the OU council to begin with, even veto'd the idea of another ladder or format to begin with. It is clearly not within the intent of what you quoted to support this and your post is at best unrealistic stretching.

 

[Finchinator]

It's not like this needs to be an absolute. You certainly can just copy-paste the tier with no Tera as well as not unban anything to make it a 1-1 comparison. The question of which current ubers might work in that metagame wouldn't be irrelevant anyway if the point would be to gather comparative data on Tera itself.

And why is it my job to "gather competitive data on Tera itself" in non-OU settings? It is my job to run SV OU as it currently is defined -- not a set of studies that pertain to metagames with premises based off of SV OU, but with something fundamentally altered. Even if I wanted to act on Tera (and, believe it or not, I was one of the people in the 64% who voted for further discussion/action in the survey despite what LoseToRU? continues to spread), this is absolutely not something the council could touch in good faith; it been disapproved from higher-up and for good reason.

It has just never ever been within the jurisdiction of tier leadership to impose their power within this capacity and you cannot possibly argue that it is SV OU as it simply is not by definition. What you are asking is for an overreach of power that contradicts the desire of higher site leadership, tiering guidelines, and precedent.

I have been very careful about how I have worded posts as I am happy for other people to do whatever they want with their thought experiments, but it should absolutely not be an official OU initiative or grouped under our job given how it currently is formed. This is not really up for debate either.

 

[artificialdeath]

How broken something may or may not be -- its brokenness -- is a measure of something in the current metagame after all. You cannot determine if something is broken by seeing a metagame void of it. You can simply determine if you prefer a metagame with or without it, but this is not the question suspects are asking and this will only generate a short-term desired result as opposed to the actual goal of metagaming and tiering.

To put it bluntly, "removing X gives a way to tell how broken X is because it allows people to see what happens with X removed" is your sentiment and this shows a lack of understanding of what brokenness is or how tiering is conducted. I feel you are either suggesting a larger paradigm shift that goes beyond the reach of this thread/the OU council or you are neglecting current tiering conventions that this conversation uses as a baseline.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but wouldn't comparing the two metas give users a sense of the effect that X broken thing has on the metagame? Most broken mons tend to constrain teambuilding heavily and having a meta w/o broken thing X could more conclusively show how not having to prepare for chien pao/magearna/volcarona/gambit/whatever results in an ultimately healthier meta. Obviously this is different because of their much smaller userbases, but if im remembering right there's precedent in oldgens doing tournaments like this for things like retroactively unbanning Latias or banning Arena Trap in DP and BW.

The logistical side of it is a separate issue, of course, and as you've said it's outside of the scope of the council members.

I completely agree about making comparisons to SS though, and really it should disqualify someone's argument from the get go if they compare SV to SS.

 

[Finchinator]

I find it interesting that you frame this as an experiment at all. To me, tera is as obviously banworthy as palafin. No experiment needed. That's just me tho, I digress.

ok.

I think the current tiering philosophy works great for straightforward broken mons like chien pao. There's no need to experiment with a pre-home SV meta without chien pao, it's not that hard to see that it's busted and should go. Most suspects/quickbans are like that (mega mence, chi-yu, palafin, dynamax, etc) If you can do a playerbase survey and mons like chien pao have ridiculous support to be banned, then yeah, no need to experiment, we just move ahead with tiering action.

However, Tera is, as I'm sure you'd agree, perhaps the most controversial and divisive topic that Smogon has ever tackled. So why are we holding on to the same standard as simple problems like chien pao?

You know what I am going to respond here, but for the sake of it being there: The tiering policy applies to every single tier across every single generation, my council cannot firsthand change it on whim for certain circumstances. That is not how it works and, if it did, the OU council would have far too much power. A council works to enforce the current tiering framework, not to overwrite it.

This goes above me, this goes above my council, and so on. If you think some sort of special provisions for core mechanics should be applied, then you should make a PR thread and probably tag tiering administration as well as all current tier leaders as it would apply to situations universally.

I feel everything thrown here directly at me is moot and inapplicable as it is my job to work within the confines of current tiering infrastructure, and your point, more or less, proved I did so and that your issue is with what is currently correct under its jurisdiction rather than how we are applying the current framework.

Tera is far more subtle in its unhealthy effects on the meta, to the point that no course of action has anything close to a majority support. No pro-tera argument is remotely convincing to me, and I'm sure that mine are ignored by them as well. So if arguments don't do much, where does that leave us? The tricky part is this in particular:

You started the post calling Tera "as obviously banworthy as Palafin" and then proceeded to say it is "far more subtle in its unhealthy effects to the meta". I do not really have any analysis to offer, but I wanted to point this out to you.

How is the ban-tera base supposed to provide this justification or evidence? Do I just keep repeating survey data on our 5.43/10 meta that's almost 2 months old now?

To the latter question, responding to surveys go a huge way. We had an initial survey that made this very discussion possible and led me to promise we would circle back to it on a more specific level in a future survey. That future survey could lead to action within the actual current metagame, which is what you want.

People expecting a rushed reassessment of a core mechanic are being unreasonable. No suspect will ever happen within 6 months of a prior suspect on the same topic and seldom will they ever happen within a year, but despite it being in between these two timeframes, we have laid out the groundwork for much of the topic and promised a next step. If you expect more than that, that's an expectation issue with you more than it is a council issue.

For an issue this controversial, I feel like an extra effort should be made to examine how exactly tera is or isn't broken, and one way of examining that is by treating tera as an experimental variable and trying a meta without it. Nobody is saying you need to stop there, yes that would be sloppy, we can use some common sense and start by unbanning volcarona+regieleki+espathra and banning baxcalibur+walking wake (can use teraless tour as some evidence for the last 2)

As I touched on in my prior posts both before tonight and tonight, this would not be something that falls under the jurisdiction of the OU council. You cannot find any modern precedent or justification in the same tiering framework that you quoted above. I hate to be the "pass it on" guy, but I have a particular job and asking for that role to expand beyond its scope is both unfair to me/my council and the community.

I appreciate all that is done by ou council as is.

We appreciate all you do, too. Pardon the argumentative nature of this post as that is unfortunately a necessary evil of this dynamic.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

If we construe it this way, shouldn't every suspect ever be met with a second ladder with an identical metagame without the Pokemon then? And shouldn't every close Uber be subject to semi-regular retesting for the sake of clarity for a metagame with and without it? And shouldn't the same be applied to certain clauses? And so on.

yes.

You are scraping at the very bottom of the barrel for the sake of finding SOMETHING by quoting an out-of-context line that does not mention your objective at all and not considering the awful slippery slope it would enable, which also is not touched on.

so let's just gloss over you calling smogon's tiering policy "the bottom of the barrel" and point out that slippery-slope arguments are not a valid debate tactic, have never been a valid debate tactic, and should never be cited in tiering policy discussion. i don't need to touch on the slippery slope because there is no such thing.

 

[mcandrew5629]

so let's just gloss over you calling smogon's tiering policy "the bottom of the barrel"

For the record:

This mission statement being construed loosely as reason to back your highly specific argument without any attention to tiering context is nonsense. You are scraping at the very bottom of the barrel for the sake of finding SOMETHING by quoting an out-of-context line that does not mention your objective at all and not considering the awful slippery slope it would enable, which also is not touched on.

These two quotes are not the same thing and it's disappointing that we've gone past misunderstandings and straight into misrepresentations.

 

[bigasschungusboi]

Man, I love when the thread needs to be constantly reminded that having another ladder is never going to happen, but they'll constantly bring that shit back up really highlights how dumb "the people" are and how roundabout this whole thread really is.

 

[LoseToRU?]

Anyone can submit a request, but if you expect OU Staff to do it through this thread that's just not the proper venue - if that's what you want then you should be sending DMs to OU Staff asking if they can do it or talk to them elsewhere, or ask if you can start a PR thread.

I think transparency is important; I'd rather ask publicly. Again, if this was any other room we met the requirements, but because it was about tera I feel the PS staff didn't want to circumvent the OU council when it comes to something that big. We need council support or it will be shot down. We can't do it alone and I'm trying to explain why it's in everyone's best interest that the OU council submit the next official application.

All you need is the current metagame to determine if something is broken or not.

Finch, if tera was broken, we would have banned it by now. If this mechanic met the criteria for being broken it would be gone. How we aren't realizing this is the crux of the entire issue is just astounding to me on multiple levels.

You can simply determine if you prefer a metagame with or without it, but this is not the question suspects are asking and this will only generate a short-term desired result as opposed to the actual goal of metagaming and tiering.

Giving potential voters access to SV without tera will generate short-term results? We're going to have to agree to disagree on this point as well.

I feel you are either suggesting a larger paradigm shift that goes beyond the reach of this thread/the OU council or you are neglecting current tiering conventions that this conversation uses as a baseline.

This isn't even a tiering policy situation, I'll get into that later. Even if it was, the current tiering conventions won't work for something that isn't broken, but may be having a net negative on the meta. The baseline isn't working. Do you feel the baseline is working? We have a supermajority of voices going unheard. The best answer the 65% is getting is, "Wait until DLC2". Finch, if Quick Claw got 65% of the votes, would we have to wait until 2024? What about Volc, what happened to conventional tiering there? Is the Volc answer going to be, "Volc is a mon and tera is a gimmick" because that's exactly what we've been saying. It seems the tiering policy is flexible- one minute we must treat Tera like a mon, but then suddenly it's this huge thing that takes a year to address. Which is it- because it we treat it like a mon, then suspect it now like we did with Volc, who had 4x less write-ins on that survey; if it's not, then why is the policy being used to combat a way to play SV OU without tera?

Nothing else came close to registering for the emergency vote Wednesday, but everything carried over to the radar this weekend. Zamazenta-Hero was well under a 4 and below any prior quickban survey result, so we naturally carried it over while was the first individual Pokemon in survey history to have over 50 written-in mentions and Tera soared above this with over 200 written-in mentions of its own, indicating that more work may need to be done on this front.

From this info you provided in the survey tera had 4x as much support to do something than Volc did. Volc got an emergency council meeting and was QB. This was 4 months ago. When you said, "more work may need to be done" can you let us know what's been done? A survey showing even more evidence, and a thread, is all I see. Can you put forth maybe what you and the council have been working on for 4 months, or am I correct when I say the official response is, "2024 bro".

And why is it my job to "gather competitive data on Tera itself" in non-OU settings? It is my job to run SV OU as it currently is defined -- not a set of studies that pertain to metagames with premises based off of SV OU, but with something fundamentally altered. Even if I wanted to act on Tera (and, believe it or not, I was one of the people in the 64% who voted for further discussion/action in the survey despite what LoseToRU? continues to spread), this is absolutely not something the council could touch in good faith; it been disapproved from higher-up and for good reason.

It has just never ever been within the jurisdiction of tier leadership to impose their power within this capacity and you cannot possibly argue that it is SV OU as it simply is not by definition. What you are asking is for an overreach of power that contradicts the desire of higher site leadership, tiering guidelines, and precedent.

I have been very careful about how I have worded posts as I am happy for other people to do whatever they want with their thought experiments, but it should absolutely not be an official OU initiative or grouped under our job given how it currently is formed. This is not really up for debate either.

I never said you didn't want tera acted on. You literally said it had uncompetitive aspects to it. Which it does, hence why we're all here.
When you voted yes on "some action" can you help us out and let us know what you meant dude? What did you have in mind? Restrictions? Which ones? Do you still feel that way- many of us on the initial restriction train have jumped off. Half-measures and complex bans just aren't alluring to anyone right now it seems. Can you please illuminate us on your current thoughts on how to address the survey?

"And why is it my job to "gather competitive data on Tera itself" in non-OU settings?

It would be an OU setting.... but yes, no one said it was your official role to do anything outside of the norm. You've made it clear you're not interested in literally any new approach to a new issue, and will continue to handle it using regulations and standards put in place for mons, items and moves. By handle it I mean, whatever you and council are currently doing with tera. We had global staff and OU staff involved in the initial petition who wanted to explore new options, but that doesn't spark your interest. Fair enough.

You know what I am going to respond here, but for the sake of it being there: The tiering policy applies to every single tier across every single generation, my council cannot firsthand change it on whim for certain circumstances. That is not how it works and, if it did, the OU council would have far too much power. A council works to enforce the current tiering framework, not to overwrite it.

This goes above me, this goes above my council, and so on. If you think some sort of special provisions for core mechanics should be applied, then you should make a PR thread and probably tag tiering administration as well as all current tier leaders as it would apply to situations universally.

If you only answer one thing from this post, please answer this one: How exactly is the council submitting a room request in any way related to tiering policy? It's a chat room. It's not a ladder. Why is this issue being derailed by quoting tiering policy? Gather the council, ask who would be interested in putting their weight behind a formal room request, then submit the app and see what happens. Are you speaking for every council member when you say you're not interested in putting forth a harmless chat room request?

Man, I love when the thread needs to be constantly reminded that having another ladder is never going to happen, but they'll constantly bring that shit back up really highlights how dumb "the people" are and how roundabout this whole thread really is.

No one is saying anything about a ladder. It would be like the Other Meta room, just a place for players to play SV OU without tera. Players could join tours and experiment. It would be a concrete way to address the super majority who said "please do something, anything, because tera in its current form isn't optimal". There are no downsides to this, from my perspective.

 

[That_Dwayneee]

Hopefully this is gonna be my last post about this “part” of the discussion. I’m not gonna respond to anything since other people have made better points that I would have, even if they are more aggressive then I would personally phrase them.

In terms of the future suspect at least, this discussion is at a stalemate. We’re asking for things outside of the council’s power and huge changes to how tiering is performed.

With that said, I have not been told that I can’t do this, and as of now it’s on topic, so:
https://discord.gg/V49GRtApRb

If you’ve been keeping up with the thread, you know what this server is, if not; this is a server for an unofficial metagame which removes tera from gen 9 ou. No matter where you sit in terms of pro ban or pro tera I do encourage you to try this theoretical metagame.

I won’t be surprised if this post gets deleted (in which case hi mods how are you) but I don’t see a better way to get this server populated... at all.

 

[razorsharp3000]

If people want to see a metagame without Tera, why not just make an OM for it? And we can even get a ladder for it then if voted OMotM.

Or are Smogon higher-ups against that?

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

If people want to see a metagame without Tera, why not just make an OM for it? And we can even get a ladder for it then if voted OMotM.

Or are Smogon higher-ups against that?

i'd wager that at least a double-digit amount of people have already submitted the idea. if it were allowed, it would already exist. unlike the vetoing of a chatroom, i can actually see concrete reasoning behind this: the om would die instantly if ou were to ban tera, since that's the only functional difference between the two. now, if the council comes out after like 3 or 4 failed suspect tests and says "fuck it, we're keeping tera, no more action", then i could see it being approved

 

[LoseToRU?]

Let me just say this, tera will most likely be banned. When we have all the DLC mons, and the 19th tera type, it will be too much. That's too many mons to factor in all their tera sets. Building is already a chore. Also, we can't ban the 19th type because that's a complex ban. If we could ban certain tera types we would have done it already. Depending on how broken the 19th type is and how it functions, this vote could be a landslide. So I don't mean to be rude when I criticize the official plan of "wait until DLC 2". It's not the worst plan. I just want a head start on balancing the meta post-tera. I also would rather play OU without tera in the meantime, but that's a desire that just won't be met. I fully understand that no one on the council is going to put forth an application for a no-tera room, or try to make it an OM, or anything really. I don't fully understand why, but that's ok. I think this thread has reached its natural conclusion. Restrictions aren't favorable and reek of complex ban and cope. We don't have enough support for a full ban on tera and if we're going to get one more shot at a suspect then it's better to wait until DLC 2. I'll stop being a pain in the ass and just wait until 2024 like everyone else.

Finch buddy, no need to waste any bandwidth on a rebuttal. At a certain point I'm debating just to debate, and you have enough on your plate without getting dragged into a pedantic argument. I could have said things in a better tone, have been less blunt, and acted with more grace when posting- not the first time I've had to say that and your patience with me is always appreciated. There are some things we're going to disagree on but overall I trust you to make the right decisions when the time comes, as you usually do. Apologies for any disrespect.

 

[Finchinator]

Finch buddy, no need to waste any bandwidth on a rebuttal.

I’m just doing my job the way I know how. I don’t always agree with you or the next guy, but it’s important we have leadership that remains engaged with the people who care about the format.

Our processes are constantly evolving (I would like to say improving, too) and that can only be done with consulting people who play the format after all. I don’t know what will happen with DLC; I guess we will have to wait and see.

I’m not going to get to many posts today because I am busy, but if people want to bring anything to my attention or want me to respond, feel free to tag me and I’ll get to it tomorrow.

 

[That_Dwayneee]

Let me just say this, tera will most likely be banned. When we have all the DLC mons, and the 19th tera type, it will be too much. That's too many mons to factor in all their tera sets. Building is already a chore. Also, we can't ban the 19th type because that's a complex ban. If we could ban certain tera types we would have done it already. Depending on how broken the 19th type is and how it functions, this vote could be a landslide.

I hate to be a doomer for this cause here, but if the 19th tera type is just properly broken and not the straw that breaks the camel’s back, an individual ban on it may be in order rather than a tera ban as a whole.

 

[ianlazerbeem]

I hate to be a doomer for this cause here, but if the 19th tera type is just properly broken and not the straw that breaks the camel’s back, an individual ban on it may be in order rather than a tera ban as a whole.

Just like how a ban on Tera Fairy was in order because it was broken on Kingambit

 

[mathiau]

we can't ban the 19th type because that's a complex ban.

There are levels to that. Banning the 19th Tera type is arguably a simpler ban than the sleep clause is.

Though it's possible that the sleep clause is simply a vestige of the past and if we had to do this ban today we'd ban sleep moves as a whole

 

[Avira]

I hate to be a doomer for this cause here, but if the 19th tera type is just properly broken and not the straw that breaks the camel’s back, an individual ban on it may be in order rather than a tera ban as a whole.

There is 0 chance that the special Tera type will be banned on its own as that would be going against how Gamefreak intended for the mechanic to be used entirely, which is that all the Tera types are selectable in a battle, although the 19th type might only be selectable for 1 Pokemon per team.

I still believe that a Tera Blast ban is the only acceptable restriction, and if Tera is still a problem after a Tera Blast ban, Tera should be outright banned.

 

[kosecant]

Also, we can't ban the 19th type because that's a complex ban.

This would not be a complex ban. it would just be a normal ban

 

[Avira]

This would not be a complex ban. it would just be a normal ban

It would be a complex ban because Smogon would be yeeting an aspect of Tera arbitrarily when we're meant to play with all the available Tera types. A simple ban would be a ban on Tera Blast.

 

[Alternator]

That's still not a complex ban. A complex ban is a conditional ban: if X, then Y is banned. Banning a specific mon from using tera is a complex ban: If Kingambit, then tera is banned.

This is just nuking a tera type: "[New tera type here] is banned." It's not conditional, hence it's not complex.

 

[Karxrida]

We don't even know enough about the new Tera type to say anything yet. It could be garbage, it could be niche, it could only be good on specific Pokémon. We had more hard information about the supposedly scary Contrary Enamorus and Ursaluna and look at what those things are doing right now.

 

[Spheal boi]

We had more hard information about the supposedly scary Contrary Enamorus and Ursaluna and look at what those things are doing right now.

Ursaluna dropped in UU and people prefer using the totem form of Enamorus, but I will be honest, Ursaluna was actually scary seeing its stats and the possibility to be used in Trick Room teams, but once again, Trick Room teams still have difficulties and even if it had Trailblaze to boost its speed, wasn't enough to let it stay in OU.

Honestly I'm curious to see if Garchomp before the second DLC comes out will drop to UU

 

[TheTraininator]

Garchomp is just waiting on the Scale Shot TM. We all know the IoA TMs are coming; hell, Grassy Glide is currently in the game right now and 100% usable but has 0 Pokémon that can learn it. Same with Coaching and maybe a couple others, and the IoA moves that ARE in only have a couple users through level up at most. Swords Dance Loaded Dice Scale Shot Garchomp is gonna pop OFF.

 

[`ShadowTwo]

Banning Tera 19 is not complex ban, it's as simple as banning Shed Tail and Last Respects.
Complex ban is "ban Tera if the Tera type is the same of the Pokemon"

 

[LoseToRU?]

That's still not a complex ban. A complex ban is a conditional ban: if X, then Y is banned. Banning a specific mon from using tera is a complex ban: If Kingambit, then tera is banned.

This is just nuking a tera type: "[New tera type here] is banned." It's not conditional, hence it's not complex.

Would banning Tera Fairy be considered a normal ban as well then? I see how I misused "complex" but if we can ban certain Tera types isn't that a slippery slope? I'm not looking forward to "X is broken with 19th tera!" and then ppl going "Gambit is broken with Fairy, should we ban that?" It feels a bit messy even if it would be a standard ban. However, I don't think the 19th will be anything crazy though, but it could be knowing GF. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it I guess.