First and foremost, Ups, my bad. First time posting for Smogon and my therapist says I need to practice my social skills.
Now, I want to see actual points, starting with the most ambiguous one.
Tera blast. I think we need to see which mons are actually abusing Tera Blast on a regular basis to determine if it's actually a problem or not. Luckily smogon has monthly stats to determine the main users, which are the following in OU:
Dragapult is one of the main Tera Blast Users of this tier, using it in 1 out of 7 sets. Is mostly used as a
ghost type Tera blast to get a reliable STAB in physical sets.
Heatran uses Tera Blast mostly as coverage considering it already has reliable STABs in flash cannon and Lava plume. If I had to guess it would be a similar use to VGC
using Tera Blast grass to defeat Great Tusk and water Types like Samurott or Dondozo.
Landorus-T uses Tera Blast in a similar fashion to Dragapult, this time with
flying type Tera blast. This is relatively common on VGC but is rarer on OU.
Despite now being banned there's still a lot reliable data of this mon, and Volcarona was indeed the biggest tera blast user, having it in most sets.
The unpredictability of said tera blast made Volcarona unwallable way too often because, Unlike Hidden Power's 60BP, Tera Blast has 120 after factoring STAB.
Similar story to Volcarona, but not really. Magearna could use Tera Blast, but it didn't most of the times. She just infiltrated here but
if I had to guess it would be mostly ground to deal with their checks like Heatran or Volcanion.
Volcanion is basically the same case as Heatran. That being said the
tera blast is Fairy type according to your own suggestions to deal with stuff like Samurott, Dragapult, Baxcalibur, Hoopa, Iron Valiant or Roaring Moon in a 1v1 scenario.
Just like its ancestor, Iron Moth LOVES to use Tera Blast in most of its sets. Tera Blast is from a new post-home set, but
according to you is mostly Tera blast ground or water used, mostly for the same reasons Magearna used it aka Heatran. It seems to be kept in check by the fact Iron Moth lacks quiver dance or reliable Special Attack boosting methods; in fact most Iron moths prefer to go 4 attacks with booster energy.
Despite she being in UU, Cresselia is quite popular at high ELO due to being an oddly reliable calm mind sweeper with Stored power. When she uses Tera Blast, it's
fighting type Tera Blast to deal with Kingambit, Tera Normal Dragonite, Heatran and Garganacl pre-tera. This is basically the Espathra at/from Home and I definitely prefer this version due to not boosting its speed every turn.
You know the deal, Sandy shocks with Earth Power, Thunderbolt/Volt switch,
Ice Tera blast and hazards is oddly reliable because of the BoltBeam combo + ground being virtually impossible to resist when all 3 have STAB. Used similarly to Regieleki but fairer.
I felt Moltres-G was worth mentioning because it was more popular than Garchomp at high level (It hurts me as much as you, but is true). The set this hell bird uses is a double dance one, with its signature move, Agility, Nasty plot and either a Flying type move or
Fairy tera Blast. Fairy has roughly the same aplications as with Volcanion.
Worth mentioning the other 3 mons notorious for causing issues due to Tera Blast. Regieleki is the proof the OU council went pridedly overeboard with the June celebrations because of course Regieleki would be busted once it gets something to hit ground types with. Espathra is the proof that Stored power + Tera Blast + Speed boost is just overpowered if used by a competent pokémon. Finally, Chi-Yu was broken beyond belief and regularly used Grass tera Blast to destroy the few pseudo-checks it would have as a cherry on top of the fiery marine cake.
Now, what we can conclude from all of this?
- Tera Blast is mostly used by Special attackers.With the exceptions of Dragapult and Landorus-T, all hit for the special side. Reason? Tera Blast without Terastalization is an special move, and you don't always want to terastalize the same creature every time. While a weaker Hyper voice who doesn't bypass substitutes is underwhelming, is definitely better when you're using that special side. This is known as opportunity cost.
- I think my VGC experience can be useful here to express my point. I've used in the last 7 months Tera Blast in 8 ocassions on my teams, with Fire and Water Sylveon, Grass Sandy Shocks, Flying Kingambit twice, Flying Dragonite twice and Flying Landorus-T (There's a serious lack of good physical flying moves). Sylveon felt very intuitive to use and sometimes i genuinely wanted to use regular Tera blast (Wide guard), Sandy shocks felt a bit more limited but regular tera blast was still good against grass types which are plentiful due to Amoonguss, Kingambit felt more like it had 3 moves before tera but its STABs were so good it wasn't a big deal, and with both Dragonite and Landorus it felt inconsistent to because of a high reliance on Tera to deal maximum damage, because otherwise the move was useless, specially Dragonite due to lacking STAB, altough with higher reward if it worked. Speaking of VGC...
- Tera Blast is less common in 6v6 than in 3v3 or VGC. That has to do mostly with the lenght of each format. In both VGC and 3v3 there's rarely such thing as long term consequences, and each turn has more relative weight. Stuff like Dragonite, Gyarados, Dondozo, Tatsugiri, Zapdos, Kingambit and Tyranitar now use Tera Blast as actual coverage, while Dragapult, Chi-Yu, Heatran, Landorus-T and Enamorus also seem to use it more often. The only exception to this is Volcarona because in VGC the sun god is more of an offensive support.
- Tera Blast is almost always used like a fancy hidden power. With that I mean it's used just like hidden power in most ocassions, aka to break through otherwise checks or to be an odd STAB option in lack of better ones like in advance Salamence or Gyarados. It's more powerful, 78-100% more powerful in fact, but it also works only for one of your pokémon unlike Hidden Power and it demands both a moveslot and a once-per-battle power up.
- Smogon stats aren't very informative at times. There's certainly a lot more Tera Blast users in OU, but those were not founded because of being a more niche option and therefore being between all "others", and I'm sure that's quite common specially at lower ranks who also used Tera Blast on Roaring Moon, Enamorus, Walking Wake, Hoopa, Lilligant-H (Also a frequent user in high elo, but let's be real, she's not popular up there), Basculegion (Same as Lilligant) and Thundurus-T (Same as Basculegion). Speaking of...
- Tera Blast is more on the niche side of things. Outside Iron Moth, Sandy Shocks and Moltres-G, no creature uses Tera Blast more than 18%. This is likely because if you want to use Tera Blast you should use Terastalization on said creature, which basically demands you to build your team around it. Is not like that kind of teambuilding is bad or anything, quite the contrary in fact, it just that you should not use more than one tera blast per team and not a lot teams can actually afford to do this.
- The move seems mostly fair. I was surprised to reach this conclussion, but Tera Blast is mostly used in fair scenarios instead of actual cheese like some of you said. It has great power at bypassing some checks, but also has great usage cost, which means that tera blast is basically a style of teambuilding, reminiscent of Mega Evolutions in the sense of you building teams around them. Unlike megas however, Tera does not increase stats nor gives you a better hability, and the restrictive conditions often balances those teams out.
I'm honestly shocked...
Before today I was a genuine believer of banning tera blast, but hey, that's why we're doing this discussion to begin with. After seeing all of this information about its usage,
now I genuinely think Tera Blast is an overall positive addition to the tier. It's painful for me to say this considering tera blast is why my favorite pokémon got banned in such questionable way, but the fact that Tera Blast is incentivizing "new" flavors of teambuilding around a central mon, an ace, something lost in the transition to switch due to the lost of Megas, while also not forcing you to have those, is honestly beautiful and somewhat puts in perspective why there's so many people willing to keep Tera, even if is overpowered by many.
PS: Is for "the love of
Arceus", not god. After all, you shall not misuse the name of the lord and creator.