This test for tera should definitely contain only voting for 3 possible outcomes: full ban/no ban/preview. While there is value in discussing tera blast, this would be better as its own test and obviously hinges on the fate of tera as a whole.
This whole tera issue seems to be the worst in OU compared to the lower tiers. What is certain is that there is no real standard for how to approach tera in terms of where the line is drawn between whether a mon itself is the issue or when tera is the actual issue for something. What constitutes a broken tera user? Is it something's ability to utilize multiple teras? is it something's ability to use one tera very well? Is it something's ability to force opposing teras? The tera conversation seems to always revolve around OU, but that's not the reality of it. This is part of why inclusion of the lower tiers matters so that players can gain more perspective from them especially when a vote for tera holds so much weight.
Getting reqs for tera isn't just voting on behalf of OU, it's making a decision for EVERY main tier. This is something that anybody who gets reqs should consider too. Despite the tera decision being one that affects all the main tiers, the decision to conduct the suspect only in OU is whack. Why should players from the other tiers be forced to get reqs in a tier that they maybe have never played just to be able to vote on it? it makes no real sense. Due process for such an important decision should be one of the goals for such an important decision like this, one of voting on the generational mechanic no less. Representation for the lower tiers does matter for something like this and if anything, a simultaneous suspect should be unanimously held across every main tier and allow people to get reqs on behalf of their main tiers.
I can understand that there's players that do not like tera, but to outright ban it seems a bit extreme. The playerbase is impossible to please no matter the state of the tiers. People complain about generations with bulkier stuff and dragged out games. People also complain when metas are highly offensive and fast paced with multiple threats around. Maybe it's just the expectations that people have for what makes a "good" metagame, but people also have to understand that a metagame where everything has a perfect counter just simply doesn't exist and is not possible. This isn't unique to SV either, a mon having perfect counters is a pretty rare thing to see especially with most mons only getting better as we get new generations are released. Tera of course really pushes this boundary, but to say tera is an uncompetitive mechanic is simply incorrect; there are skillful characteristics in a tera meta and I'm of the belief that tera should be preserved if possible in some way. Regardless of the outcome, i think there should be the option to play SV with and without tera even if it ends up being a custom battle option. At the tour level, perhaps there should be tours with and without tera just so that there is variety among the different beliefs on tera. Maybe team tours can have dedicated slots without tera so that we all can compare both metas. I always think about what will happen once SV becomes an old gen. I genuinely believe that if tera were to get banned, most would end up regretting it and actually miss having it around when SV finally is an old gen. I for one think it's good to have variety among different generations.
Tera Preview
I think this solution wouldn't be as positive as many believe it to be. Tera preview would change the status quo of how games are played and an atmosphere that involves this knowledge requires a totally different skillset than the ones currently used in the unrestricted format. Think of those scenario matches where you and your opponent are familiar with each other's teams, where maybe you've faced each other previously or perhaps a recognized team from somewhere (sample teams, tour teams, youtube, etc.) is being used. If you go into a match knowing the opponent's movesets, items, maybe even EV spreads too completely changes how the match is approached "from preview" as opposed to entering a match against a team you've never faced before and instead acquire knowledge as you progress in the match. If players could see opposing teras from preview, the same effect would be present. While it could be argued that making a gameplan would be easier with preview, this isn't a foolproof solution that will always grant you sudden counterplay to something; just because you know the tera of a mon doesn't mean you have the counterplay for it anyways. Ultimately, people can vote for what they believe, but they shouldn't expect tera preview to have all these magical answers that they might assume it will. For a game that fundamentally involves one's ability to adapt to the game state and gaining knowledge throughout the match rather than from the get-go, this solution doesn't seem like the move to me. Random teras truly aren't all that random, in fact, many offensive teras revolve around the defensive mons of a given tier. Not all teras are built the same and some are simply better than others for every mon.Tera metas reward good prep, general game knowledge, and staying up to date with metagame trends. Some may get salty about losing to an unexpected tera without actually questioning the practicality of the tera choice in question, or if the tera turn was what actually lost them the match. Most mons don't become "broken" with tera. Usually, it's only a select few users of tera that push the limits in this way. A general observation I've seen is that OU players, compared to other playerbases for different tiers, are always the most anti-change of the bunch for some reason. Maybe they just hate change or enjoy chaos, but the volatility of a tier does depend a lot on the willingness of the playerbase to enact change. I know that most were shocked at Volcarona getting banned, but as a UU player (an outsider perspective) i think Volcarona could have been banned way sooner than the home meta, but as the OU surveys have showed despite how often I've come across a complaint about like Garganacl, Gholdengo, Iron Valiant, etc. the playerbase seems to be opposed to actually addressing these things, which is surprising as someone that doesn't main OU. Not to say this has been observed only in SV, but one could say similar to that of OU playerbases in SS and USUM. In more recent gens, there has been a push for more community feedback in addressing topics of a tier, which is a positive, but i also think it'd be good to talk about how suspects are looked at now. A main defense for whether something gets a suspect now is if it reached a certain threshold on a survey. In past gens, i feel like the times were more inclined to give mons a suspect even if it may not end up actually being broken, but rather as something that is explored in some way. Nowadays, even mons that constantly get mentioned on a survey have rarely gotten a suspect test. Does the community think that upholding a survey threshold for whether something gets a test or not has been practical? Should councils be more inclined to conduct and hold suspects for mons regardless of survey thresholds? In bringing these questions up, I'm not saying that surveys are of no value (community imput is important), but should surveys be the deciding factor in whether or not something is given a test? Anyways, if tera preview does end up winning the vote, i think teras should be revealed once a mon hits the field rather than from team preview.
Tera Blast
This is a unique move that is definitely worth discussing in this conversation. It's no doubt that this move allows for some mons to have godly coverage combinations and with an extra kick on top of that. Granting any mon the ability to possess a particular coverage type that they normally don't have access to can be a powerful thing. In some conversations about tera's issues, "tera" gets talked about very ambiguously despite there being times when people are indirectly referring to this move. Every dexit generation we have had so far consequently makes it more difficult to answer certain mons when a very limited pool of defensive counterplay is all thats available despite mons getting better for the most part each generation. On paper, tera blast only gets better the further you go down the tier ladder because ideally the "better" defensive stuff end up in the higher tiers. Acting on tera blast does have merit in that movesets for any given mon wouldn't be out of the ordinary and you'd at least be facing a mon with everything it already comes with. Agreed that this would be better as its own suspect depending on what the outcome of tera alone ends up being.
Additional proposal
A big part of the issue that many seem to have with tera is the lack of predictability. Previous gimmicks in gen 6 and 7 did have predictability on some level. In gen 6, you could obviously know which mons can Mega evolve. In gen 7, there was a little less predictability but it did exist in players being able to make educated guesses on what might be the user depending on if a pokemon's item was revealed or not. For argument's sake im not defending dmax but in gen 8 there was gmax and you could also guess what might dmax depending on if it had access to the more broken dmax moves (flying/fighting/etc.) or if set up moves came into play. Tera in gen 9 doesn't really have predictability for what might tera the same way previous generations have had. Since the start of SV and up until now I've only ever reached one possible solution to address having some sort of predictability for tera, but it's something i think many would be opposed to. An additional proposed solution that most likely wouldn't get approved but could potentially work would be this other method of a tera restriction is: a base stat total restriction. Essentially, mons above a certain bst limit would not be able to tera and anything below the restriction would. The main idea here is that in theory, mons with higher bst don't exactly need a "boost" since on paper they would simply be better than mons with a lower bst and ideally a tera "boost" would allow these lower bst mons to even the playing field with the higher bst mons. There is exceptions to the rule obviously, but i think most can understand the root of the premise. In a match right from preview, if a player sees any mons above the bst limit they would know that those can't be the tera users; predictability for tera would exist. In bringing this up, of course there would be some complexities to figure out how this would be applied. Some of the issues involve:
>how would the bst limit be established?
>would it only apply to OU or every main tier?
>would lower tiers establish their own limit depending on the bst ranges of the tier?
For any outcome of tera, the odds of everyone being satisfied is nearly impossible, but discussing other possibilities doesn't hurt. I recall most not being fans of the potential outcomes of the first tera vote, so if possible we should try narrowing down tera outcomes to things that the playerbase actually supports.
Thanks for reading.