Just trying to make sure terms are being used correctly. You can still argue your point about how it affects prediction but imo calling it a 50-50 is a way to blame RNG and paint the mechanic negatively when it is not truly a 50-50 or fair to call it one.
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Metagame Terastallization Tiering Discussion [ UPDATE POST #1293]
- Thread starter Finchinator
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The term 50/50 in Pokemon isn’t really meant to mean something with actual literal 50/50 odds; its just a term for when the player has to make a guess between two options with equal odds of happening/being true. Pokemon naturally is a game where there will be lots of guessing and predictions, but we ideally want to avoid a metagame where players get totally dominated by a sweeper because they guessed one 50/50 wrong.
I think saying that there's "18 different options" for tera types per pokemon is a bit disingenous when you're realistically never going to see more then 2 or 3. you can just look at held items for an example because we have 50+ of those, yeah maybe that chi-yu has an adrenaline orb and nasty plot and if you lead masquerain you'll give it a speed boost that will let it sweep your whole team, but practically its going to be either specs or scarf because anything else is gimmicky and unreliable.
Rumor has it that tera is unusable on Mondays
If we're primarily going to try one option to save tera so we don't waste a ton of time on it, I think restricting slots and revealing the type might be what it takes to make it balanced.
it's not overblown when every single pokemon can do it and it isn't limited to a select few. a majority of the megas didn't have this issue as it was confined to a specific number of them. no one has ever said these types of situations are new to the game.
additionally, i would argue that those aspects of those particular megas were in fact bad for the game, but they were inconsequential to the overall health of the metagame so they didn't need drastic tiering action. i would hope it is self-evident that the consequences of these types of chance-based interactions with terastallization are far worse than choosing which turn to mega-evolve, but i can elaborate further if it's somehow not obvious.
Ema Skye
Work!
Tera on team preview is only a bandaid solution and doesn't solve the problem. Meta developments will lead to an ideal tera type for each mon (or maybe at worst 1-2 options but you can likely sus them out from the team structure) and so knowing the tera type won't really change anything in the long term.
An outright ban is the only solution for the mechanic.
An outright ban is the only solution for the mechanic.
Whatever your opinions on those megas being switch ups are, there is a key difference in that you can usually safely call whether or not they're using the mega, and those megas take up an item slot which is infinitely more of a drawback than tera gets. Gyara you usually can go either way with mega or not but it's still weak to electric, but no one is gonna run a non-mega Altaria in OU
There are few instances of actually 50-50s in Pokemon, but there are often specific turns in many battles where there's 2 or 3 different decisions that can be made that will greatly influence win probability. In a normal battle, you're trying to find a win that either avoids these turns entirely or heavily weighs the choices in your favor. Tera makes those heavily weighted turns happen very often, and potentially even before players can formulate or enact a gameplan for the battle. Combining that with the fact that most pokemon will have 2-4 different potential types they can switch into, makes decision making both on those high value turns and in the builder closer to wishcasting than prediction.
I'm not saying this logic is wrong. I think you made a very fair point. I'm glad you were able to properly voice this concern because it is an important one. But yeah I'm just trying to emphasize that tera is not an RNG heavy mechanic like the term 50-50 implies.
I think the notion of "highly weighted turns" is one of the strongest advocates against tera in its current form. As it is now, the weight of those significant turns is too high for fair competition when you don't know type beforehand, but I am of the opinion that it is worth trying to find out if revealing tera at preview lowers that weight to a point where it would be more fair.
I don't have a lot to add at the moment because frankly it's way too early to understand Tera's impact on the metagame and I'm baffled how quickly this is being rushed. I'll only say that I and a lot of people would be pretty bummed if it got banned, please try to compromise at least. This isn't dynamax.
First post I guess.
I personally think Terastallizing isn't very much a broken feature.
Terastallizing gives the supposed Pokémon access to another typing.
This could be defensive and offensive utility.
We already have some important pokemon that utilize this feature.
Defensive utility includes pokemon like Annihilape, and Skeledirge who use Terastallizing to resist a certain typing, a great example before the Flutter Mane ban was the use of Poison Tera Annihilape.
Offensive utility includes pokemon like Palafin, Roaring moon, with my favorite being Chien-Pao. They use Terastallizing to give them a 2x stab boost, and before the Iron Bundle ban, I used to use Tera dark Chien-Pao just for it, due to 2x Stab Sucker punch OHKOing a majority of the frail attackers.
I'll explain why I want a restriction rather than an outright ban, or no change.
Terastallizing is quite unexpected, like Dynamax in the previous generation, and unlike Dmax and Gmax, Terastallizing isn't just straight up 3 turns of insanity, it can be predicted, and it can be interesting in the current meta.
I would actually say to not let opponents see your mons' tera type, but I would say to restrict the pokemon on your team that can tera.
That would become some sort of bootleg mega evolution that's much more unpredictable, and could give your opponents a nasty scare, but doesn't change it so much.
Say, the opponent has a roaring moon at +3 atk and +3 spe from DDance. You have a gholdengo, and you tera to fairy.
Crunch resists and you "Make it Rain" to kill the Roaring Moon.
It would be nice to see some new sorts of mind games.
However, this could impact us permanently.
There are many pokemon who abuse Tera, like many pokemon I referenced above.
One notable thing is Palafin in rain, who can Terastallize water and OHKO practically everything, and outspeed everything with scarf.
That's why I want to limit your choices of Terastallization to be very specific specific choices.
(ps if you ban it to ubers flutter mane will still abuse it)
I personally think Terastallizing isn't very much a broken feature.
Terastallizing gives the supposed Pokémon access to another typing.
This could be defensive and offensive utility.
We already have some important pokemon that utilize this feature.
Defensive utility includes pokemon like Annihilape, and Skeledirge who use Terastallizing to resist a certain typing, a great example before the Flutter Mane ban was the use of Poison Tera Annihilape.
Offensive utility includes pokemon like Palafin, Roaring moon, with my favorite being Chien-Pao. They use Terastallizing to give them a 2x stab boost, and before the Iron Bundle ban, I used to use Tera dark Chien-Pao just for it, due to 2x Stab Sucker punch OHKOing a majority of the frail attackers.
I'll explain why I want a restriction rather than an outright ban, or no change.
Terastallizing is quite unexpected, like Dynamax in the previous generation, and unlike Dmax and Gmax, Terastallizing isn't just straight up 3 turns of insanity, it can be predicted, and it can be interesting in the current meta.
I would actually say to not let opponents see your mons' tera type, but I would say to restrict the pokemon on your team that can tera.
That would become some sort of bootleg mega evolution that's much more unpredictable, and could give your opponents a nasty scare, but doesn't change it so much.
Say, the opponent has a roaring moon at +3 atk and +3 spe from DDance. You have a gholdengo, and you tera to fairy.
Crunch resists and you "Make it Rain" to kill the Roaring Moon.
It would be nice to see some new sorts of mind games.
However, this could impact us permanently.
There are many pokemon who abuse Tera, like many pokemon I referenced above.
One notable thing is Palafin in rain, who can Terastallize water and OHKO practically everything, and outspeed everything with scarf.
That's why I want to limit your choices of Terastallization to be very specific specific choices.
(ps if you ban it to ubers flutter mane will still abuse it)
what about this process is being rushed? this is a discussion about terastallization for a potential suspect test in december that will last several weeks. it's being given more than a fair shake. did you even read the OP?
By and large, I would be for a restriction to remain in the spirit of keeping the new mechanics in the game in some capacity.
I do not believe that showing the tera types in team preview actually solves the big issues with tera - being that whenever it is more effective to tera a player will tera into a momentum swing. While you could technically play around it a little bit better, most decisions are optimized and are not relying entirely on the unknown factor. Also letting an opponent know information about your set potentially that is directly given, and not due to inference, goes against what is an important part of competitive battling. Most information is also inferred using experience and understanding of teams, and the tera type itself may open up some counterplay, but it does not resolve all of the issues.
Limiting Tera to STAB types is a solution to allow Tera to exist in some capacity, but it goes against the spirit of the mechanic, especially in-game. It's accessible, but it's not particularly fun in my opinion.
Tera Blast I assume is a strong move, but I don't feel like it is what makes Tera broken on its own, Hidden Power didn't get banned, and while this is stronger than Hidden Power was, it's a move that carries with it an interesting restriction and should be attempted to be kept in the format if possible.
Limiting the amount of Pokemon on any given team that have access to possibly Terastallize during a battle
OU is already a handshake agreement, we decide on the Pokemon allowed and not allowed and the clauses such as sleep clause and everything else. If its a clause that effectively forces players to agree to only terastalize one Pokemon marked in team preview, I believe that's very fair. It allows Terastalyzation to remain an interesting mechanic. A genuine momentum swing. And it hopefully does not completely overwhelm the opponent's decision making with it being possible every single turn.
If Tera is still broken with one Pokemon, then it should be banned. But if it is balanced enough, I'd like the restriction to slowly be eased up close to the limit which would keep the mechanic interesting. If two possible Pokemon end up being balanced then eventually three can be tested and so on. I'd probably stop it at 2 or 3 personally.
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Tera Typing being a team building decision, restricting it pushes it even more into being a team building decision and is very much in the spirit of the mechanic. It's a team building decision that can show up and have influence depending on the game as you see fit at the moment. And that's really cool.
I do not believe that showing the tera types in team preview actually solves the big issues with tera - being that whenever it is more effective to tera a player will tera into a momentum swing. While you could technically play around it a little bit better, most decisions are optimized and are not relying entirely on the unknown factor. Also letting an opponent know information about your set potentially that is directly given, and not due to inference, goes against what is an important part of competitive battling. Most information is also inferred using experience and understanding of teams, and the tera type itself may open up some counterplay, but it does not resolve all of the issues.
Limiting Tera to STAB types is a solution to allow Tera to exist in some capacity, but it goes against the spirit of the mechanic, especially in-game. It's accessible, but it's not particularly fun in my opinion.
Tera Blast I assume is a strong move, but I don't feel like it is what makes Tera broken on its own, Hidden Power didn't get banned, and while this is stronger than Hidden Power was, it's a move that carries with it an interesting restriction and should be attempted to be kept in the format if possible.
Limiting the amount of Pokemon on any given team that have access to possibly Terastallize during a battle
OU is already a handshake agreement, we decide on the Pokemon allowed and not allowed and the clauses such as sleep clause and everything else. If its a clause that effectively forces players to agree to only terastalize one Pokemon marked in team preview, I believe that's very fair. It allows Terastalyzation to remain an interesting mechanic. A genuine momentum swing. And it hopefully does not completely overwhelm the opponent's decision making with it being possible every single turn.
If Tera is still broken with one Pokemon, then it should be banned. But if it is balanced enough, I'd like the restriction to slowly be eased up close to the limit which would keep the mechanic interesting. If two possible Pokemon end up being balanced then eventually three can be tested and so on. I'd probably stop it at 2 or 3 personally.
ETA:
Tera Typing being a team building decision, restricting it pushes it even more into being a team building decision and is very much in the spirit of the mechanic. It's a team building decision that can show up and have influence depending on the game as you see fit at the moment. And that's really cool.
But isn't the vein you're arguing initially is that these '50/50s' are in a Tera preview set where you KNOW the tera type? Since this stems from acquiesceyourself's point here:
So the '2-4 different potential types' is largely irrelevant. The decision with a tera available to use is Move + Decision to Tera or Switch (and into what). This isn't a lot of extra information for the opponent to have to process as they are clearly aware what tera COULD occur and anyone with eyes is able to tell if a specific tera type is advantageous in a matchup. Tera Roaring Moon into Loom is a question on whether loom should be in. But Roaring Moon with an unactivated Tera is signaling Loom will hit Super Effective damage unless a switch occurs.
I'm still not sure this solves everything because the complex ban causes a problem where Smogon has implemented a system that you can use to bait your opponent (Have roaring moon show flying tera but actually just run a normal dual stab set or something) that wouldn't exist in cartridge. But if the problem is the amount of options, Preview fundamentally solves that.
If your problem from then is "when do they use it"... I feel this is a less convincing argument to just outright ban because... you're playing with enough information to make informed decisions. Make a good decision given your situation. Both players have an extra tool and are always aware of what that tool is. The skill becomes when to use it. At that point, you'd have to say that the power of a raw tera activation is too powerful and frankly I don't agree with that. An already revealed Tera mon has never felt that overbearing to me, its still frontloaded into the turn it was used.
I read the OP. And I still think it's too soon to make a decision this year or shortly after. What's the rush? We have time. Let things develop. Metagames take years to develop, giving it a few months is the least we can do.
I love how everyone is like 'team preview is useless, with time every Pokémon will only have one or two teratypes', but then when we talk about giving time to the mechanic before banning it, they're way less open to the concept. Time relativity, huh ?
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No it's about Tera in general as it's currently implemented
banning tera blast will do next to nothing since this move in general does not see that much play.
considering that only one pokemon at the time can terastylize you will be stuck with a normal type move in your slot if you end up wasting your tera on a other pokemon.
personally I reccomend that we should start by showing the tera type in the team preview.
if complains of terastylization continue then we should move on on limiting to only existing typying and if they keep continuing then we should outright ban tera.
considering that only one pokemon at the time can terastylize you will be stuck with a normal type move in your slot if you end up wasting your tera on a other pokemon.
personally I reccomend that we should start by showing the tera type in the team preview.
if complains of terastylization continue then we should move on on limiting to only existing typying and if they keep continuing then we should outright ban tera.
Wasn't there also briefly an OU (No Mega) ladder?
the largest issue is the consequences of these decisions. ultimately the situation you're describing comes down to a read. reads are informed guesswork as i said, but still guesswork. the loom player getting that read wrong potentially just lost the entire game, as the roaring moon now has guaranteed at least one free turn to do with what it pleases. the consequences of getting a read wrong is unprecedented for any other pokemon mechanic ever introduced. it turns singles into a metagame that is akin to vgc, where specific turns are the focus rather than long term planning and strategy. i simply do not enjoy a metagame in which that potential blowout from an incorrect decision (that is ultimately still a guess, even if you can use inductive reasoning to your advantage) is possible.
No no no, you don't understand, you're not allowed to take action on Tera until it's existed for 3 months and totally monopolized meta progression and made it impossible for the metagame to develop in a healthy way; but once 3 months have passed, it'll be too entrenched in the meta and you won't be allowed to take action on it since the metagame has progressed to revolve around it (and SPL has started).
Don't you see how reasonable I am? Clearly no one else had given any thought about whether it would be best to give this mechanic time before me. I am the only Pokemon player with any restraint whatsoever. Bask in my oh-so-nuanced intelligence.
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On a serious note, I will comment on the prediction point: every mechanic forces "predictions" of a sort, as do most moves and Pokemon. This isn't unique to Tera. But most "predictions" in mons, in the absence of Tera, are not actually true "predictions"; instead, you take a look at what you need to win and try and find a good midground that advances your own gameplan while not letting your opponent do the same. Sometimes you need to make risky plays, yes, but outside of HO vs HO games, it's typically uncommon for the entire game to come down to one or two big predict turns (it does happen in some endgames, of course).
Tera, however, places a big emphasis on one or two prediction turns deciding the game. There's obviously the direct impact — stuff like how Teraing into a defensive type allow you to avoid a revenge kill and continue a sweep — but there's also the fact that your singular Tera is a very valuable resource, and so every turn you click Tera, you're risking a lot to try and exploit your incremental advantage. With Z-moves, this was not an issue insofar as you commit to Z-moves before the game in the builder; there was still a cost to using your Z-move since you can only do it once, but it wasn't as limiting of your future options as the "resource" of being able to pick your Tera was expended up-front, rather than being forced to boil down to a correct prediction.
As an example, suppose your opponent has a Gholdengo in against your Tera Fairy Espathra. Espathra is in range to die to a super effective Shadow Ball or Make It Rain, but not a neutral one; and it 2hkos Gholdengo back no matter what. This is a situation that blatantly comes down to Tera predicts; but when you make the decision to Tera or not, you aren't just risking one Pokemon. Espathra is a very snowbally mon, and if your opponent is relying on Gholdengo to answer it, they probably don't have a great response otherwise; so there are three real outcomes:
And "regularly" is the key word here; every metagame will have games come down to "50/50s" and predictions every now and then, but Tera does it early and often. Anyone who's played a lot of ladder games has probably had multiple situations similar to the above happen. Espartha is a particularly bad offender here, but there's plenty — Roaring Moon, Annihilape, Dragapult, Tera Normal Dragonite, all of the Trick Room abusers come to mind as Pokemon where these sorts of situations honestly feel like they happen more often than not. Moreover, a lot of these Tera 50/50s happen early in the game, whereas "traditional" 50/50s that actually decide games usually occur on the last few turns of a very-even battle; I can tolerate 50/50s a lot more if they're used as a coinflip to resolve a close game than if they just decide one on turn 5 (at the very least, it makes games exciting).
To that end, I am interested some sort of policy that requires the player to choose who's going to Tera before the battle (e.g. restricting Tera to only one Pokemon or whatever), so that this cost is somewhat paid up-front rather than creating a prediction burden on every single turn of the game. That is to say, simply making Pokemon declare their Tera types before battle nerfs Tera but it does not (alone) fix this problem.
Don't you see how reasonable I am? Clearly no one else had given any thought about whether it would be best to give this mechanic time before me. I am the only Pokemon player with any restraint whatsoever. Bask in my oh-so-nuanced intelligence.
———
On a serious note, I will comment on the prediction point: every mechanic forces "predictions" of a sort, as do most moves and Pokemon. This isn't unique to Tera. But most "predictions" in mons, in the absence of Tera, are not actually true "predictions"; instead, you take a look at what you need to win and try and find a good midground that advances your own gameplan while not letting your opponent do the same. Sometimes you need to make risky plays, yes, but outside of HO vs HO games, it's typically uncommon for the entire game to come down to one or two big predict turns (it does happen in some endgames, of course).
Tera, however, places a big emphasis on one or two prediction turns deciding the game. There's obviously the direct impact — stuff like how Teraing into a defensive type allow you to avoid a revenge kill and continue a sweep — but there's also the fact that your singular Tera is a very valuable resource, and so every turn you click Tera, you're risking a lot to try and exploit your incremental advantage. With Z-moves, this was not an issue insofar as you commit to Z-moves before the game in the builder; there was still a cost to using your Z-move since you can only do it once, but it wasn't as limiting of your future options as the "resource" of being able to pick your Tera was expended up-front, rather than being forced to boil down to a correct prediction.
As an example, suppose your opponent has a Gholdengo in against your Tera Fairy Espathra. Espathra is in range to die to a super effective Shadow Ball or Make It Rain, but not a neutral one; and it 2hkos Gholdengo back no matter what. This is a situation that blatantly comes down to Tera predicts; but when you make the decision to Tera or not, you aren't just risking one Pokemon. Espathra is a very snowbally mon, and if your opponent is relying on Gholdengo to answer it, they probably don't have a great response otherwise; so there are three real outcomes:
- You predict correctly and win.
- You predict incorrectly and lose Espathra, and:
- if you Tera'd, you lost your Tera (but at least your opponent's Gholdengo is now -1 SpAtk).
- if you did not Tera, your opponent has a fine (if damaged) Gholdengo in.
And "regularly" is the key word here; every metagame will have games come down to "50/50s" and predictions every now and then, but Tera does it early and often. Anyone who's played a lot of ladder games has probably had multiple situations similar to the above happen. Espartha is a particularly bad offender here, but there's plenty — Roaring Moon, Annihilape, Dragapult, Tera Normal Dragonite, all of the Trick Room abusers come to mind as Pokemon where these sorts of situations honestly feel like they happen more often than not. Moreover, a lot of these Tera 50/50s happen early in the game, whereas "traditional" 50/50s that actually decide games usually occur on the last few turns of a very-even battle; I can tolerate 50/50s a lot more if they're used as a coinflip to resolve a close game than if they just decide one on turn 5 (at the very least, it makes games exciting).
To that end, I am interested some sort of policy that requires the player to choose who's going to Tera before the battle (e.g. restricting Tera to only one Pokemon or whatever), so that this cost is somewhat paid up-front rather than creating a prediction burden on every single turn of the game. That is to say, simply making Pokemon declare their Tera types before battle nerfs Tera but it does not (alone) fix this problem.
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Agreed, and it doesn't even keep the parts of tera that are interesting and fun, I'd prefer a ban to giving every team one free adaptability
I understand the frustration in losing to guessing incorrectly, but like how is this different from hurricane/fblast/etc missing? You click the move needing it to hit and having a likely chance of the outcome you want happening, but 30% of the time you lose bc that is how the move works. Or you switch and they miss and then you get a sudden momentum boost. With tera you have to use intuition to think "will they or won't they" and then make the best calculated move depending on the current match parameters. There may be a best choice in each instance, but selecting the best choice does not always give you the outcome you want, and that is the nature of the game. It is why certain losses happen, even when both players are making the best possible decision at every step. I'm not sure you can argue that tera (with preview) causes you to lose based on guesswork being wrong significantly more often than not.
If your game is regularly coming down to a 70% of whether Hurricane or whatever hits, you probably need to get better at identifying "safe/midground" plays. Accuracy is annoying for sure, but there are ways to play around it, to hedge options, and to account for it; indeed, one could argue that competitive Pokemon ultimately boils down to risk management. You ideally shouldn't have too many games decided by misses, and if you're forced to rely on an inaccurate move to decide the game, that's a sign that you didn't outplay your opponent all that much (i.e. accuracy/prediction/etc. tends to decide close games way more often than it decides games where one player was clearly better, since a clearly superior player can outplay while making safe plays).
But, as the tier currently is, games are often decided by Tera "50/50s". This isn't an Aegislash situation where the effects are oft overblown and the consequences of losing a 50/50 tended to be fairly minor; this is a case where these 50/50s happen very frequently, often early in games, and often are significant enough to decide games on the spot (or at least create a vast advantage for one player).
It's not that all mechanics that force randomness and luck and prediction are bad, it's a matter of magnitude. Tera introduces these situations and places importance on them to an unprecedented extent; even pre-team preview generations didn't have this much ambiguity.
Edit: I should also mention that the individual 50/50 turns are only really a minor side point. Tera warping individual turns is bad, but the main problem is the vast amount of flexibility it offers making it almost always better to just focus on making the best short-term play rather than playing to a long-term gameplan. This is — to me — the true issue with Tera. I think it's tempting to tunnel vision on these individual turns and 50/50 situations that are easy to analyze, but its effects on the overall game extends far beyond these isolated turns. The prediction point is really a minor addendum rather than the crux of the argument, in my eyes.
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You mean like how Z-moves were a guessing game of whether or not the opponent had one on their sweeper until it was used? Except Tera can also be used defensively to slow down an opposing Tera mon, while giving lower tier mons who are only held back by their type a way to be used. Terastalization is the most balanced gimmick since Megas, and just being able to see what types they are would almost definitely be enough of a nerf for it to be no longer remotely banworthy in my opinion.
Unlike Dynamax, Terastalization doesn't give the mon using it the ability to just sweep because it got 3 Z-moves that boost a stat. It makes for a much more varied, interesting metagame, albeit one we aren't used to. I think banning Terastalization now would be premature and not healthy for the metagame, making this gen just Sw/Sh without good defensive cores.
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