They have enough to be good, at least Thund and Lando.
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v2 [Update on Post #5186]
- Thread starter TPP
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Because they are.
I have yet to see any "facts" about how Tera is more competitive than it is broken.
Srn's post, as I say for the 100th time, has not been broken down or refuted in any meaningful way, and until it is, then I'm just going off of what I'm seeing.
I've literally said that there is nothing wrong with simply saying "it's fun" but once again, if you don't agree with that then prove me wrong by being the first person to refute Srn's post.
As I said before, forum is a lot different than the OU ladder and OU chat room.
Just ladder and ask ur opp if they think tera is broken and see what responses you get.
Ask OU chat if they think tera is broken and see what responses you get.
My official take is literally the same as our OU Tier Leader:
I just have a low tolerance for things I find uncompetitive and am vocal about it.
I would be lying if I said there weren't times I had a bit of fun w Tera, but that was awhile ago, and now I just find it annoying, win or lose.
Have to agree, wanted to try scarf Lando and genuinely struggling to fit in a fourth move. Probably going for Tera Blast Flying just in case but there probably are better options
I so desperately want to use explosion imprison landorus again but I just can't because they took my baby away from me
I feel like with the Tera discussion, there's alot of people spending too much of their time chatting back on forth based on theory, and not spending enough of their time playing and really seeing things in practice.
And like what I envision would really put some insight into Tera, is to get top players from OU, UU, and RU, with enough representation from anti-ban and pro-ban, and have them go into a debate, with replays backing up their arguments.
And like what I envision would really put some insight into Tera, is to get top players from OU, UU, and RU, with enough representation from anti-ban and pro-ban, and have them go into a debate, with replays backing up their arguments.
actually you can make a rock-solid argument for the banning of tera from smogon’s founding principles
anything else is just supplementary
edit: when the upcoming 2nd suspect happens, though, i will be doing just what you suggest anyway, to appease people like you
edit 2: to suggest that those on the pro-ban side are unaccustomed to the dynamics of tera in both building & battling is a total ad hom. where do you think people get their theoretical arguments from?
anything else is just supplementary
edit: when the upcoming 2nd suspect happens, though, i will be doing just what you suggest anyway, to appease people like you
edit 2: to suggest that those on the pro-ban side are unaccustomed to the dynamics of tera in both building & battling is a total ad hom. where do you think people get their theoretical arguments from?
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Not everything is black and white, and there's certainly a large grey area in smogon, despite how amazingly well-built it has become over the years and a model for gaming communities.
Tera was already suspected once and voted to stay, so it's certainly in the grey area. Other examples, perhaps, of grey area from the top of my head are Garg in pre-home and Lele & Melm in Gen8.
Tera was already suspected once and voted to stay, so it's certainly in the grey area. Other examples, perhaps, of grey area from the top of my head are Garg in pre-home and Lele & Melm in Gen8.
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tera was voted to stay and the community was way off the mark on this
i am unironically doing the principal skinner meme right now. you were all wrong.
Honestly at this point just pick whichever wierd move option helps your team best.
Like Rocks for a secondary rocker
Facade to be able to deal damage after a Burn
Fly if you want a secondary STAB without immunities
Taunt to mess with walls.
BB if you struggle with screens
Fling to turn the scarf off at will
Weather moves if you hate weather teams
i hope zapdos paras you with every fly its gonna switch in on
i think tera blast flying or ice sound good rn. or tera ground and last move brick break to try break screens atm?
The main body of srn's post essentially describes an endgame that without tera would be winning but with tera becomes a mindgame. This is a fair complaint. The rest of the post is long enough that I have no interest in refuting it. When it comes to tera, yeah it can be annoying that it flips endgames that would previously be winning, but ultimately the only way you can examine tera fairly is to accept that this is just reality. I think the problems people have with tera don't really come down to the 50/50 aspect, their issue is with what I'll call the unseen third option. Essentially the idea is that the binary of will they tera into "x" type or will they stay regular is eradicated by their tera type being something different that could cover all options. This is important, because tera in other aspects is more beneficial to the attacker, whereas the unseen third option favours the defender. In my opinion most of these interactions kinda balance themselves out, but it requires a change in mindset generally. When boots came out in gen 8 I hated what they did to the game and pretty much refused to adapt to them, ultimately leading to me quitting the game for a while. I feel like I see a lot of this in people complaining about tera, regardless of whether or not it is broken, if you try to play this meta like it's the same as every other gen you will think tera is broken.
Honestly the Tera conversation can continue but nothing will be done until the World Cup is over. Tera was the closest vote (one of if not) I think in Smogons history, a very close call for some sort of restriction. Tera obviously has some uncompetitive aspects to it, it changes a Pokemons type and boosts its type power and you can use Tera Blast to abuse it. It's like Roulette, I think Tera Type Preview will fix a lot of the mental warfare oneself will have thinking what the fuck is this mon about to do? Banning Tera Blast wont fix much of the issue since part of the problem of Tera is defensive utilization. Preview takes out the guessing game while still maintaining the Gen 9 mechanic in hand.
The question doesn't become what will the mon tera to, but when which is just one less thing to worry about.
The question doesn't become what will the mon tera to, but when which is just one less thing to worry about.
Too bad he lost Weather Ball too, it would have been the best meme against Ursaluna Trick Room. Imagine Glowking Chilly Receptions into Luna and you just smack it with basically stronger Ice Beam
Edit: Now that I think of it, just use Grass Knot lol
Once again, I am of the mind that we should start with a preview and then move on from there. Not outright banning it or outright doing nothing with it.
I stopped reading there king. Also threw u a laugh react which I hardly ever do.
Only fair to give you the same level of attention and respect that you are giving an extremely concise, easy to follow and intelligent post.
Classic pro-tera post tho, I'll give u that.
Yeah we're far off, but if I can change even like 5 ppl's minds on here then that could be enough to sway the vote.
But yeah, basically pointless at this point, esp when it's devolving into "tl:dr".
I'm done for a min on here unless Alternator responds I guess about the other topic I brought up.
i’m on mobile for the next week or so, so i can’t go in depth, but i’ll just say that even the most neutered version of tera imaginable (such as one user per team, revealed at preview, when the pokémon will tera etc.) still has a multitude of issues with regards to pre-game information, building preparation, when the pokémon will tera (which is actually a huge deal) & pokémon power levels.
furthermore, smogon does not aim to balance problematic elements. to ringfence tera in this area is totally arbitrary & is genuinely identical in terms of argumentation to things we would dismiss out-of-hand such as no-stab kyogre, no-booster flutter mane, etc.
will elaborate much further when the next tera policy review thread is up.
furthermore, smogon does not aim to balance problematic elements. to ringfence tera in this area is totally arbitrary & is genuinely identical in terms of argumentation to things we would dismiss out-of-hand such as no-stab kyogre, no-booster flutter mane, etc.
will elaborate much further when the next tera policy review thread is up.
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Classic
You'll be surprised to learn that I actually saw smth similar in the tera suspect thread and replied to it here. So I'd like to reiterate:
What is this new magical mindset that allows you to consistently predict tera? What was wrong with the old one? Is it the old mindset that's wrong, or is it trying to preserve Tera that's wrong?
To prove a point, I have peaked ladder this gen much higher than the last. Idt I even broke 1900s last gen.
And this was with arboliva, post shed tail ban and pre-home. My mindset has not changed from gen8 to gen9, so why am I doing better now? How can I do better than last gen and believe tera is unhealthy while playing mostly the same?
With all due respect, that post has a ton of the same issues that yours do. Misrepresenting and mocking people you disagree with doesn't generally prompt serious responses. Listing one of the pro-Tera arguments as "Skill issue! Skiill Issueeeee!!!" demonstrates both a lack of understanding of the pro-Tera argument and a lack of respect. No one is going to respond to that in a serious way, because it's not serious. The problem with the post is that all of the pro-Tera arguments are either a) not refuted in the post; b) grossly misrepresented; or c) not even arguments used in serious discussion.
It's pretty clear to most people that Tera does take skill to use. It's also true that it can flip certain matchups in a way that's unhealthy. But the idea of whether Tera is broken should be considered in a metagame that is optimized to balance the mechanic, not one where the threats considered busted by the mechanic are still permitted in the game. The idea that it is a core mechanic is a totally fair argument, as is the idea that predicting 50/50's has always been an integral part of the game. If you think these are not worth it, that's a fair argument. Dismissing these as irrelevant is not.
It's also not necessary to debunk every point because there's some I agree with. I can agree with some of the points without agreeing with the idea of a Tera ban. I'd be happy to go into specific points on the post when I have time. I just had to get some things out now because it's silly that you think we have been ignoring some well reasoned piece of literature that objectively discredits all of our arguments. It was actually blatantly disrespectful and heavily relied on mischaracterized or fabricated counterarguments.
you guys really say the weirdest things sometimes... do you mind going into a bit more detail about how you improving at the game and managing to ladder to a higher elo = tera being broken? because this argument does not make sense. unless you truly think you've stayed at the same skill level over months/years of playing (this does not happen).To prove a point, I have peaked ladder this gen much higher than the last. Idt I even broke 1900s last gen.
And this was with arboliva, post shed tail ban and pre-home. My mindset has not changed from gen8 to gen9, so why am I doing better now? How can I do better than last gen and believe tera is unhealthy while playing mostly the same?
they were responding to a post alleging that those wanting tera banned play the same way as previous gens & are unwilling to adapt
hope this helps
"Tera increases diversity!"
If anything, the number of threats that you have to handle in your teambuilder drastically increases more than your defensive options do. It's simple-ish math: If every threat like Roaring Moon has 3-4 viable tera types (flying, dark, steel), and your defensive options can only choose to be one tera type (I make my skeledirge tera fairy), then inevitably you can't cover every option. We see this now with huge threats abusing tera like chien pao, chi-yu, annihilape, espathra, iron valiant, roaring moon, dnite, etc the list goes on. All of these pokemon have 3-4 viable tera types and it's RESTRICTIVE to try and cover all of them in the builder. It leads to the opposite of diversity.
"Both sides can use tera! You can tera reactively to limit your opponent's tera!"
Ah yes the both sides argument. Unfortunately I see this one a lot. Well, both players could use dmax, and you could use your own dmax to limit your opponent's dmax. Did that make it ok? Hell no lmao dmax is broken and you're crazy if you think it should've stayed. But tera is meaningfully different in that you can't always tera reactively, because it depends on the type matchup. There is more depth to tera gameplay than there is to dmax gameplay, that's for sure.
"Tera has drawbacks too! You get new weaknesses! It's not OP like dynamax!"
It's true that you get new weaknesses but most of the time this isn't an issue because you get to DECIDE what new weaknesses you have and WHEN you have them. This flexibility means that you can adjust your gameplan and use your tera accordingly to minimize the impact of any new weaknesses you may get. When tera is used by competent players who can do this, this drawback of tera is really not worth mentioning. Pro-Tera people spin this as a good thing, as an example of tera rewarding skill and planning. That's not entirely wrong, I just wish there weren't so many other issues.
I hope we can all agree that tera is not as bad as dmax, but tera can still be bad enough to get banned. They share many similarities, especially the ability for any pokemon to use them at any time holding any item. That unpredictability was a huge reason why dynamax got banned.
"Stop comparing dmax to tera! This is in bad faith!"
If your argument defending tera can also be used to defend dmax, it's probably not a great one because dmax was indefensible.
"Tera is just like megas, or z-moves, or items or lure sets! If we can keep those, why can't you deal with tera?"
Tera is fundamentally different in that it has no opportunity cost and has no tell. Megas take up your item slot and are very predictable (If I see a garchomp+lopunny on my opponent's team, 99% of the time its regular chomp and mega lop). Z-moves take up your item slot and you must dedicate only one user in the teambuilder. Lure sets tend to be subpar when they're not doing their job. Weird items can be scouted, knocked off, tricked, and have obvious opportunity costs (you have to commit to the item the whole game, unlike tera). Unlike all of the above, you can choose the most advantageous tera in every game. If your tera has a bad matchup, just don't use it. Or wait until a point in the game where its matchup improves. The flexibility and low cost of tera make it far more comparable to dynamax than it does to anything else mentioned imo.
"It's just one turn! Learn to play!!!"
Every turn someone CAN tera, you have to consider it. And as I showed above, those considerations can get awfully complex. My example also assumed that you knew the tera type, and you were only dealing with tera from one player, not both. This quickly becomes far too much variance for either player to really predict.
"Pokemon has always been about prediction and hidden information! Learn to predict!!"
Not only can tera enable more options than is reasonably expected to be predictable (as I tried to show at the beginning of this post), the mechanics of tera itself are far more impactful than a resist berry or a choice scarf or something similar, and have none of the associated opportunity costs. Changing your typing/getting adaptability can swing the matchup most of the time and the outcome of the entire game sometimes.
"I just don't see how if tera is so random and inconsistent, how the top players have all managed to be consistent here. How have players been 1900-2k for a month straight in a meta that is supposedly just Yahtzee lol"
Short answer: The best ladder players were still at the top in the dmax meta. Does that mean we should've kept dmax too?
Long answer: The best players are gonna be the best no matter how healthy or unhealthy the meta is, and their AVERAGE performance shouldn't be taken as an indicator of anything. I emphasize average because even if they drop a game or two to a worse player due to an unhealthy mon/mechanic, they are still going to win more often than not and be at the top of the ladder more often than not. This is because competitive pokemon does reward skill to some degree, even in horseshit metas like dmax. However, unlike when playing ladder, the importance of SINGLE games is greatly emphasized in the tournament setting. As such, the effect of unhealthy mons/mechanics is amplified, and losing to silly bullshit is going to make the competitive scene feel much more uncompetitive. A healthy meta that upholds competitive integrity for both ladder and tour is what we should be aiming for.
"Skill issue! Skiill Issueeeee!!!"
A supermajority of the qualified playerbase (61.5%) already believes tera needs to be at least restricted if not outright banned. I'm not being facetious when I include this here; this is genuinely the most common response I hear when I try to explain my position.
Please stop pretending like you're better.
"Nobody wants another gen8!"
Things have already changed far too much for that. Toxapex sucks now, recovery only has 8 pp, slowtwins lost teleport, tons of pokemon lost defog
and knock off, and we have an abundance of new solid ghost resists like kingambit and ting-lu. This isn't a good argument to begin with, because
smogon should prioritize competitiveness over fun, but it's a misguided concern too. Which leads us to our next one...
"Tera is so fun! If you guys ban tera, I'm quitting!"
We don't cater to what people find fun because that's highly subjective. The smogon community has always tried to make this game competitive, and fun has always been secondary to that. This is because competitiveness is less subjective than fun, and has clearly identifiable parameters
that we can adhere to (for example a ban on spamming evasion moves is pretty straightforward and not hard to understand.) If we find tera to be
uncompetitive or unhealthy, then it will go, regardless of how many people find it fun.
"We can't go another generation without the core mechanic!"
Yes you can. We don't give special treatment to whatever bullshit that gamefreak cooks up. Dynamax was broken and we banned it. If we find tera to be broken then we'll ban that too. If the next 5 gens straight introduce more broken nonsense, then we'll continue to ban that shit because we do not care.
"Just get used to it! Why can't you try adapting for once!"
We got used to broken pokemon like dracovish, we carried seismitoad or another 1 of 3 physdef water resists that could maybe switch in once. It lead to the worst stretch of gen8 ou. We CAN adapt to broken bullshit, but that doesn't mean that we should. If it's obvious that we can do better, we shouldn't settle for less.
"You guys are just a vocal minority!"
According to the tiering survey results and working with just the qualified responses, we can breakdown the responses like this:
38.5% want no ban or restrictions
29.1% want a full ban
32.4% want some restriction, but opinions on which restriction are split even further
The point is this: We're all vocal minorities here. Nobody has enough support outright to pass what they want, and a good portion of this community will be upset no matter what we do. So just roll with the punches and let's do what needs to be done.
"Most people want to keep tera in some fashion!"
Well this is just up to interpretation isn't it? You can interpret the restrict crowd as "wanting to keep tera in some way" to make it seem like the pro-tera crowd has more support, or you can interpret the restrict crowd as "wanting tiering action on tera" and make it seem like the pro-ban crowd has more support. Neither of those interpretations are wrong. Either way, we have a pretty clean 3-way split and the restrict crowd will ultimately decide what happens here. I'm ignoring the general responses for reasons stated in the results post, which you can find in the OP.
"Think about what the general playerbase wants! Activity will plummet!"
I don't care about what the general playerbase wants. In this community, you earn your right to vote and shape the meta, and most of the general playerbase does not qualify. Anybody can, but most don't. It's not like there are quotas or caps to how many people can vote either, we geniunely could have thousands of voters if that many people decide to qualify. At the end of the day, we are debating a voluntary ruleset that nobody is being forced to play. I think it's perfectly fine for competitive players to be deciding what competitive ruleset to play with. The general playerbase has no obligation to join us, nor do we have any obligation to satisfy them.
"Just make a separate ladder then!"
The viability of this solution hinges on the amount of activity it can garner. If we have tons of people ready to run the tier, hold events, write up analyses and play the tier, then we can justify it. However, these are all done by volunteers to begin with, and spreading our free labor too thinly can have drawbacks. For example, the moveset analyses for each pokemon last gen were badly outdated. Slowking-galar's gen8 ou analysis doesn't even include any of the Nasty Plot sets, despite it being one of the tier's best stallbreakers. If we cannot properly take care of one OU, I'm not sure we should plan to take care of two.
"The meta needs more time to develop! We're doing this suspect test too soon!"
If we choose to keep tera, we have tons of pokemon that are borderline broken thanks to tera (or busted otherwise) that we need to take the time to suspect. Dnite, Espathra, Annihilape, Gholdengo, Cyclizar, Chi-yu, Chien-Pao come to mind, and by the time we've finished cleaning up the pre-home meta, pokemon home will likely drop and we'll start all over again. The meta will not have enough time to develop with tera in the tier, and by the time we get a fresh batch of new tera abusers (regidrago, regieleki, volcanion, urshifu-r) we will need to continue to suspect mons once again. If Tera is the clear single factor breaking so many pokemon, it makes no sense to preserve the mechanic and pretend its ok as we're in the middle of our 14th suspect test this year.
This is all just my speculation that x pokemon will be worthy of a suspect test and that we may have too many things to suspect if we decide to leave tera alone. You're free to disagree with my assessment or just embrace a suspect every month lol.
My speculation aside, the council has waited until the metagame has run out of things to quickban, and a suspect on tera has more popular support than any other individual problematic mon/move. We can also decide to retest tera should we feel differently in the future, so I would argue right now is a great time to suspect tera.
"The council is obviously biased towards pro-ban! The way the questions are asked is rigged against us!"
The Pro-Tera camp only needs 41% of votes on the first question to maintain the status-quo and allow tera to remain with no restrictions. You absolutely have a fair chance at victory so please tone down the conspiracy.
Finally, the best for last:
"There are genuine positives that Tera brings to the metagame and teambuilding! You can cover teambuilding holes with no serious opportunity cost, enhance defensive and offensive strategies, and reward smart risk-reward management and execution!"
I already addressed the "cover teambuilding holes" at the top, but let me respond to the meat and potatoes here. All of this is true, but this was not absent before. We already had a competitive-ish game that rewarded smart risk-reward management, long term planning, and creative teambuilding BEFORE tera was introduced. Tera does have positives but as I've made clear, it also comes with many negatives. The "fair and balanced" applications exist in the same metagame as the "broken" ones, and there is no way to isolate the two. We had a "fair and balanced" game before tera, and I reject the notion that we should overlook "broken" tera just because it also introduces some "fair and balanced" tera. You're asking me to use a double-edged sword when the glorious nippon steel katana single-edged sword is better.
If anything, the number of threats that you have to handle in your teambuilder drastically increases more than your defensive options do. It's simple-ish math: If every threat like Roaring Moon has 3-4 viable tera types (flying, dark, steel), and your defensive options can only choose to be one tera type (I make my skeledirge tera fairy), then inevitably you can't cover every option. We see this now with huge threats abusing tera like chien pao, chi-yu, annihilape, espathra, iron valiant, roaring moon, dnite, etc the list goes on. All of these pokemon have 3-4 viable tera types and it's RESTRICTIVE to try and cover all of them in the builder. It leads to the opposite of diversity.
"Both sides can use tera! You can tera reactively to limit your opponent's tera!"
Ah yes the both sides argument. Unfortunately I see this one a lot. Well, both players could use dmax, and you could use your own dmax to limit your opponent's dmax. Did that make it ok? Hell no lmao dmax is broken and you're crazy if you think it should've stayed. But tera is meaningfully different in that you can't always tera reactively, because it depends on the type matchup. There is more depth to tera gameplay than there is to dmax gameplay, that's for sure.
"Tera has drawbacks too! You get new weaknesses! It's not OP like dynamax!"
It's true that you get new weaknesses but most of the time this isn't an issue because you get to DECIDE what new weaknesses you have and WHEN you have them. This flexibility means that you can adjust your gameplan and use your tera accordingly to minimize the impact of any new weaknesses you may get. When tera is used by competent players who can do this, this drawback of tera is really not worth mentioning. Pro-Tera people spin this as a good thing, as an example of tera rewarding skill and planning. That's not entirely wrong, I just wish there weren't so many other issues.
I hope we can all agree that tera is not as bad as dmax, but tera can still be bad enough to get banned. They share many similarities, especially the ability for any pokemon to use them at any time holding any item. That unpredictability was a huge reason why dynamax got banned.
"Stop comparing dmax to tera! This is in bad faith!"
If your argument defending tera can also be used to defend dmax, it's probably not a great one because dmax was indefensible.
"Tera is just like megas, or z-moves, or items or lure sets! If we can keep those, why can't you deal with tera?"
Tera is fundamentally different in that it has no opportunity cost and has no tell. Megas take up your item slot and are very predictable (If I see a garchomp+lopunny on my opponent's team, 99% of the time its regular chomp and mega lop). Z-moves take up your item slot and you must dedicate only one user in the teambuilder. Lure sets tend to be subpar when they're not doing their job. Weird items can be scouted, knocked off, tricked, and have obvious opportunity costs (you have to commit to the item the whole game, unlike tera). Unlike all of the above, you can choose the most advantageous tera in every game. If your tera has a bad matchup, just don't use it. Or wait until a point in the game where its matchup improves. The flexibility and low cost of tera make it far more comparable to dynamax than it does to anything else mentioned imo.
"It's just one turn! Learn to play!!!"
Every turn someone CAN tera, you have to consider it. And as I showed above, those considerations can get awfully complex. My example also assumed that you knew the tera type, and you were only dealing with tera from one player, not both. This quickly becomes far too much variance for either player to really predict.
"Pokemon has always been about prediction and hidden information! Learn to predict!!"
Not only can tera enable more options than is reasonably expected to be predictable (as I tried to show at the beginning of this post), the mechanics of tera itself are far more impactful than a resist berry or a choice scarf or something similar, and have none of the associated opportunity costs. Changing your typing/getting adaptability can swing the matchup most of the time and the outcome of the entire game sometimes.
"I just don't see how if tera is so random and inconsistent, how the top players have all managed to be consistent here. How have players been 1900-2k for a month straight in a meta that is supposedly just Yahtzee lol"
Short answer: The best ladder players were still at the top in the dmax meta. Does that mean we should've kept dmax too?
Long answer: The best players are gonna be the best no matter how healthy or unhealthy the meta is, and their AVERAGE performance shouldn't be taken as an indicator of anything. I emphasize average because even if they drop a game or two to a worse player due to an unhealthy mon/mechanic, they are still going to win more often than not and be at the top of the ladder more often than not. This is because competitive pokemon does reward skill to some degree, even in horseshit metas like dmax. However, unlike when playing ladder, the importance of SINGLE games is greatly emphasized in the tournament setting. As such, the effect of unhealthy mons/mechanics is amplified, and losing to silly bullshit is going to make the competitive scene feel much more uncompetitive. A healthy meta that upholds competitive integrity for both ladder and tour is what we should be aiming for.
"Skill issue! Skiill Issueeeee!!!"
A supermajority of the qualified playerbase (61.5%) already believes tera needs to be at least restricted if not outright banned. I'm not being facetious when I include this here; this is genuinely the most common response I hear when I try to explain my position.
Please stop pretending like you're better.
"Nobody wants another gen8!"
Things have already changed far too much for that. Toxapex sucks now, recovery only has 8 pp, slowtwins lost teleport, tons of pokemon lost defog
and knock off, and we have an abundance of new solid ghost resists like kingambit and ting-lu. This isn't a good argument to begin with, because
smogon should prioritize competitiveness over fun, but it's a misguided concern too. Which leads us to our next one...
"Tera is so fun! If you guys ban tera, I'm quitting!"
We don't cater to what people find fun because that's highly subjective. The smogon community has always tried to make this game competitive, and fun has always been secondary to that. This is because competitiveness is less subjective than fun, and has clearly identifiable parameters
that we can adhere to (for example a ban on spamming evasion moves is pretty straightforward and not hard to understand.) If we find tera to be
uncompetitive or unhealthy, then it will go, regardless of how many people find it fun.
"We can't go another generation without the core mechanic!"
Yes you can. We don't give special treatment to whatever bullshit that gamefreak cooks up. Dynamax was broken and we banned it. If we find tera to be broken then we'll ban that too. If the next 5 gens straight introduce more broken nonsense, then we'll continue to ban that shit because we do not care.
"Just get used to it! Why can't you try adapting for once!"
We got used to broken pokemon like dracovish, we carried seismitoad or another 1 of 3 physdef water resists that could maybe switch in once. It lead to the worst stretch of gen8 ou. We CAN adapt to broken bullshit, but that doesn't mean that we should. If it's obvious that we can do better, we shouldn't settle for less.
"You guys are just a vocal minority!"
According to the tiering survey results and working with just the qualified responses, we can breakdown the responses like this:
38.5% want no ban or restrictions
29.1% want a full ban
32.4% want some restriction, but opinions on which restriction are split even further
The point is this: We're all vocal minorities here. Nobody has enough support outright to pass what they want, and a good portion of this community will be upset no matter what we do. So just roll with the punches and let's do what needs to be done.
"Most people want to keep tera in some fashion!"
Well this is just up to interpretation isn't it? You can interpret the restrict crowd as "wanting to keep tera in some way" to make it seem like the pro-tera crowd has more support, or you can interpret the restrict crowd as "wanting tiering action on tera" and make it seem like the pro-ban crowd has more support. Neither of those interpretations are wrong. Either way, we have a pretty clean 3-way split and the restrict crowd will ultimately decide what happens here. I'm ignoring the general responses for reasons stated in the results post, which you can find in the OP.
"Think about what the general playerbase wants! Activity will plummet!"
I don't care about what the general playerbase wants. In this community, you earn your right to vote and shape the meta, and most of the general playerbase does not qualify. Anybody can, but most don't. It's not like there are quotas or caps to how many people can vote either, we geniunely could have thousands of voters if that many people decide to qualify. At the end of the day, we are debating a voluntary ruleset that nobody is being forced to play. I think it's perfectly fine for competitive players to be deciding what competitive ruleset to play with. The general playerbase has no obligation to join us, nor do we have any obligation to satisfy them.
"Just make a separate ladder then!"
The viability of this solution hinges on the amount of activity it can garner. If we have tons of people ready to run the tier, hold events, write up analyses and play the tier, then we can justify it. However, these are all done by volunteers to begin with, and spreading our free labor too thinly can have drawbacks. For example, the moveset analyses for each pokemon last gen were badly outdated. Slowking-galar's gen8 ou analysis doesn't even include any of the Nasty Plot sets, despite it being one of the tier's best stallbreakers. If we cannot properly take care of one OU, I'm not sure we should plan to take care of two.
"The meta needs more time to develop! We're doing this suspect test too soon!"
If we choose to keep tera, we have tons of pokemon that are borderline broken thanks to tera (or busted otherwise) that we need to take the time to suspect. Dnite, Espathra, Annihilape, Gholdengo, Cyclizar, Chi-yu, Chien-Pao come to mind, and by the time we've finished cleaning up the pre-home meta, pokemon home will likely drop and we'll start all over again. The meta will not have enough time to develop with tera in the tier, and by the time we get a fresh batch of new tera abusers (regidrago, regieleki, volcanion, urshifu-r) we will need to continue to suspect mons once again. If Tera is the clear single factor breaking so many pokemon, it makes no sense to preserve the mechanic and pretend its ok as we're in the middle of our 14th suspect test this year.
This is all just my speculation that x pokemon will be worthy of a suspect test and that we may have too many things to suspect if we decide to leave tera alone. You're free to disagree with my assessment or just embrace a suspect every month lol.
My speculation aside, the council has waited until the metagame has run out of things to quickban, and a suspect on tera has more popular support than any other individual problematic mon/move. We can also decide to retest tera should we feel differently in the future, so I would argue right now is a great time to suspect tera.
"The council is obviously biased towards pro-ban! The way the questions are asked is rigged against us!"
The Pro-Tera camp only needs 41% of votes on the first question to maintain the status-quo and allow tera to remain with no restrictions. You absolutely have a fair chance at victory so please tone down the conspiracy.
Finally, the best for last:
"There are genuine positives that Tera brings to the metagame and teambuilding! You can cover teambuilding holes with no serious opportunity cost, enhance defensive and offensive strategies, and reward smart risk-reward management and execution!"
I already addressed the "cover teambuilding holes" at the top, but let me respond to the meat and potatoes here. All of this is true, but this was not absent before. We already had a competitive-ish game that rewarded smart risk-reward management, long term planning, and creative teambuilding BEFORE tera was introduced. Tera does have positives but as I've made clear, it also comes with many negatives. The "fair and balanced" applications exist in the same metagame as the "broken" ones, and there is no way to isolate the two. We had a "fair and balanced" game before tera, and I reject the notion that we should overlook "broken" tera just because it also introduces some "fair and balanced" tera. You're asking me to use a double-edged sword when the glorious nippon steel katana single-edged sword is better.
Clearly we have very different definitions of concise.
I mean anecdotally when I quit gen 8 cos of how much I hated boots I was actually doing pretty well in that meta for long spells, but regardless I don't think everyone who thinks tera is broken is wrong or whatever. I just see a lot of people here who blame tera for literally every problem in the meta and it reminds me of being miserable playing gen 8. There's a sentiment that every loss to a random tera is like the worst thing ever and an example of why it's broken when I don't view it as overly different to certain random techs in previous gens at times. I also think its applications are pretty much equal for both players/all styles of play. In my experience the guessing games really feel unhealthy when playing with or vs ho and the nature of ou so far this gen has been very offensive which also contributes to people feeling its broken, but anyone who's played uu can tell you that an offensive meta isn't guaranteed with tera. I could go on about this for longer, but tbh I don't view it as an overly productive use of my time, which is why I didn't spend an hour responding to a post from 6 months ago in a different subsection, and instead tried to summarise the main argument that seemed to be going on there.
Honestly bros, I think I gotta step off the Galarian Articuno hype train for a while. Call it a skill issue, but dealing with Tera Dark Clod / Ting-Lu is just too hard, and a well played Urshifu-RS can completely cook the bird too. Being SR weak, lacking self-sustain + coverage in one move, vulnerability to Toxic, and some Tera reliance are big limitations compared to Magearna, though the Strong AF Stored Power is nice compensation.
At the very least, the bird let me cheese some wins against players I've had no business beating, which is pretty nice.
At the very least, the bird let me cheese some wins against players I've had no business beating, which is pretty nice.
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