Tera in National Dex: Where do we stand now?

[ant4456]

While I am very pro-Tera in main SV, the power level of National Dex is not suited for Terastilization whatsoever; there are just far too many very powerful Pokémon to abuse the mechanic, and I don't think it adds much to this tier. When you are already dealing with a metagame where a 130 Attack stat is middling, an Adaptability boost / free turn to setup is unmanageable. It's already hard enough to counterplay many of these threats without it, and having so many at the same time makes teambuilding much more restrictive.

If the option was between banning more Pokémon or Terastilization, I'd go with banning Pokémon, but I don't know if that's a worthy process, or one that the community wants to handle.

 

[1234hjkl]

I really dislike Tera. I thought and still think it's dumb in OU and I think it's dumb here as well, you think Megas and Z-Moves would make it less obnoxious but mindgames like guessing if the Pult, Zama, Torn, etc is Tera or Z-Move is really dumb. Getting to bullshit your way around matchups is mindblowing stupid, turning would be checks, counters and revenge killers into fodder is really dumb and there still all the mons banned because Tera Pushed them like Regielek, The ruinous mons, Melmetal and Espartha, theres plenty more rising up lately like Rageape, or one of the mentioned above. Tera in theory could be good IF GF had put a limitation on it like loss of stabs, a forced Item slot or even being forced to put Terablast on the mon moveset, it's like they learned nothing about Max. I don't think any half-measure would fix it. Tera Preview won't fix it because even if you know the Tera it won't stop the guessing games of when and which mon will Tera, Stabs only won't fix it because many mons will still use it to great and ridiculous effect but at least we will get back Relek and Espartha and finally the 1 Tera per team, I think this could be the lesser evil of the solutions but I still have some reservations about it since it would still be easy to build a team around a nasty abuser like Rageape, Nite, Pult and others.

TL/DR: Ban Tera. Just because it's not as dumb as Max, doesn't means it's not ridiculous OR if not possible at least limit it to one mon on each team only.

 

[Phyn]

There is really not much I can add to this thread, I feel like the most important points already have been mentioned and properly explained, but I'll try amyway.
Tera is an incredibly unhealthy mechanic for the tier, and specifically on the builder.
I think with this generation natdex might already have hit a critical mass of incredible threats, all of which need answering in the builder if the player doesnt resign to building a MU fishing team. (Which would be a bad thing since MU fishing is as far from a healthy competitive environment as I could possible imagine without taking into account ReviveCats).
This problem is for the most part due to tera.
Each and ever team is expected to be able to answer multiple formes of the same threats at the same time. An easy example to make would be Kingambit.
During building, Kingambit is a must-answer pokemon that no team aming to be competitive can pass up having an answer to. However, as things stand, a team doesn't only need to answer regular Kingambit, but also Tera Flying and Tera Dark at the very least, without taking into account other nicher options like Fire and Fairy.
The same goes for Dragonite, as a team must be able to answer regular Dnite with its set of resistances as well as after it Teras. (Which is usually Normal yes, but I've personally clicked Will-O-Wisp on a Dnite as it turned to Fire).
Those are just the first two examples that came to my mind, but this is applicable to a myriad of different threats, the result of which is that the player doesnt only need to straight up sacrifice some MUs and accept being 6-0d by some threats, but also it restricts the choice of defensive mons to a select few that can actually do something agains a lot of the Tera metagame (Which is the opposite of the "creativity point" that is often used as a defense for Tera).
I also don't think I have to explain why same-type tera is unhealthy, adem 's calcs should be more than enough for that, I however want to address Crowned Mlvluu 's point regarding this being a problem of those specific mons cited in the calcs.
It really isn't.
We already had mons that got pushed over the edge by Tera in the past, the linchpin of this being Regieleki, Melmetal and Roaring Moon, mons that without Tera would clearly never be considered for a quickban at the very least.
The problem with the mechanic as a whole is that while it might make some more obscure mons kinda mediocre, it's the best mons in the tier that will abuse it the best due to it's inherent property of making already hard mons to handle even harder.
If we ban Zama, Pult, Rain, Urshifu or whatever else, other Tera abusers will just rise up and take their place until we ban ever pokemon with decently powerful stabs and an attack stat over 100 (Of course this is hyperbole, but this literally already happened after the quickbans).

As a sidenote, with no impact on wheter Tera should stay or not, I have personally stopped enjoying mons due to this mechanic being in the tier, and I feel like a lot of people feel the same, so remember while discissing that fun is subjective.

 

[sanguine]

as ND’s resident boomer, i figured i should share my thoughts:

i believe terastalization is a deeply unhealthy gimmick that upends one of the core mechanics of pokemon, which is to say that typing gives a clear indicator of offensive and defensive counterplay, and being able to change it at will is not something we should keep around.

pokemon is a game of imperfect information, which essentially means that there are knowable constants (movepool, stat spreads, base power, abilities, etc) but each player has private facts about their team that they reveal over the course of the game. the former is often pivotal in inferring what you want to do in response to the threat, what your opponent is capable of doing offensively, and how your opponent wants to respond to your tools. these set inferences can often lead into safe assumptions of the latter, which is a vital and important part of anticipating your opponent’s gameplan, in addition to crafting your own strategy in response to your limitations: “my tyranitar wants to pursuit trap the latias so zard-y can break, but i still have to keep in mind the possibility that they might know this and double switch to toxapex to cover both options, so perhaps I should just attack here for chip” etc etc.

now, imagine you got the latias play right, but then they got a +2 or +4 defense boost or a free choice specs / life orb and killed ttar. you got punished because your opponent gets a free chance to bend the core rules of the game. it would be like if you played basketball but once per game, a team could increase the value of a shot to 10 points instead of 2. not only are you punished for being better at the game, but you are also punished further and prevented from coming back from losing positions because at any point, your outplays that would ordinarily turn the game into your favor turn into moments where the opponent can win harder. this is additionally exacerbated by the fact that you can do this at any point on any mon and with any type, which means the person tera’ing is always in the driver’s seat, because of the fact that now type matchups are included in the list of information not known by both players equally. obviously, the more middle-of-the-road proposals (revealing tera type on preview, one mon tera’ing only, STAB Tera only) help to mitigate and alleviate the advantage Tera can provide, but still don’t address the core issues of the mechanic.

i’ve seen some of the counterarguments, and to be as blunt as humanly possible, i think a fair number of them are idiotic. preserving game mechanics for the sake of preserving them is deeply arbitrary and runs fundamentally against smogon’s core philosophy, which is about creating metagames centered around maximizing the amount of games where the better combination of player / team can win. why is a simple ban of poorly-implemented gimmick being treated as something as a last resort and not the desperate and complex handshake restrictions being proposed as a “compromise”? you can argue that some players would lose interest, but i don’t know if we should be bending over backwards to keep a demographic among us who probably aren’t particularly interested in the competitive aspect of play itself or in actively contributing to advancing the metagame beyond “did you know X NU threat is actually C- worthy on the VR?!?, crazy stuff”

in seeking to pander to a larger audience, we risk losing / diluting the core reason we play in the first place.

so yeah, just ban tera outright.

 

[ant4456]

There is really not much I can add to this thread, I feel like the most important points already have been mentioned and properly explained, but I'll try amyway.
Tera is an incredibly unhealthy mechanic for the tier, and specifically on the builder.
I think with this generation natdex might already have hit a critical mass of incredible threats, all of which need answering in the builder if the player doesnt resign to building a MU fishing team. (Which would be a bad thing since MU fishing is as far from a healthy competitive environment as I could possible imagine without taking into account ReviveCats).
This problem is for the most part due to tera.
Each and ever team is expected to be able to answer multiple formes of the same threats at the same time. An easy example to make would be Kingambit.
During building, Kingambit is a must-answer pokemon that no team aming to be competitive can pass up having an answer to. However, as things stand, a team doesn't only need to answer regular Kingambit, but also Tera Flying and Tera Dark at the very least, without taking into account other nicher options like Fire and Fairy.
The same goes for Dragonite, as a team must be able to answer regular Dnite with its set of resistances as well as after it Teras. (Which is usually Normal yes, but I've personally clicked Will-O-Wisp on a Dnite as it turned to Fire).
Those are just the first two examples that came to my mind, but this is applicable to a myriad of different threats, the result of which is that the player doesnt only need to straight up sacrifice some MUs and accept being 6-0d by some threats, but also it restricts the choice of defensive mons to a select few that can actually do something agains a lot of the Tera metagame (Which is the opposite of the "creativity point" that is often used as a defense for Tera).
I also don't think I have to explain why same-type tera is unhealthy, adem 's calcs should be more than enough for that, I however want to address Crowned Mlvluu 's point regarding this being a problem of those specific mons cited in the calcs.
It really isn't.
We already had mons that got pushed over the edge by Tera in the past, the linchpin of this being Regieleki, Melmetal and Roaring Moon, mons that without Tera would clearly never be considered for a quickban at the very least.
The problem with the mechanic as a whole is that while it might make some more obscure mons kinda mediocre, it's the best mons in the tier that will abuse it the best due to it's inherent property of making already hard mons to handle even harder.
If we ban Zama, Pult, Rain, Urshifu or whatever else, other Tera abusers will just rise up and take their place until we ban ever pokemon with decently powerful stabs and an attack stat over 100 (Of course this is hyperbole, but this literally already happened after the quickbans).

As a sidenote, with no impact on wheter Tera should stay or not, I have personally stopped enjoying mons due to this mechanic being in the tier, and I feel like a lot of people feel the same, so remember while discissing that fun is subjective.

imo it's less "attack stat over 100", it's more that there is such a wide range of major threats already compared to main SV, where it's still very split opinion on Tera

you already have all the 450+ auto atk/spatk Megas, the Z-Move users, Pokemon with 180 Base Attack; and on top of that, most of them cover completely different cores

Annihilape, Kartana, Tapu Lele and Dragonite are very different types of threats, for instance. And unlike normal SV, Pokemon in the National Dex metagame have even more offensive utility.

Toxic and Knock Off are rare currently and do not seem to be coming back in normal SV OU, but are still easy to find everywhere in National Dex, as a lot of these Pokemon have existed for many generations. I've Toxic stalled a Pokemon down using Tera Heatran, this won't even be possible in SV when Heatran returns.

It's hard to use diverse teams when you have to deal with many offensive cores, and major offensive threats, many of which at one point were considered broken or even banned in previous Gen OUs:

-Rain
-Lele
-Zama
-Valiant
-Kingambit
-Annihilape
-Mega Char Y
-Mega Medi
-Mega Lop
-Kart
-Urshifu
-Gholdengo
-Dragapult
-Garchomp
-Greninja
-Rillaboom
-Volc
-Dragonite
-Hoop Unbound

and many more, some nicher and some not really. Disregarding the Megas, which covering will alone require some counterplay in your team; can Terastilize, and start breaking many resists which have not only not gotten new tools in generations, but also got nerfed. While they can Tera, not being able to blow shit up with Pult / Lele is an immediate major cost to running a Defensive team, and your core taking your Tera is not a positive, especially since it can be broken. Turn your Garganacl into a Tera Water to stave off the Floatzel? Pray to God that you didn't need a Tera somewhere later in the game. This is on top of having Z-Moves, which are basically a fighting game you can craft into your team to designatedly destroy things you lure; it was already hard enough making a valid Defensive core that wasn't popped by a random Z-Move before.

Compare this to SV OU where the threats are:

-Psyspam
-Sun
-Azumarill
-Baxcalibur
-Ceruledge
-Cinderace
-Dragapult
-Dragonite
-Garchomp
-Gholdengo
-Greninja
-Hydreigon
-Iron Moth
-Iron Valiant
-Kingambit
-Meowscarada
-Roaring Moon
-Volcarona
-Walking Wake

While that is a lot of threats, there is a lot of overlap to account for in the teambuilder. A lot of it is Dragons, or Darks, and Ghosts. Slap on a Toxapex and you can pivot on half of this list, most of which even with Tera, and for most Haze. Corviknight blanks a lot of these, and Clodsire/Dondozo/Skeledirge are fairly easy to run separately, or Dozo + Dirge/Clod (Dondozo being the hardest) and blank a lot of this list. Because it's inherently easier to check the Tera threats, there is just as much use to Defensive Teraing, because while your Kingambit can Tera, it will beat a lot of these Pokemon just fine, even when they Tera. Especially because you don't have 50,000 Pokemon to Knock Off boots or Lefties, disallowing items from existing on a defensive Pokemon.

In conclusion (I guess), it makes sense why Terastilization just isn't very good for National Dex (understatement), but it's not that the mechanic is badly designed because it doesn't work with what it was intended for. It's not as funny as using Swords Dance + Rock Polish on Landorus-Therian and Dynamaxing on Gastrodon; using Max Quake and getting a Special Defense boost to live the incoming Ice Beam, but instead you can Tera Psychic Tapu Lele for STAB x Adaptability x Psychic Terrain for a very funny result, with amany pivots to bring it in again and again. Less immediately explosive, more "If you don't have a very healthy Dark/Steel-type I will kill a Pokemon this turn"

 

[AuroraOurania]

I think that my thoughts have definitely improved since the test, In that I currently am not finding the metagame to be completely unplayable anymore, but I still think it needs to go. The main issue I have with it is the elevation of threats it creates, which makes it virtually impossible to cover for everything that you could reasonably encounter in a day of playing on ladder or in a tournament situation. I don't think that it is single handedly winning games the majority of the time but I do think that it means that you can't possibly build around everything, which I don't think is healthy for a metagame.

I do think that the surprise teras are somewhat mitigated at this point, But I do still think that it causes increase of 50/50s that you can't reasonably make mid grounds to control for. I also agree with what others have said that I think that has Led to a lot of bans that would otherwise be unnecessary, And I personally value reducing the bans on pokemon that all share the same problematic mechanic in favor of simply banning the mechanic.

It also continues to have karma in my opinion, too low of opportunity cost. It's hard to justify throwing a z crystal on something Just in order to let it break past a specific core that you don't necessarily expect to run into, but that would otherwise be a reasonable check to it. Because you don't need a held item for tera, And because you can make virtually all of your pokemon have useful tera options, It's easy to have a team blow past things that should check it purely by having some weird unconventional tera It's on an already good mon that otherwise isn't necessarily a super high priority Tera choice. It makes it very easy to lure checks, Which leads to a situation where the good pokemon are unable to be checked without massive teambuilding strain.

I remember an argument made that it helps with creativity call which I continue to disagree with due to the fact that tera is a mechanic that inherently gives greater benefits to already good pokemon and team architects. Yes, it can let you use a pokemon that might otherwise be niche, but far more often it well lead to a team with creative options being stuffed out because it doesn't have the very specific checks to more common tera options

 

[Xoliduz]

I have no real stance on Tera as whether it should stay or go. Truth is we don't know what a meta without Tera will look like. We can speculate but things will vastly change. If we are to suspect it, I suggest we do it quickly because of the dramatic change.

 

[TheRainQueen]

I've all but quit the tier due to tera.

Here's a list of quick responses to common pro-tera arguments that I've had to use so many times that I have them in a .txt file so I can copy paste them.

"Tera can be countered with defensive tera and allows for creativity in the builder"

Tera allows any mon to beat any other mon at any time. "Smart" tera is pretty rare, as you usually tera the same mon every game since either

A. They couldn't answer one of the many specific threats in the tier like annihilape so you win at team preview with very little effort or
B. You are forced to tera one mon (99% of the time to water or fairy) to answer your opponent's option A.

"Tera lets poor mons get around their bad typing, so banning tera reduces creativity in the teambuilder"

The only mons that survive solely based on tera are Skeledirge, maybe Garganacl, and maybe Dragonite. Tera actually reduces diversity by forcing teams to overprepare for threats like tera water floatzel or annihilape that can only be answered by one or two mons in the game.
Alternatively, players can simply use their own unanswerable tera and hope they matchup well into the opponent, but that's not competitive.

I had more to say here but lost steam.

TLDR: Tera lets any mon beat any other mon at any time. Tera mons 2hko every would-be answer and the mechanic breaks like 30 mons in half. Ban it so we can play competitive pokemon again.

 

[Taka]

While I'm not 100% against Tera in other metagames, I do not think National Dex is the right metagame to hold this mechanic. There are just simply WAY too many pokemon in the tier. Many of the viable Pokemon from last generation have been phazed out to an extent, but they are definitely still options in the right team and are very hard to check with Tera.

On top of dealing with current metagame staples like Dragapult, Volcarona, Annihilape, Iron Valiant, and Kingambit abusing Tera, there is a level of matchup fishiness in the metagame.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9nationaldex-680507

This match between two excellent players, LBN and Lameflame, includes a random Tera sweeper just winning the game, Tera Steel Stored Power WP Latios.

While I am all for developing a metagame, Tera provides way too many options in the builder offensively, and defensive counterplay is not matching up to it. This is just the tip of the iceberg too, there are many other random Tera sweepers picking up such as Tera Poison Mew, Tera Steel Moltres-G, Tera Fight Polteageist, Tera Steel Regidrago. I think a well built team can deal with all of these Pokemon without factoring in Tera, since you can usually have decent type diversity and synergy. This simply isn't feasible with Terastallization, and there are way too many metagame threats to check for.

I think in a smaller metagame such as current OU where there is a much smaller pool of viable Pokemon, it is reasonable to be expected to deal with Tera in the builder, and those metagames can also utilize centralization to have a few really good pokemon check a vast majority of the metagame (i.e. Great Tusk and Garganacl). However, National Dex has far too many and Tera is gonna keep churning out more and more random Tera-capable pokemon that promote a matchup-fish metagame. I don't think the metagame is healthy as is, but that might change in the future.

 

[MachJacob]

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9nationaldex-680507

This match between two excellent players, LBN and Lameflame, includes a random Tera sweeper just winning the game, Tera Steel Stored Power WP Latios.

imo this is a poor example. Yes the Latios Terastalized, but what did it actually do to the game?

Without Tera:
Turn 4: U-Turn activates Weakness Policy, Latios uses Agility. It is now faster than LBN's entire team, and has a Stored Power that can OHKO nearly everything.
Turn 5: Latios Terastalizes and KOs Tapu Fini without getting hit; Tera does nothing.
Turn 6: No Ferrothorn set has anything that can hurt this Latios through Reflect, so let's say it uses Toxic. Latios takes 6% Toxic and is on 62%. (as opposed to 55% with Tera)
Turn 7: Latios KOs Zapdos. Latios takes 12% Toxic and is on 50% (as opposed to 55%)
Turn 8: Latios doesn't resist Fake Out, so it takes 14% (up from 7%) and 19% Toxic, it ends up on 17%
Turn 9: It's still healthy enough to send off another Stored Power and KO Ferrothorn on turn 9. 25% Toxic KOs Latios.

Maybe LBN sacrifices something else instead of Ferro, but Latios has still KO'd Fini, Zapdos, and another, regardless of Tera, while Lameflame still has four fully healthy Pokemon in the back.

Surprise Tera didn't sweep, it just allowed Latios to get a single extra KO after already tearing apart LBN's team (assuming he sacrificed something else instead of Lopunny, allowing another Fake Out for the KO). Either way, Lameflame is in a dominant position and primed to win the game.

This replay highlights more issues with Weakness Policy + Stored Power than with Tera.

 

[Taka]

imo this is a poor example. Yes the Latios Terastalized, but what did it actually do to the game?

Without Tera:
Turn 4: U-Turn activates Weakness Policy, Latios uses Agility. It is now faster than LBN's entire team, and has a Stored Power that can OHKO nearly everything.
Turn 5: Latios Terastalizes and KOs Tapu Fini without getting hit; Tera does nothing.
Turn 6: No Ferrothorn set has anything that can hurt this Latios through Reflect, so let's say it uses Toxic. Latios takes 6% Toxic and is on 62%. (as opposed to 55% with Tera)
Turn 7: Latios KOs Zapdos. Latios takes 12% Toxic and is on 50% (as opposed to 55%)
Turn 8: Latios doesn't resist Fake Out, so it takes 14% (up from 7%) and 19% Toxic, it ends up on 17%
Turn 9: It's still healthy enough to send off another Stored Power and KO Ferrothorn on turn 9. 25% Toxic KOs Latios.

Maybe LBN sacrifices something else instead of Ferro, but Latios has still KO'd Fini, Zapdos, and another, regardless of Tera, while Lameflame still has four fully healthy Pokemon in the back.

Surprise Tera didn't sweep, it just allowed Latios to get a single extra KO after already tearing apart LBN's team (assuming he sacrificed something else instead of Lopunny, allowing another Fake Out for the KO). Either way, Lameflame is in a dominant position and primed to win the game.

This replay highlights more issues with Weakness Policy + Stored Power than with Tera.

I see what you’re saying, but the Tera made it immune to toxic, so the possibility of being chipped like that was thrown out the window. There are just a plethora of Pokémon like this that can matchup fish into teams because Tera forces them to bring specific counterplay. I do get the sentiment about Stored Power being stupid though.

 

[Professor Hal]

I do believe that Terastalization is an oppressive presence on the metagame, regardless if it is even used or not. But since most of the other comments here in favor of banning terastalization have already shared my exact thoughts, I won't elaborate on that.

Instead, I want to entertain the ideas i've been coming across as potential alternatives to an outright suspect test or quickban.

Separate Ladders: I propose the creation of separate tiers of National Dex, one with and one without Terastalization, to see which one people like better. There seems to be a lot of controversy around the issue with people here and there threatening to quit the game if it's banned or to never play again if it's not banned, but I believe the way to answer both sides is to try splitting the ladder so that there's less drama about it. I propose this because I wanted to vote against Terastalization in the last suspect test, but ended up constantly being regularly destroyed by Tera and being unable to get the 80 GXE score necessary to vote.

Publicize the Tera-Type: In Team Preview, being able to see the Tera-Types may be helpful for simplifying the process of attacking. I am not firmly behind this suggestion, however, not only because it doesn't nerf rain teams in the slightest, but because it may be more favorable in the calculus of prediction. You can't afford to not Earthquake a pokemon like a KGB with potential to Tera-Flying, only for it not only to kill you for not attacking it, but getting to swap into a different, more offensive pokemon that may better utilize the terastalization, like Dragonite. Regardless, if this proposal is ever tried out, and power remains the issue, then it may be more informative on conducting a proper ban of Terastalization.

Teams must only choose to use either Terastalization or Mega + Z-Crystals: Not being able to use Z-Crystals and Mega Evolutions would be a critical blow to the team synergies of terastalization. I propose this idea because there is no Pokemon game in which it is possible to use all three mechanics in a single game, and in my experience, this was how Pixelmon handled the Dynamax problem: you could only equip the item that uses either mechanics but not both. I think the same thing would be helpful for curbing Terastalization's oppressiveness. The best example I can produce it on Rain teams, which under this nerf would be unable to use Mega Swampert and Tera-Water Floatzel together.

Thoughts, everyone?
I'm seeing lots of pro-ban votes but perhaps the ideas above may be more appealing to satisfy everyone?

 

[Aera]

Separate Ladders: I propose the creation of separate tiers of National Dex, one with and one without Terastalization, to see which one people like better. There seems to be a lot of controversy around the issue with people here and there threatening to quit the game if it's banned or to never play again if it's not banned, but I believe the way to answer both sides is to try splitting the ladder so that there's less drama about it. I propose this because I wanted to vote against Terastalization in the last suspect test, but ended up constantly being regularly destroyed by Tera and being unable to get the 80 GXE score necessary to vote.

I don't think separate ladders would work. At least from what I've seen from this discussion and other forums I feel like the main difference between the pro-ban and anti-ban side is a difference in priorities. From what I've seen of anti-ban players their primary concern appears to be fun, they think terastalyzation is fun and think a metagame without terastalyzation is less fun. From what I've seen from the pro-ban side is that they're primarily concerned with balance, they think tera can introduce 50/50s during play and puts a strain on teambuilding. Separate ladders will not fix this, anti-ban players will prefer the ladder with tera because it's more fun, pro-ban players will prefer the ladder without it because it's more competitive. I also think adding another ladder without tera to get reqs on could introduce a form of bias that would skew the results of the suspect test compared to other Smogon suspect tests.

Publicize the Tera-Type: In Team Preview, being able to see the Tera-Types may be helpful for simplifying the process of attacking. I am not firmly behind this suggestion, however, not only because it doesn't nerf rain teams in the slightest, but because it may be more favorable in the calculus of prediction. You can't afford to not Earthquake a pokemon like a KGB with potential to Tera-Flying, only for it not only to kill you for not attacking it, but getting to swap into a different, more offensive pokemon that may better utilize the terastalization, like Dragonite. Regardless, if this proposal is ever tried out, and power remains the issue, then it may be more informative on conducting a proper ban of Terastalization.

I'm also not a big fan of this change which I also went over in my original post. While sometimes you can be caught off guard by a surprise tera type, this is largely not the issue for me. The question is more about when a pokemon will use the tera. Do I use Earthquake on the Skeledirge with my Garchomp? Or do I switch out predicting them to tera and will-o-wisp me? What if they predict my switch and don't use the tera to begin with? It doesn't matter much here if I know my opponent's tera type. Even for the more surprise tera types it makes the predictions harder. You can swap out Skeledirge and Garchomp for tera fire Kingambit and Rotom-Wash and you'll be in a similar problem, since your opponent knows that you know the tera type. Furthermore as you said yourself, seeing a tera type on team preview doesn't help against rain at all, and I think this is the case for most wallbreakers. The main problem tera brings in those cases is that the added power of tera makes it unreasonable to have a wall sturdy enough to take their hits.

Teams must only choose to use either Terastalization or Mega + Z-Crystals: Not being able to use Z-Crystals and Mega Evolutions would be a critical blow to the team synergies of terastalization. I propose this idea because there is no Pokemon game in which it is possible to use all three mechanics in a single game, and in my experience, this was how Pixelmon handled the Dynamax problem: you could only equip the item that uses either mechanics but not both. I think the same thing would be helpful for curbing Terastalization's oppressiveness. The best example I can produce it on Rain teams, which under this nerf would be unable to use Mega Swampert and Tera-Water Floatzel together.

This to me feels more like an unnecessary complex ban, and I think we should avoid complex bans wherever possible. It doesn't help against the primary issues I have with tera either, as any team without a mega would still be able to force these 50/50 scenarios. It could also cause even more unhealthy strategies, like running regular Mawile to bluff a mega stone, therefore allowing you to get a completely unexpected tera off. I also think the justification is quite flimsy, as there are many combinations legal in Natdex that are impossible in any game. There is no game where you can run a Mega-Lopunny with Triple Axel, nor can you use a Z-move Dragapult in any game.

 

[Crowned Mlvluu]

Separate ladders will not fix this, anti-ban players will prefer the ladder with tera because it's more fun, pro-ban players will prefer the ladder without it because it's more competitive.

That seems a good fix.

 

[Sulo]

re: separate ladders for terastallization

you are literally only splitting the playerbase by doing this. this doesn't even solve the issue of tera being broken. if the proposal is "make diff ladders and see which one people like better", at the point the easiest fix is literally just to suspect test it if the end goal is to find a metagame people like.

anyways, my 2 cents on this would be relegated to repeating points i feel, but i would vote ban if tera was suspected soon (not to say it will).

it is inherently an uncompetitive mechanic that removes the value of having a hard check to something because "oh no, they have adaptability now!" there's also many scenarios that end in a loss with a tera mon on screen because of someone being baited incredibly hard by a defensive tera on an offensive pokemon. "playing better" won't help because at that point, it is literally too late to play better.

as an example: say i have a galarian moltres and the opponent brings out their check (i dont think the exact check matters too much, but we'll just say it has toxic). it is behind screens, and your plan is to hit it with toxic and use recovery to stall out its hp and get it into range of a priority move like weav ice shard or something. the most glaring issue with this plan is that i have not terastallized yet (for anyone not in the know, gmolt can use tera steel to get rid of prio weaknesses, tox weakness, and fairy/ice weakness to potentially set up on mons like mdia kyurem weav etc). in this scenario, i can quite literally just cheese my way to a win by using tera steel and avoiding any and all relevant forms of priority with ease.

there a bunch of other examples of mons cheesing their way past wins like ape and adapt tera users like zama and pult. those mons in particular are super egregious users of the mechanic that make it clear that something this strong should not be kept in the tier.

"but why not ban all the broken abusers?"

i've seen this argument used way too many times, and not for the best reasons either. banning all the tera abusers just completely ignores the root issue at hand. if you are banning multiple pokemon because of x mechanic/move/ability etc, you're just missing out on the big picture. in this case, banning all the broken tera abusers is just showing complete ignorance towards the actual problem. banning the mechanic would allow these pokemon to stay, and they could still be looked at as problematic without the mechanic in mind (see: dragapult. not saying i think its suspect worthy, but u can maybe argue for it being broken).

get this out of the tier.

 

[Beastkidyt]

I feel Tera. Is an important aspect to keep. If you add an "Open team sheet" option, it becomes less powerful than megas in my eyes, since you'll know what the types are. Banning tera currently means you put it on the same level as the insanely overpowering Dynamaxing, which even without open team sheets, I just don't see that. Most pokemon only have one or two good tera types. Another idea, while I have no clue how hard this would be to program, only let Pokémon in the SV dex take advantage of this ability. *no, that doesn't include the Greninja or Cinderace lines, or the 2 raid paradox mons, as you don't get a pokédex entry when catching them.



A restriction is better than a ban, because banning Tera. would mean 2 generations in a row that the gimmick was banned. While certain pokemon are banned due to Tera, more I feel are currently viable then banned because of it, meaning overall, it still balances the tiers and meta for the better

 

[R8]

Separate Ladders: I propose the creation of separate tiers of National Dex, one with and one without Terastalization, to see which one people like better. There seems to be a lot of controversy around the issue with people here and there threatening to quit the game if it's banned or to never play again if it's not banned, but I believe the way to answer both sides is to try splitting the ladder so that there's less drama about it. I propose this because I wanted to vote against Terastalization in the last suspect test, but ended up constantly being regularly destroyed by Tera and being unable to get the 80 GXE score necessary to vote.

To be clear right away: I believe this idea is not really possible in practice, and this for a couple reasons:

First of all, you still would have to decide which NatDex OU (the one with tera or the one without) is the official one. A metagame isn't only about its ladder, but also about National Dex official tournaments (as we have our own seasonals, premier leagues, world cups, etc... and more generally our own tournament circuit), the ressources dedicated to the tier and most importantly the tiering decisions made in them (as NatDex with tera and NatDex without Tera are probably very different tiers). It is obviously not realistic to maintain these for two tiers, which wouldn't interest the same people in the first place.

So now let's assume we did pick the non-tera NatDex OU as the official one (could be the yes-tera, this doesn't change anything to the point I am trying to make in this paragraph). We have an other problem now though : how do you justify giving a ladder to the yes-tera NatDex OU? In fact, there is a ton of metagames out there that do not have a ladder, such as old gen lower tiers, a billion different OMs, old VGC iterations, or NatDex RU/AG/Gen8OU. You probably would not be surprised to learn Pokemon Showdown is not really willing to run a ladder for every single metagame in existence (I'm not even sure if it would be technically possible lol, even if you exclude metagames with a very small playerbase that would have a dead ladder anyway). Unless you get significant forum support and enough contributors to actually maintain the tier (spoilers alert: this is not easy to get), it would be hard, if not impossible, to make a convincing case to give a ladder for what would basically be a NatDex side tier.

There is a minute chance I misunderstood what you meant in this paragraph, so just to be sure I'll also address the idea of running a Tera suspect test in a tera-less metagame (Fun fact: Smogon used to do this with suspects). I generally think this is not a good idea, as in my opinion the point of a suspect test is also making sure that the voters know how to play against (or abuse) the suspected element consistently enough.

Publicize the Tera-Type

This wouldn't really help in my opinion, as you can often tell what tera Pokemon are the most likely to use anyway. In addition to this, this would not always make either teambuilding or playing easier : stuff like tera stab moves or bulky win conditions like Annihilape or CM users often needs quite specific answers anyway, and there sometimes still is a guessing game around when they are to click the tera button or not.

Teams must only choose to use either Terastalization or Mega + Z-Crystals

I think this would just make Megas and Z-Moves really bad. You maayyyybe could argue there is some synergy thing going on, but megas and z-moves are not the reasons why Tera is problematic in the first place, so it doesn't even matter. If anything, I would argue it might make Tera even worse to deal with as you can't even rely as much on mons like Mega-Lopunny and Mega-Scizor to check threats. I guess that would nerf rain but that's about it.

I generally wouldn't be opposed to some kind of way to mitigate tera but to be really honest I have yet to see something that imo really tackles the issue with tera itself.

At least from what I've seen from this discussion and other forums I feel like the main difference between the pro-ban and anti-ban side is a difference in priorities. From what I've seen of anti-ban players their primary concern appears to be fun, they think terastalyzation is fun and think a metagame without terastalyzation is less fun. From what I've seen from the pro-ban side is that they're primarily concerned with balance, they think tera can introduce 50/50s during play and puts a strain on teambuilding.

It should absolutely be mentioned that fun is, first and foremost, subjective anyway, and keeping whatever element in whatever metagame for the through suspect voting for the sake of fun is uh... not something that really makes sense to me, at all.

If one is arguing that tera should stay for the sake of fun, why couldn't I argue that it actually should be banned for the sake of fun? You don't have to look too hard to find people that hate tera, even if you discount all the people that are waiting for tera to be banned before starting to play gen9.

Furthermore, competitive players also are looking for fun (if you are playing mons without having fun you should quit immediately lol): some people enjoy playing in a balanced metagame, and this is why Smogon formats exist in the first place. The whole idea behind Smogons' tiering process is basically asking the best players available (= suspect process) what they think should be banned or shouldn't, because they probably know what they are talking about. It's fine to not agree with this philosophy, since everyone has its own way to have fun playing the game, but then if you don't like playing with Smogon rulesets you probably shouldn't play Smogon formats in the first place.

If you add an "Open team sheet" option, it becomes less powerful than megas in my eyes, since you'll know what the types are.

No, because:

Most pokemon only have one or two good tera types.

and even when you know for sure what tera type the mon is, stuff are still rough to deal with. I already went over it in this post, and so did pple in the thread : information isn't the main issue with tera.

Banning tera currently means you put it on the same level as the insanely overpowering Dynamaxing

Dynamax is more broken than tera, but it doesn't mean tera is fine. We shouldn't keep Genesect in OU because Arceus is more broken than it.

Another idea, while I have no clue how hard this would be to program, only let Pokémon in the SV dex take advantage of this ability. *no, that doesn't include the Greninja or Cinderace lines, or the 2 raid paradox mons, as you don't get a pokédex entry when catching them.

This is not how Smogon works, read more about this in this post

A restriction is better than a ban, because banning Tera. would mean 2 generations in a row that the gimmick was banned.

What Smogon is trying to do is creating a balanced Pokemon format : if tera is broken, then it unfortunately has to go. That's life /shrug

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One final thing I would like to add to this very messy post:
To anyone just saying "just be creative", please take as a proof of creativity all the unholy sets people come up with tera. People recently started to experiment with random setup sweepers that happen to abuse tera very well (stored power users in particular), and even though I personally don't have enough experience yet to form an educated opinion on it I think we have good reasons to be concerned about it lol, the metagame can quickly become bullshit city if anything can decide to become Magearna at home.

 

[LORD SAGIS]

Coming from a outsider that suspect test was heavily rushed. The PR thread about the future of natdex wasn't even finished and you guys didn't even wait for OU's chosen options with dealing with it. I'm sorry but you guys were really trying to get it out the way as fast as possible and it backfired tremendously.

I ask that the next suspect doesn't include a "Ban Tera" options as its clear a lot of people who play only want it nerfed. Either be Tera Captains or showing the Tera type. No reason to risk the same shit happening again.

 

[G-Luke]

Coming from a outsider that suspect test was heavily rushed. The PR thread about the future of natdex wasn't even finished and you guys didn't even wait for OU's chosen options with dealing with it. I'm sorry but you guys were really trying to get it out the way as fast as possible and it backfired tremendously.

I ask that the next suspect doesn't include a "Ban Tera" options as its clear a lot of people who play only want it nerfed. Either be Tera Captains or showing the Tera type. No reason to risk the same shit happening again.

Why wouldn't you keep a Ban Tera option? Everyone who is anti Tera wants it banned. It's pro Tera people want restrictions or being unaltered.

 

[LORD SAGIS]

Why wouldn't you keep a Ban Tera option? Everyone who is anti Tera wants it banned. It's pro Tera people want restrictions or being unaltered.

I'm sure a lot of people voted ban for the sole reason there was no other option. It goes both ways.

 

[G-Luke]

I'm sure a lot of people voted ban for the sole reason there was no other option. It goes both ways.

Again, why would that lead you to determine that removing that option altogether is a good idea? Every anti Tera sentiment shared in the thread wants it fully gone. At that point what you are suggesting is pro Tera v pro Tera? What's the point.

 

[Phyn]

Coming from a outsider that suspect test was heavily rushed. The PR thread about the future of natdex wasn't even finished and you guys didn't even wait for OU's chosen options with dealing with it. I'm sorry but you guys were really trying to get it out the way as fast as possible and it backfired tremendously.

I ask that the next suspect doesn't include a "Ban Tera" options as its clear a lot of people who play only want it nerfed. Either be Tera Captains or showing the Tera type. No reason to risk the same shit happening again.

Ok so a couple of things.
Why should we wait for OU to decide what to do in order to run a Tera suspect? The metas are completely different.
Also where did u get the idea that a lot of people only want for it to be nerfed? Reading this thread, most ppl are decidedly against tera staying in the tier, and every time a restriction is proposed other people reply with valid reasons why they think the restriction wouldn't work, especially cause this is natdex, and we have a whole lot more threats than in OU.
Also what shit happening again would exluding "ban tera" prevent? People not voting it? Cause now there is not even an option to?
This post is just ridiculous

 

[R8]

Coming from a outsider that suspect test was heavily rushed. The PR thread about the future of natdex wasn't even finished and you guys didn't even wait for OU's chosen options with dealing with it. I'm sorry but you guys were really trying to get it out the way as fast as possible and it backfired tremendously.

I ask that the next suspect doesn't include a "Ban Tera" options as its clear a lot of people who play only want it nerfed. Either be Tera Captains or showing the Tera type. No reason to risk the same shit happening again.

I personally do agree Tera was suspected way too fast for the reasons mentioned, however I really don't see the point of removing the full ban option. If people don't want to ban it they can just... vote to not ban it?

Also anyone in touch with the natdex community can tell you the anti-tera sentiment grew significantly stronger over time since the tera suspect, which btw was like 2 ban votes away from nuking tera.

 

[Aera]

It should absolutely be mentioned that fun is, first and foremost, subjective anyway, and keeping whatever element in whatever metagame for the through suspect voting for the sake of fun is uh... not something that really makes sense to me, at all.

If one is arguing that tera should stay for the sake of fun, why couldn't I argue that it actually should be banned for the sake of fun? You don't have to look too hard to find people that hate tera lol, even if you discount all the people that are waiting for tera to be banned before starting to play gen9 lol.

I do not think it's a good argument either and completely agree it should not be considered in whether something should be banned or not, but it is a sentiment you can see reflected in a large number of players. It's more to say that I unfortunately do not think these kinds of discussions will persuade many people. If your primary motivation for wanting tera to remain legal is that you think it's fun, arguments of its competitive merit will not be very persuasive. Likewise if your primary concern is competitive balance, any comment about creativity or fun will not change your mind either.

 

[TimidTailwind]

Only been playing the tier for a pretty short amount of time, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

I find tera fun. Really, really fun; the options it opens up lets you use some Pokémon in whole new ways. But I can't say that and not recognize the fact that I agree it's a little too overwhelming for the tier. It's unpredictability can lead to a lot of scenarios that just can't work out or that just change the way you have to fight due to something that might not be expected, or cheap Bo1 tech. And while some of that can just be adapted to, it doesn't change that it can also just amp up a primary type and all of a sudden nothing's switching into you. If it were up to me, I'd do open teras at preview. But I also wouldn't argue with it being flat out banned. Just some sort of restriction of some kind I think works.