Also, wasn't Last Respect unanimously banned once more than 1 user was available? When a new unprecendented situation arrives, countries have to create new laws using the old ones as a guideline, just like with Internet or nuclear energy; gen 9 is clearly the precedent of "brutally powerful moves can be banworthy, just like the ones who create unfair scenarios" in that sense.
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Metagame Terastallization Tiering Discussion, Part II [CLOSED FOR DLC]
- Thread starter Finchinator
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What differentiates move/ability bans and move/ability "clauses"? Why was there a Swagger Clause but there isn't currently a Last Respects or Shed Tail "Clause"? Why is there currently a Moody Clause but not an Arena Trap "Clause"? It seems arbitrary which bans are clauses when it's not blanket ban like OHKO/Evasion.
Swagplay caused a ban as a eesult of uncompetitiveness, which is not the same circumstances as Tera Blast. Climb off that high horse would you?
Yeah, and if Tera does eventually get the boot, it'll be for being uncompetitive, not for being "broken". So if Tera Blast being banned is enough to bring Tera in line with the majority opinion, that amounts to.. a ban on an uncompetitive move.
I know the arguments against Tera shift constantly, depending what the pro-Tera side has most recently said, but this is very much the core of why the full-ban side wants the entire thing gone.
And it's used mostly to fish for KOs to supposed counters. It might be alright once you know the tera type in preview, specially since that means a lot of opportunity cost, specially outside HO where you might want defensive tera, but we're not that sure.
Hey guys, Goku here back again.
Sorry for my last post, Vegeta taught me not to post such horrible takes here again (the funny reactions hurt my ego).
Anyway, Goku's honest opinion on Tera is that it should have a partial ban.
Goku isn't well versed with Showdown as much, but here is his take!
A Pokemon games gimmick should never be banned fully, period. Yes, there need to be some partial bans in place but Tera is not nearly as broken to justify a ban. However, there are many cases where a person's team is radically changed because their jolt turned into the ice type and spammed tera blast ice and Thunderbolt (just an example I thought about from a recent random battles game).
What I suggest is a ban on certain types of tera on certain pokemon.
Since my knowledge on showdown is limited, I'll keep it at that. But if there are cases where a pokemon can tera into 1 type, spend 2 moves setting up and be ubers level (tera electric balloon shed), the pokemon should not be allowed to tera into that type.
Another solution would be to ban that mon outright and put it in a higher tier, although Goku here doesn't know which is better, due to their limited knowledge.
Goku out!
Sorry for my last post, Vegeta taught me not to post such horrible takes here again (the funny reactions hurt my ego).
Anyway, Goku's honest opinion on Tera is that it should have a partial ban.
Goku isn't well versed with Showdown as much, but here is his take!
A Pokemon games gimmick should never be banned fully, period. Yes, there need to be some partial bans in place but Tera is not nearly as broken to justify a ban. However, there are many cases where a person's team is radically changed because their jolt turned into the ice type and spammed tera blast ice and Thunderbolt (just an example I thought about from a recent random battles game).
What I suggest is a ban on certain types of tera on certain pokemon.
Since my knowledge on showdown is limited, I'll keep it at that. But if there are cases where a pokemon can tera into 1 type, spend 2 moves setting up and be ubers level (tera electric balloon shed), the pokemon should not be allowed to tera into that type.
Another solution would be to ban that mon outright and put it in a higher tier, although Goku here doesn't know which is better, due to their limited knowledge.
Goku out!
i don't think it'd take too much of a stretch to get tera blast banned, can't it just be argued that it allows any mon to invalidate its checks and counters? even if most mons are obviously not broken with it, it inherently introduces an unhealthy level of unpredictability into the game. that sounds like plenty of justification for it to get suspected, and it seems like one of the better ways to restrict tera. i would even say that it makes a lot more sense than tera preview from a policy perspective, that's just introducing a whole game rule because it's kind of done in vgc
I'm sorry Goku, but no one wants to play Gen 8 OU with Dynamax legal. This is not a valid way of establishing whether or not something is banworthy.
except tera isn't uncompetitive according to many, many people, including a lot of top players, moderators, and even council members. unhealthy because of unpredictability, yes, that argument can be made and i believe it to be true. broken, not in my eyes, no, but i can see how some would consider it so, seeing as it's played central roles in multiple bans, including the upcoming one of kingambit. (and before people twist my words into a pro-ban talking point, z-moves played outsized roles in several bans in gen 7 too, as well as in natdex formats. that doesn't make z-moves broken, does it? so why are we applying this logic to tera?) uncompetitive? no, not at all.
I feel like banning tera blast, though a step in the right direction, ignores a lot of the problems with tera favour of crippling a few niche sets and special normal types.
One of the big reasons that tera is unhealthy in my eyes is how it interacts with any mon that has a setup move by giving it a free turn from a mistake you made that can only be seen retroactively. Kingambit is the easy example and is getting tested literally tomorrow so instead I’ll use bax:
1.The opponent brings bax onto the field to setup a sweep
2. In order to kill bax before it can sweep me I switch in my booster energy iron treads (ass mon, ik) in order to outspeed and kill it with iron head
3. Bax teras into steel on my iron head and gets a second dd off
4. I lose the game for not using eq, which would have missed the ko on a non tera or tera fairy bax in the same scenario
Was not using eq a mistake there, or did I make the right play but lose anyway because the opponent was using a set is standard other than the tera type? What if I had a mon that beats regular dd bax but would lose to it when it teras due to no longer being able to hit it hard enough?
There’s also the concern that tera is what is enabling single mistakes to cost entire games as much as they do because it favours offensive momentum heavily: would ho be as popular if the amount of options teams had to exert offensive pressure due to tera matched the amount of options they had to answer those offences?
One of the big reasons that tera is unhealthy in my eyes is how it interacts with any mon that has a setup move by giving it a free turn from a mistake you made that can only be seen retroactively. Kingambit is the easy example and is getting tested literally tomorrow so instead I’ll use bax:
1.The opponent brings bax onto the field to setup a sweep
2. In order to kill bax before it can sweep me I switch in my booster energy iron treads (ass mon, ik) in order to outspeed and kill it with iron head
3. Bax teras into steel on my iron head and gets a second dd off
4. I lose the game for not using eq, which would have missed the ko on a non tera or tera fairy bax in the same scenario
Was not using eq a mistake there, or did I make the right play but lose anyway because the opponent was using a set is standard other than the tera type? What if I had a mon that beats regular dd bax but would lose to it when it teras due to no longer being able to hit it hard enough?
There’s also the concern that tera is what is enabling single mistakes to cost entire games as much as they do because it favours offensive momentum heavily: would ho be as popular if the amount of options teams had to exert offensive pressure due to tera matched the amount of options they had to answer those offences?
mildly off topic but yeah what is the difference between "clauses" and bans?
the difference used to be that bans were only for items and mons and clauses were for almost everything else—abilities (moody), moves (swagger/bp), groups of moves (ohko/evasion), and occasionally other stuff too complex to be covered by simple bans (endless battle/sleep). there were some exceptions, like shadow tag, but generally that was how things shook out before sometime in gen… i wanna say 6 or 7. nowadays, clauses are exclusive to the latter two and mechanics like dynamax, as moves and abilities are covered by individual bans instead.
there's also, of course, the edgar clause
Hey Return To Zero (may I call you zero?).
I agree, it seems like my take could have been more worked on. Thoughts on my second idea, however?
Taht would need an insane amount of suspecting and thinking of for example "if regieleki could only teras bug, fire, ground, ... but not grass, ice or water, would it be fair?"
And that for basically every pokemon at least in the OU and probably some in the ubers tier would be too much work and a too uncertain line for when a teratype is broken and when not,
i already mentioned a ban of tera types for mons where you can only have a teratype NOT matching any of your four (or less) attacking moves to celm the insane powerboost down and while i got an answer about how that would do nothing against stuff like tera flying kingambit or tera feiry or steel bax for example, it would calm the powerlevel of the tier down to an OU-acceptable extent imo where you can actually switch in most of the mons instead of your mixed defensive amoonguss getting twoshot by an enamorus specs moonblast because it felt like tera-fairying or to lose to tera ghost/tera psychic IVal because it set up and had stab on moves it shouldnt have them on
One thing to keep in mind(and I'm not calling you out for this, it's everyone on every side):
No one actually bans things for the high-minded policy reasons. The policy is the justification. People want things banned because they hate it, or unbanned because they like it. The example of that is King's Rock, which was supposedly banned for RNG. Not for the hideously unreliable 10% chance to flinch that is clearly BS when it goes off, but for the much more reasonable 41% chance that you should anticipate and prepare for that it had under certain circumstances.
And it's fine, the goal is an enjoyable metagame, but let's not kid ourselves: Most people are going to vote based not on details of policy or game theory analysis of what level of unexpected teambuilding qualifies as fair, but based on "This sucks and I hate it" or "This is awesome!" and that shouldn't be ignored.
You putting words in people's mouth?
You can't prepare for something that is purely RNG and operates independantly regardless of player action. It is noninteractive and removes player autonomy and skill. This is the kind of uncompetitiveness.
People prepare for Serene Grace Jirachi and its 60% flinch chance, I don't see why Cloyster and a 41% flinch chance can't be prepared for. The difference isn't some nebulous "competitiveness" argument, it's that Shell Smash Cloyster is really powerful and would have been banned to Ubers for power reasons had King's Rock not been booted.
and they shouldn't have to do that shit either. this is actually kind of the worst example you could use because jirachi's continued existence is a massive plot hole in any self-consistent tiering policy
This is the same stuff as Clawgate. There's massive opportunity cost to running Paraflinch Jirachi and it can be stopped relatively easy. The thing with sets like this is that this is one mon running it and its not like everyone likes using Jirachi and is going to pick that set, so I feel it's more justified keeping it bc thats its niche. Plus a complex ban akin to "no serene grace + flinching moves" is far from what smogon councils try to do. The thing with Tera is that everyone can do it and its something that can shift the game with the click of a button. Paraflinch Jirachi is manageable in that when you see Jirachi in Team Preview you already prepare yourself for it.
But if that was the problem, King's Rock would have been banned way back when tiering policy was first developed. It was always a 10% chance of random BS, which could happen on any pokemon and is impossible to anticipate. It showing up on Cloyster is both more powerful and less random. Suddenly it's a common item pick for a specific pokemon, that you can scout like any other item, and has a chance of flinch that is high enough that you should reasonably take it into your calculations*. That's not RNG, that's a tradeoff the same as picking Fire Blast over Flamethrower is.
And that's when the ban came through. It wasn't banned for being RNG, it was banned for being good and annoying.
And that's a valid reason to ban things, to be fair. I'm just saying that a lot of debaters on every side here are holding up the policy like they're sacred texts, arguing over what the meaning of "is" is, but in practice a lot of people are going to vote based on "the meta will be less shitty if X", and that shouldn't be forgotten.
*41% chance of increasing damage by 100%, repeating. Which makes it better than LO but less reliable
Only if you think flinching in general is a problem**. Jirachi doesn't have an RNG chance of winning. At 60%, Jirachi's flinch chance is more reliable than not. The person who stays in and tries to hit through the flinching is the one who hopes the RNG works in their favor, the person using Jirachi is just abusing a stunlock, a perfectly reasonable thing to do in competitive games.
**And we haven't banned Fake Out, so it's not
For what it’s worth, we intend to move into a Kingambit suspect tonight or tomorrow.
These threads will remain open* and closely watched in the meantime as Tera is still an important topic.
*to Tera discussion, not Kingambit discussion
These threads will remain open* and closely watched in the meantime as Tera is still an important topic.
*to Tera discussion, not Kingambit discussion
Understood, but I'm worried that a big consensus is to restrict tera then do something about Kingambit (You said that was a common feeling around Kingambit), so the process will be incredibly troublesome with tons of different solutions to the same issue.
I honestly think for my part that, unless we fully ban tera, Kingambit will be banworthy due to roughly the same reasons as gen 6 aegislash, gen 8 Magearna, gen 9 Zamacenta-C/Annihilape/Palafin, Gen 4 Garchomp and gen 7 Zygarde to an extent, aka having both great power and ease of setting up due to typing and bulk so they can easily sweep. Since a full ban of tera is very unlikely...
I REALLY don't want to be in your shoes, nor anyone of the council, because no one is equipped to deal with 2 suspect tests at the same time. I'll try my best to help the discussion to mantain its dialogue in both Tera and Kingambit.
PS: With 2 suspects I mean discussions about restrictions and bans, specially since Kingambit is a big part of terastalization issues and viceversa.
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To be clear, believe it's been stated that only a single suspect test can occur at a time
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