Okay I haven't posted in minute but I have some thoughts and I want to put a disclaimer that the council is not at fault because DLC is coming out in 3 weeks. (We the people vote and we the people need to speak up)
This meta is absolute dogshit. If we rated it out competitiveness in my opinion it might be like a 5/10 (probably me being nice tbh), if we rated for fun I would it's about the same.
Why? You see the same thing on the high ladder, it's a combination of Dondozo for all of the physically (attacking) insane mons we have like (Kingambit or Baxcalibur). You put in a water absorb for all the Rain cheese teams and Walking Wake. Then you have to add everyone's favorite Pokemon (usually) Ting Lu [broken af], for all the spike stacking since Zapdos can't really touch it (who also loves spamming static across the oppositions field). Ting Lus sheer bulk is hard to beat down so it'll get a bunch of layers, oh you want to rapid spin because you don't have an all boots team? oh well don't mind if I do I'll go to my 252 HP / 252 DEF Bold Gholdengo on an Air-Balloon to take your Rapid Spin, EQ, and Knock Off from Great Tusk. The best way to combat all the spike stacking spam? Either you carry an all boots team or you have Cinderace as your best entry hazard (switcher not remover) LOL. It's just all fishing for status, let me make sure that I can setup my family of entry hazard, who gets para haxed more, oh you're running a whole HO team? let me Flame Body all your physical attackers and if that doesn't work let me wisp everybody (Shoutout to Moltres). Oh you don't want to use Ting Lu? that's totally fine if you want to have a more offensive approach just use Samurott-Hisui! Ceaseless Edge all day until you get killed and make sure that it's impossible for the opposition to remove your spikes!
Oh both teams have Booster Energy Valiant as their fastest mons? lets see who wins the speed tie :D
All I'm getting at is when DLC comes out we have a decent amount of work to do as a community to voice our disinterest because, I've said this before and I'll say it again. Last month of pre-HOME was probably the best that this meta felt, I can absolutely truly call it balanced even with Volc running everywhere. We need to get back there.
I've spoken to many of my friends who play the tier, and 90% of them do not have fun with building at all, because it's almost impossible to prepare for everything especially if you take in account with all the other teras people are running. I think there's literally no one on this site that will say that the meta the way it currently is has no room for improvement.
Ngl I feel like if I made this post it would elicit a different reaction. To be fair I have semi-cringe posts on here so maybe that's on me. Anyway, I think the meta is generally worse post home because of tera math. For every viable mon added to a tera meta, there is a formula that puts additional strain on the meta. I'm sure someone could break it down mathematically. We all know Val just isn't Val. Val has a regional form it can turn into on a dime and that regional variant is Steel, or Ghost, or Dark, or Electric.
It's like if I could instantly swap out my Alolan-Ninetails into Kanto Ninetails and eat a Scizor Bullet Punch as it attacks. Every viable DLC mon will add 2-5 more mons, and that factor increases exponentially. Not just adding new mons, it's the complexity of it all that is a burden. The strain on builder. The in-game tera mind games. This meta won't get better with time, with new mons, it will get worse.
I know why some ppl like Tera, but I feel like they are objectively wrong. I wish it could stay, I love a good gimmick, but what it's doing and will continue to do is make this meta terrible. All my passion and rage about tera has died down completely, and I'm just slowly watching it perniciously and subtly erode our metagame.
Ngl I disagree. I played a few hundred games this week between OLT ladder and other tournaments, and I found the metagame to be good aside from a few interactions with Tera Fairy Kingambit and SD Bax.
Yea, those can and should go had we had more time perhaps. But relatively speaking, this is by far the least problematic metagame we have had since HOME has dropped. It was better a bit beforehand after Shed Tail got banned, but when the deck is reshuffled, restoring order naturally takes time.
I find Dondozo to be very abusable and honestly healthy as a means of forcing deviation and creativity within the confines of offense. I find Ting Lu stack management to be an interesting feature of the metagame and it makes finding openings and generating momentum to force switches an important skill akin to BW spikes patterns. I don’t think any of that is an imminent issue.
I feel like the meta is a wild game of Jenga atm. Gambit and Bax are not broken, but are broken with tera. In a lot of ways we need Bax and Gambit, and a lot of ways we don't But yes, those are easy to identify interactions that show there are times this meta can be quite silly. The end game is where this meta suffers the most imo. There are also some incredibly easy to pilot wincons that need specific counters and do not have blanket checks. Overall, it's not unplayable, and at times fun because mons is fun, but I think almost everyone has had some games that leave a bad taste in their mouth like no other meta before it. The amount of weight one puts on these games is different per person, and that's why the opinions about this meta are so polarizing. To some it's a meaningless silly game and who cares if that tera fire bax bullshitted a win- to others its an injustice, even if they are the ones winning via these means. It's obviously somewhere in the middle, but I don't think some of these complaints are the usual crying that comes with any meta, it just feels a little deeper than that. Please continue to factor in tera when it comes to what is best for the meta.
Yeah, powerlevel is definitely related to tera and the meta. Think of pokemon like
1) tera dragon glaive rush baxcalibur
2) tera dark blackglasses sucker punch/kowtow cleave kingambit
3) tera fighting choice band close combat zamazenta
4) Tera water proto spa/speed choice specs hydro steam Walking Wake in the sun
All of these pokemon are much stronger than they would be in a metagame without tera, much stronger purely thanks to tera. All of these pokemon put a big strain on teambuilding, and all of these are viable and dangerous threats, who have great niches in the meta due to tera making them nukes.
The power level is likely to go down if tera is banned, although some pokemon like Walking Wake and Baxcalibur will still be problematic imo.
I think Tera could theoretically be balanced in a very limited and tightly managed pool of pokemon. OU will never be that, and thus tera will imo never be balanced in practice.
EDIT: To reply to the quoted response quickly (too short to warrant a separate post)
Nah, it's pretty arbitrary. I couldn't draw a hard line in the sand and tell you exactly why I drew it there.
When 3HKOs turn into 2HKOs, or 2HKOs into OHKOs via same type tera then that changes everything. The baseline power of the meta is pushed into ridiculous levels. Safe switch ins are no longer safe. Counters become soft checks. I said way back the only way tera would be manageable would be a restriction that nerfs it into the ground. I was thinking you can only tera on T1- crazy shit like that. Or like you said, only certain mons. The amount and level of restrictions needed to make this thing a healthy gimmick would upset pro-tera crowd so much that we might as well ban it at that point.
We can only hope that the new tera type will be so broken that it forces a complex ban conversation by pro tera players, wherein we would say, "oh, we could have banned Fairy on Gambit this whole time?" It would be pretty funny to watch some of the mental gymnastics.
P.S don't forget about Pult, that thing loves to same type tera and break teams apart.
