Metagame Terastallization Tiering Discussion [ UPDATE POST #1293]

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Tera is crap and needs banning imo. I just had one of those Espathra's be passed a sub from Cyclizar (please ban this shit) so I'm like ok switch to Kingambit, Espathra is at +1, break the sub, Espathra is at +2, ok let's sucker punch. Tera to fire, tera blast, I was 3% from the kill proceed to be swept I couldn't defensively tera here because I run ghost on Kingambit. What am I actually supposed to do here? I switched into a mon that without tera is capable of beating it how is it competitive that I lose in this situation?
You could've sacked a mon to give Kingambit a power boost through his ability, or run an offensive Tera for him, or run an Unaware tank to block setup sweepers.
 
I have been trying to argue this exact thing, but majority of the pro-tera arguments apparently are

a) it's fun because unpredictable
b) it's the generational gimmick

And neither consider it's strain on teambuilding. Both arguments are pretty ridiculous and it shows how so many casual players are completely out of touch with the singles 6v6 meta
No, this is as far from what is actually being said in the pro-tera side as can be and you clearly have not been paying attention to the thread on the in depth discussion of why. Your statement on team building is a double edged sword and shows how little you understand developing meta games as a whole. You can't even make an argument on team building until the meta actually settles down and people decrease the amount of TESTING of various sets. The strain on teambuilding is twofold because both camps, before the match even begins, needs to plan what Tera types work best for their team. You tell me, exactly how different is this from picking items, Iv's/Ev's, and team members? These are all factors you cannot change mid battle. Once I decide to lock in my tera type Dragon Charizard in teambuilder, I can't magically make it a Water type mid battle. This notion of "it can turn into anything so its bad" stems from lack of understanding of the new pokemon, who have only been out for 8 days as of this post. understanding of the new mechanic, and understanding what tera types work better with what Pokemon.

Of the previous 3 generational gimmicks thus far, only one was banned. Dynamax was on a level far more insane than anything we had seen previously and it was clearly built towards VGC given how the mechanic worked. Mega's and Z-moves both had aspects of prediction not previously seen in the game, and Tera is no different. As it stands, terastilization is the arguably the weakest mechanic of the 4. Like Mega's and Z-moves, you have to plan out what you bring to the fight. The difference is that the mechanic itself doesn't actually give you a net value every time you hit the Terastilize button. Hell, you can even go games without using the mechanic because you never actually had a good time to use it. This is the first mechanic that actually requires thought before use and using it to early can cost you games. When you have enough games under your belt, it becomes far more predictable. And even when you get surprised by a terastilization, that doesn't mean it was a good one.
 
You could've sacked a mon to give Kingambit a power boost through his ability, or run an offensive Tera for him, or run an Unaware tank to block setup sweepers.
Unaware doesn't always stop Espathra since Stored power blows most mons with that ability due to the high base power of the move although Skeledirge could be ok and maybe Dondozo
 
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Do people think gen 8 was bad or stale? Gen 8 was better than gen 7 imo, except for the brief period where we unfortunately allowed dynamax. Polls seemed to support me on this one, so I'm surprised to see so much gen 8 hate around here.
I don't like double posting but I was typing up an article so this hadn't loaded yet, so please forgive me. Gen 8 was definitely the most stale meta we have seen in awhile. I've been around for awhile and I do in fact remember a mass exodus of players after the dynamax ban due to many finding the speed of the ban being in poor taste. I don't agree with that as I see how flaws Dynamax is for 6v6 singles, however I can tell you that as someone who plays both VGC and Smogon singles, VGC saw the most significant spike in player activity in the history of the game ( cart). In fact, the Sword and Shield Meta on cart was the most played meta in terms of active players for online cart play in the history of Pokemon. So I would say many of the polls are skewed, because many players lost faith in Smogon at that time.
 
1) wrong thread
2) if you're gonna talk about a replay then send the replay
3) Notice how terra team sheets would have changed this. Maybe you would have prepared a different terra type than ghost on your kingambit or had another mon that could deal with the sub before you sucker punch, but either way you would know what coverage espathra was packing, and could move your gameplan accordingly.
I'll be honest I forgot to save the replay.

No tera team sheets wouldn't have changed this because you still have to account for all the other mons that want to change type and they were also running dnite.

EDIT: Also this is entirely missing the point, outside of tera Kingambit checks Espartha 100%, in this situation it's best move against me is Dazzling Gleam which whilst is a 2hko I would have gotten the kill with sucker. How are you supposed to team build when multiple mons want to run multiple tera types. How can you build sets to check or counter things when said pokemon can effectively turn into multiple different pokemon. Ok. their stats don't change but the typing is what makes most pokemon. Even if a pokemon only wants to run 3 or 4 tera's that's potentially 5 different pokemon, how are you supposed to deal with that with any consistency?

If you knew it was a Tera Fire Espathra, you would have at least known that Kingambit would be at risk of getting blown up by a coverage move like Tera Blast and even Tera Ghost King would've probably saved you from that sweep.

Also, that's one of those mons that's reasonable to expect to Tera. Espathra is a pretty all-or-nothing sweeper, isn't it? It makes sense that it'd want to capitalize on a potential opening made by Terastal to deal with counters and sweep.

Could you please post the replay? I just wanna know if there were other identifiable threats on team preview.
Yes tera ghost would have saved me from the sweep but then I would have also lost the potential to play defensively against the rest of their team.

I forgot to save the replay I'm sorry, they had a dnite though that was what I thought was going to tera.
 
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I can tell you that as someone who plays both VGC and Smogon singles, VGC saw the most significant spike in player activity in the history of the game ( cart). In fact, the Sword and Shield Meta on cart was the most played meta in terms of active players for online cart play in the history of Pokemon. So I would say many of the polls are skewed, because many players lost faith in Smogon at that time.
Sword and Shield also outsold every other pokemon game with online play, so I am not surprised that it was also the most played online. I am skeptical that people were dissatisfied with OU and left to play VGC as the primary reason why VGC had an increased playerbase.


Gen 8 was definitely the most stale meta we have seen in awhile.
In what way? It was a fun a bunch of exciting metas where creativity was rewarded and bullshit was kept to a minimum, definitely for the most part. Stall occasionally became somewhat meta but the meta shifted to block it pretty quickly every time.
 
I'll be honest I forgot to save the replay.

No tera team sheets wouldn't have changed this because you still have to account for all the other mons that want to change type and they were also running dnite.



Yes tera ghost would have saved me from the sweep but then I would have also lost the potential to play defensively against the rest of their team.

I forgot to save the replay I'm sorry, they had a dnite though that was what I thought was going to tera.
It happens. Don't worry about it.

Expecting Tera on the Dnite is also reasonable enough. Them's the breaks.

I'm not sure I agree with the last part though. I'd have definitely focused on the Espathra behind a sub boosting and ready to fold me like an omelet. If the Dnite got me after that, Tera or not involved, it's just a cleaner doing its job and I couldn't prevent it. :mehowth:
 
I don't like double posting but I was typing up an article so this hadn't loaded yet, so please forgive me. Gen 8 was definitely the most stale meta we have seen in awhile. I've been around for awhile and I do in fact remember a mass exodus of players after the dynamax ban due to many finding the speed of the ban being in poor taste. I don't agree with that as I see how flaws Dynamax is for 6v6 singles, however I can tell you that as someone who plays both VGC and Smogon singles, VGC saw the most significant spike in player activity in the history of the game ( cart). In fact, the Sword and Shield Meta on cart was the most played meta in terms of active players for online cart play in the history of Pokemon. So I would say many of the polls are skewed, because many players lost faith in Smogon at that time.
I stopped trying to get into competitive because the gen 8 meta wasnt fun for most of its run, but I don't think that correlates with vgc, as the singles > vgc pipeline is very weak. more likely, natdex cannibalized some of the would be swsh players, others just decided to skip the gen.

i dont think fun is a good argument, but for what is worth, I think i've been having fun regardless of tera or not. I'm glad the council is being so transparent and, whatever happens to tera, I have belief it'll be a really good gen overall :)
 
I am not in either camp rn, haven't played enough to have an opinion but would just like to say that if Tera seems overly restricting I'd much rather a half-measure be taken FIRST and then if it's still busted then fully ban it. I think it's an interesting enough mechanic and there are enough complex options that it should only be fully banned if absolutely necessary
 

chimp

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This is something that kinda popped into my brain a few minutes ago, but I am curious to see thoughts on it? Not saying I am for or against it but it's not something I've seen discussed unless I'm blind and missed a bunch of posts...

How about Pick Bans? On Team Preview, both players can choose one of their opponent's Pokemon that can NOT Terastalize. Would fall into the whole "gentlemen's agreement" umbrella we've been discussing so much. Probably would work best in tandem with Tera-on-Team-Preview but could perhaps leave the bulk of the balancing to the players?

Not sure if you can handle a Terastalizing Roaring Moon? Ban it. Your sweeper can be walled by a certain Pokemon Terastalizing? Ban it. Might lead to some balance issues unforeseen but... eh. Just figured I'd throw it out there to leave no stone unturned.
 
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It happens. Don't worry about it.

Expecting Tera on the Dnite is also reasonable enough. Them's the breaks.

I'm not sure I agree with the last part though. I'd have definitely focused on the Espathra behind a sub boosting and ready to fold me like an omelet. If the Dnite got me after that, Tera or not involved, it's just a cleaner doing its job and I couldn't prevent it. :mehowth:
I was focusing on the Espathra, the first thing that I did was switch and break the sub, just by this point it was too late and I had nothing else that could check it due stored power and the MU (which more speaks to how broken shed tail is, why isn't this already banned?)
 
How about Pick Bans? On Team Preview, both players can chose one of their opponent's Pokemon that can NOT Terastalize. Would fall into the whole "gentlemen's agreement" umbrella we've been discussing so much. Probably would work best in tandem with Tera-on-Team-Preview but could perhaps leave the bulk of the balancing to the players?
I'm mixed on this. On one hand, you'd probably have to teambuild so that a foe picking the mon they dont want to tera isn't a game ender for you, and might lead to weaker pokemon thatd make use of tera focused movepools a bigger risk, while not impacting the top ou mons a lot.

On the other... it seems really interesting. I'm not sure if it'd need to be together w tera on preview, but it could get rid of these "check becomes checked" situations, from both sides, or stopping a mon from snowballing. Might also give more space to defensive tera as an option.

Not sure overall, and I don't think I'm nearly good enough to give a veredict, but I like that you brought it up
 
Sword and Shield also outsold every other pokemon game with online play, so I am not surprised that it was also the most played online. I am skeptical that people were dissatisfied with OU and left to play VGC as the primary reason why VGC had an increased playerbase.
Outselling is one thing, but of course you have to factor in that a majority of buyers were casual players or parents buying their child a new game for Christmas. But I can say for certain that during my time playing smogon 6v6 post the Dynamax ban, that was the lowest I had seen the active player count in years. And that lasted from my recollection for at least 6 months of the time I was playing regularly. My hypothesis is that because the true competitive circuit wasn't emulating what many players wanted, that actually may have ended up fueling sales for the game since we weren't replicating the true cart experience. I also can't deny that SwSh was one of the best selling Pokemon games despite it's criticisms so that does make me wonder.
In what way? It was a fun a bunch of exciting metas where creativity was rewarded and bullshit was kept to a minimum, definitely for the most part. Stall occasionally became somewhat meta but the meta shifted to block it pretty quickly every time.
This isn't me talking from my experience, I am simply going by what i have read on the forums over the years. More than likely, the regression of gameplay back to the way prior generations played ( meaning lack Mega's and Z-moves) in conjunction with the smaller amount of useable pokemon had many people disheartened. Personally, I liked the dex cut but I know I am the minority in that take and accept that. But given the nature of the gen 8 meta, it was slower than previous ones and there are many players that do not like slow metas.
 
For those of you clamoring for not banning Tera for the sake of preserving the generation's core mechanic and for the draw to new players, why are you not out protesting for the unjust bannings of Koraidon and Miraidon? Riding your legendary is much more central to the new games than terastilization and new players will certainly be far more excited to battle with their favorite bicycle bois than they are to get swept by a Dragonite they just ice spinnered for 20%! Sure it will take a little deviation from smogon's core balancing philosophies, probably would have to make them be a lower level than everything else, but I ask you is that any more of a playground solution than the Tera restrictions proposed?
While I think the post here is a bit satirical, I do legitimately have to ask - what is the difference between something like agreeing to terra only to stab because freely being able to terra is broken, and agreeing to both only use Kiraidon or Miraidon if they're at a max level of 75? If the convention that Smogon has decided to follow is "If X aspect is broken we ban it", why are changes to the 'agreement between players' for this mechanic falling out of line of this convention?

When gen 5 semi-recently banned gems, was the discussion ever "limit mons from being able to use gems that match their stabs"? No, and rightfully so because the concept of it is pretty ridiculous. Anything in this game could have changes or restrictions that would make it under some arbitrary desired line of power. Stop kyogre from using water moves or an item. Still too broken? Now make it hold a black sludge. etc... etc... It's because you can do things like this that the original convention of simplicity - ban or no ban - exists in the first place.

Terra can be fun and bolsters a lot of creativity, but it does so in a way that also enables mons to blow past their conventional checks which will inevitably put a ton of pressure into the builder and a significant portion of games largely dependent on how X mon + Y terra type matches up against their opponent. Constant justification for suspects in the past has been 'X mon is able to circumvent their checks in a way that's opressive' or 'Y mon exerts too much pressure on the builder'. Terra as a mechanic, in my opinion, will inherently push mons past the brink in both of these ways, and I think it warrants a suspect for a full ban.
 
One thing that a lot of people seem to be missing with tera is that defensive counterplay does exist, it's just not enough to balance it. Yes, I can play excessively safe to prevent the mon in front of me from auto winning, but what happens if they don't tera? You can try to find a scenario that covers everything, but it requires unreasonably specific team compositions, and the further you go to check one mon the more you lose to something else. Knowing the pokemon your opponent is likely to tera doesn't help because your opponent can literally tera with anything. You can expect that one mon is more likely to tera than another, but the only way you can be sure that they'll tera something specific is if you auto lose to it. I'm sure most people on ladder expected me to tera normal dragonite when I used it, it still won a ridiculous number of games because tera makes it so strong. On the rare occasion it didn't have a good mu I could tera something else. In the hands of someone who knows what they're doing tera just makes the games come down to coin flips, and this was something I found obvious while playing. It didn't feel like my play made any difference between winning or losing, it just felt completely random. Tera in its current state has no place in the meta for this reason.
 
While I think the post here is a bit satirical, I do legitimately have to ask - what is the difference between something like agreeing to terra only to stab because freely being able to terra is broken, and agreeing to both only use Kiraidon or Miraidon if they're at a max level of 75? If the convention that Smogon has decided to follow is "If X aspect is broken we ban it", why are changes to the 'agreement between players' for this mechanic falling out of line of this convention?

When gen 5 semi-recently banned gems, was the discussion ever "limit mons from being able to use gems that match their stabs"? No, and rightfully so because the concept of it is pretty ridiculous. Anything in this game could have changes or restrictions that would make it under some arbitrary desired line of power. Stop kyogre from using water moves or an item. Still too broken? Now make it hold a black sludge. etc... etc... It's because you can do things like this that the original convention of simplicity - ban or no ban - exists in the first place.

Terra can be fun and bolsters a lot of creativity, but it does so in a way that also enables mons to blow past their conventional checks which will inevitably put a ton of pressure into the builder and a significant portion of games largely dependent on how X mon + Y terra type matches up against their opponent. Constant justification for suspects in the past has been 'X mon is able to circumvent their checks in a way that's opressive' or 'Y mon exerts too much pressure on the builder'. Terra as a mechanic, in my opinion, will inherently push mons past the brink in both of these ways, and I think it warrants a suspect for a full ban.


I think the consideration here is that a generational gimmick is to be put on a pedestal compared to individual pokemon.smogon is in uncharted territory and trying to figure out how to handle this going forward, second guessing the way dynanamax was handled. And clearly there is no consensus yet and it's heavily controversial.
 
How about Pick Bans? On Team Preview, both players can choose one of their opponent's Pokemon that can NOT Terastalize. Would fall into the whole "gentlemen's agreement" umbrella we've been discussing so much. Probably would work best in tandem with Tera-on-Team-Preview but could perhaps leave the bulk of the balancing to the players?
Oddly i think this makes it worse because if you can pick out a mon to say "don't tera this fucker" then you already know which fucker they were going to tera and just made the game harder to predict who out of the other 5 is the tera.

like if i see roaring moon i imagine they're going to win with it by using tera, if i say no tera on moon well now i don't know anything and banning it on something else would be pointless.
 

Bad Grief

Banned deucer.
When it comes down to it, Terrastilize's effect on the strategy and outcome spaces create an outcome function that cause the game to be balanced in the favor of
\sigma \ _{i}
in a manner that is both uncompetitive and overcentralizing. This becomes even worse when the team matchup creates an extensive form game by which the of flow perfect information should be at an acceptable state of allocation. This gives the player who can create a situation where, viz a viz, the matchup space between two game pieces a higher percentage chance of being a concordet winner, which in turn creates unhealthy and uncompetitive game states in terms of game decidability and game determinacy relevant to the actions of each player in set
\mathrm {N}
. In some cases, this can turn Pokemon into a "determined game" or even a "finite game", which are unhealthy for long-term spectator enjoyment and analytics. Over long periods of time, assuming a balance-favoured metagame (as usual), the ability to create a mixed strategy can be severely hampered down to an uncompetitive 50/50 scenario as the Nash Equilibria of the game is shrunk by a factor equidistant to the total amount of determinacy inertia that Terrastilize creates. I don't wish for our tournaments to become pareto inefficient, so I support a restriction on Terrastilize at a minimum, and trust the council, who have done a good job so far, to find the best solution.
 
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Sword and Shield also outsold every other pokemon game with online play, so I am not surprised that it was also the most played online. I am skeptical that people were dissatisfied with OU and left to play VGC as the primary reason why VGC had an increased playerbase.
Well there's a couple factors.

1: a lot of OU cart players gave up cause of the 20 minute timer and VGC was the only consistent way to enjoy the game on cart

2: That bled into youtubers/streamers who made battle content focusing mostly on VGC content as well which pushed a lot of the new playerbase gravitating to it.

3: making VGC teams became really fucking easy thanks to rental teams, ability capsules/patches, hyper training, mints, etc. Where as before either you hacked everything or you had to remake a team every week as the meta shifts. It's easier to steal someone's rental team for doubles then for 6v6 singles with a 20 minute timer, and 3v3 just sucks imho.
 
Unaware doesn't always stop Espathra since Stored power blows most mons with that ability due to the high base power of the move although Skeledirge could be ok and maybe Dondozo
nah my dondozo was blown up by espathra fuck that mon LMAO

sidenote: is "Tera" spelled as "Terra" in different languages, or is the tradition of smogon players not knowing how to spell alive
 
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1LDK

It's never going to get better
is a Top Team Rater
How about Pick Bans?
bro like some league of leyends shit? draft leagues and worlds are gonna start banning mons before the matches lmao
but for real, sounds like a cool idea, because you can still get blown up by creative team building and long term planning, but at least its not gonna be by one mon in particular, so now its 5/6
 
bro like some league of leyends shit? draft leagues and worlds are gonna start banning mons before the matches lmao
but for real, sounds like a cool idea, because you can still get blown up by creative team building and long term planning, but at least its not gonna be by one mon in particular, so now its 5/6
I was thinking about the concept of bring x pick y metas, and honestly I think that's how the official metagames, despite dealing with so much of the broken stuff smogon bans, is still very much playable with it all. Having 6 mons but only.picking 3/4 means you always can theoretically have more Pokemon to check things that your actual team you use doesn't, making a team of 6 more likely to be able to check opposing teams.

In terms of a draft style? I don't know if anyone remembers it exists, but Temtem is actually a really cool example of this, even if it's also using a doubles format primarily. You bring 10 but actually use 5. My only real problem with it is that it takes like, a minute to start, and honestly if you're trying to grind ELO that might make losses sting more time wise, or just in general lead to less games overall.

Would this work with 6v6 Smogon singles? I don't really think so, honestly, and even if it did I don't think it should replace the current format. Could be a cool OM, though.
 
While I think the post here is a bit satirical, I do legitimately have to ask - what is the difference between something like agreeing to terra only to stab because freely being able to terra is broken, and agreeing to both only use Kiraidon or Miraidon if they're at a max level of 75?
why am I back here, am I in a bad dream I can't wake up from?

You've explained the problem with these kinds of "restrictions". In theory we could make any Pokemon "manageable" with the right amount of arbitrary "nerfs". In my opinion (I know I'm an "old head") this would be a horrendous precedent if we started doing these things. Ban it all, or ban nothing, that should be the only discussion here. We also shouldn't be bending the rules of the game (previewing everyone's Tera type) in the hopes of "balancing" a mechanic, at least in an "official" meta. Wild to think the suggestions we used to scoff at are now legitimately being proposed.
 
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Saw some posts comparing Tera to Team Preview, and honestly I thought they made a lot of sense. However, saying that Tera should be fine because we went 4 generations without Team Preview and had to deal with a similar amount of guesswork is imo pretty silly. There has only been maybe one mon ever that was broken by not having access to Team Preview, and it literally came into existence in the same generation Team Preview was added. Meanwhile, Tera could potentially be balanced once players gain experience with it, however, there are still many Pokemon that would need to be banned entirely because of Terastalizing, because even if you know what’s coming, they’re simply a nightmare to deal with and overall very uncompetitive, which imo warrants looking at Tera very differently than one would look at no Team Preview.

Also idk why a separate Tera ladder is getting so little traction with council. Whenever I played Gen 8 randbats I would always play on the no Dynamax ladder, and I’m sure I’m not alone. Tera fans seem very very invested in this mechanic, so I’m not sure why the assumption is being made that this ladder would die. I got behind the OM idea in the past but honestly reinstating a banned mechanic doesn’t seem very OM-like, so I think it’d make more sense to just have it be its own thing (a la NatDex).
 
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