Suspect SV AAA Suspect #1: Bejeweled (Terastallizing)

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I don't think this suspect test should've taken place that early, now we're likely to see the main mechanic of gen9 banned before any tournament was played with it, which make little sense imo. Terastalizing can be very dumb and uncompetitive but can also be very competitive and interesting from a teambuilding perspective. Voting do not ban, not because I think the mechanic is fine, but because we should give it more time.
 
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Kinetic

my focus is UNPARALLELED
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got way too much bad rng (i got frozen by ice punch two different times, costing me the game)

Likely voting do not ban. Being able to have a mon beat something it normally can't, at the cost of losing to other pokemon (unfavorable defensive typing, or not being able to tera for the other mon, and taking the option to tera away from teammates who might need it) is honestly pretty fair to me and allows you to come up with more options in teambuilding. may add more thoughts later
 

Isaiah

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I was reading all of the tera discussion in OU (yes, all seven pages ) and policy review and found something that I think is a good scenario for part of why I think the mechanic should be nuked altogether.

Initially posted by hornets, but choosing not to ping them in a random OM suspect they have no stake in lmao:
They said:
Tera allows checks/counters to become set up fodder, revenge killers to become the next victim, and its way too unpredictable. Here's an example from one of my games today: I double on a predicted annihilape switch to my specs valiant. Neither of us have terra'd. Consider this ridiculous situation

1) I could predict nothing and specs moonblast for the kill. He could, however, be terra steel and now I'm setup fodder.

2) I could predict a terra steel and focus blast, although tera steel IS less common then tera water atm. and if he just stays in i may as well forfeit

3) I could thunderbolt predicting a tera water, but he could just eat that up by not tera'ing and use me as rage fist fodder.


So from an advantageous position, threatening an OHKO on my opponents win con, the simple threat of tera makes it arguably a misplay to attack the ape at all. This is ignoring the possibility of him even switching, and I'm only considering the two most common tera types. In the end, I did moonblast, it was terra steel, and I lost the game. As a player who relies on long term game plan, risk/benefit, and tries to minimize prediction; I despise that situation. Its simply impossible to make an informed decision.

Now I get that I didn't make the best play in the above scenario, seeing as I knew the possibilities, and maybe the best play was to scout, but letting ape get a free +1/+1 is already so threatening... its just hard to play around anything reliably right now. This is why we're seeing so much offense, hazard stack, and unaware and a relative absence of what I would consider traditional balance.

Furthermore the long tera is kept the the game the more we destroy the future meta and have to waste time resolving it. Ape WILL be banned if tera doesn't go as tera defensive type+rage fist is way too good, but is that mon broken without that? Possibly not. Are we going to end up banning roaring moon for its destructive acro set? Dnite with its ekiller set? Set up mons will continue to run rampant as its impossible to offensively check them with tera running around; so are we going to subject ourselves to this unaware meta forever? Of course not, eventually the toxicity of tera will boil over.
I'm not going to give a tl;dr because if you aren't willing to read the whole excerpt, I don't believe you're ready to make a good faith response to begin with.

Moving on, I think the extra layer of predictive play necessitated by the inclusion of Terastallization mechanics is detrimental to AAA. In OU, you already know what a Pokemon's potential abilities are, and for the most part you aren't going to be that shocked by a coverage move since the full moveset of every Pokemon is whatever their default is. In AAA, however, we have already made a good amount of the game an information war by enabling Pokemon to use any legal ability. It doesn't matter how skilled or experienced you are; you can't know what abilities you're facing (or could be facing) without making an effort to get more information by playing out the battle itself.

To change the OU scenario above, I'll use an example from one of my own AAA battles:

My CB Mold Breaker Great Tusk finally got in against an Avalugg with no revealed ability on an expected double.

In AAA w/o tera:
1) I Close Combat and 2HKO even if they're Dauntless Shield (252+ Atk Choice Band Great Tusk Close Combat vs. +1 252 HP / 252+ Def Avalugg: 200-236 (50.7 - 59.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO), and they have nothing to OHKO or 2HKO me with in return (0 Atk Avalugg Avalanche vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Great Tusk: 236-278 (63.6 - 74.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO). In the process, I still take a lot of damage but fulfill the goal of KOing Avalugg if they stay in.
2) They switch out because they decide the chip damage on Great Tusk isn't worth their Avalugg being weakened or w/e.

In AAA w/ tera:
1) I Close Combat and 2HKO even if they're DShield, but they could be Fairy or Ghost Tera and not only easily eat (or take 0 dmg outright), but deal a lot of damage to me with (let's say) Rocky Helmet + coverage move and I just lost a chunk of my Great Tusk for nothing gained.

2) I don't want to risk Ghost or Fairy Tera and switch, even though I already just made the plays necessary to get my Fighting type in versus an Ice-type.

In this case, we have a situation where it's arguably a wrong play for a Fighting type to attack an Ice-type it's [ideally] supposed to beat, just because of a set it could be. If you're following along, that probably doesn't sound all too different from something like a one-on-one ending with a Volcarona switching out of a Corviknight to scout for Flash Fire Before trying to attack it, but what about a situation where there were more layers? Consider:

My Desolate Land Volcarona got into a one-on-one versus an opposing Corviknight.

In AAA w/o tera:
1) I click Fire move and either get a kill or run into Fire immunity/Ice Scales ability Corviknight and get put to bed by Brave Bird.
2) I scouted and now know or am confident it's not Fire immunity/Ice Scales Corviknight (maybe I forced it to reveal Volt Absorb, or it showed Unaware versus a different setup sweeper on my team, or earlier in the battle they didn't switch it into Volcarona for w/e reason), so I go for the Fire move and it either works or doesn't.
3) I switch out bc it might be Fire immunity Corv and I don't want to risk it.

In AAA w/ tera:
1) I click Fire move and either get a kill or run into Fire immunity/Ice Scales ability Corviknight and get put to bed by Brave Bird.
2) I click Fire move because I have scouted and KNOW it isn't Fire immunity/Ice Scales Corv, but it's Water tera and just OHKOes me with Brave Bird.
3) I maybe predict the tera to happen and tera myself into something without a Brave Bird weakness, but it turns out they're immune to Fire anyway + I just wasted my tera on an overprediction, OR it works out and I get the KO. Alternatively, I could predict a tera water and try to Solar Beam, but if they don't do what I'm expecting that could be a super throw.
4) I or the opponent decide to switch out (maybe they want to bluff fire immunity/resistance or actually have it, or maybe I don't want to risk it).

There are probably some other options I didn't think to mention, but I think this is enough to get the point across>

So now even a Corviknight that was "confirmed" to be weak to my Fire move because I properly scouted the ability still has the potential to cook me anyway as long as the opponent hasn't already blown their tera. Sure, this is a very specific scenario, but I don't think it's all that farfetched. Consider a SFLO Iron Valiant vs a Roaring Moon or Great Tusk: As the Iron Valiant user, should you Moonblast for a "free" kill, switch out even though you're finally standing in front of Pokemon you're supposed to beat, or even sillier still, use tera yourself and then Moonblast (or some coverage move) expecting them to tera...? I won't sit down and log all umpteen ways these kinds of exchanges can happen, but the idea here is just to point out how ridiculous it gets once you really break down even the most straightforward interactions possible once tera is involved. This is why even though I sympathize with the position of wanting to keep the generation's mechanic intact and wanting to have more "flavorful" ways to counter the opponent, I don't think it's reasonable to stack yet another layer of this type of play on top of what we already have.

To me, Terastallization adds more information wars and potential for getting "fished" in a metagame where "matchup fishing" has not only already been argued to death as a problem in the generation we just ended, but is inherently a core aspect of the metagame by nature because you can give any legal Pokemon almost any ability and ALREADY have to play around that potential in every match.

Thus, I think the question we should be trying to answer isn't whether or not you can use skill to predict what tera options your opponent might have or on what turn they might use it (same applies to evaluating your own team's matchup). Even though the meta has only been around for a just over a week, we're already seeing some norms in the tera types people choose to use and making some efforts to account for that in teambuilding, so we know it's definitely possible. Rather, I think we should be looking at: Is this manageable on top of the already existing questions regarding what abilities the opponent may or may not have at any given position in a battle? Is it acceptable to have to consider both ability options and potential tera options in teambuilding and gameplay?
Personally, I think it's unacceptable. While I find it very fun to be able to adjust my tera types to give me a fighting chance against certain unfavorable matchups, I do not think it has the potential to be more competitive than (or even equally as competitive as) the "classic" AAA we're used to, where the premier mindgames you have to worry about involve unrevealed abilities--if anything, I can only see the meta becoming noticeably less competitive. Over the large sample size of playing on the ladder, losing some games to a random ability/tera here and there might not have that big of an impact, but I am absolutely certain that in a tour environment where it's bo1/bo3, the issue would be exponentially exacerbated: not only is your win/loss hinging on getting the right ability calls, but now you have to worry about them changing type as well. I was hoping to maybe see if my theory has any merit by spectating how tera affects the kickoff tour, but that'll have to wait for another day. I hope that explains my perspective and decision to vote ban well enough to get others to do the same :]
 
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PociekMociek

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Confirming as TERAA Aubrey Fan; rn prolly will vote DNB; in most of my ladder games tera didn't do a lot but that's a Certified Ladder™ Moment, in the other games Terastalizing mainly felt like a very powerful but competitive possibility both i and my opponent had and either of us used it well and outplayed - though i would be for forcing all pokemon to show their tera type on team preview because that way you have more information and could do better plays ex: "Oh I need to revenge this Gholdengo; I could go to my Flutter Mane or I could go to my Volcarona because :clueless: SURELY no one runs Tera Water because something something metagame variations and something something team choice - where is my volcarona :aware:"
 

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Runo

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Another enjoyable ladder experience. :worrywhirl:
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I'm not sure whether it's Tera itself or all the very broken mons & abilities running around. It feels very early to ban a generational mechanic when the banlist could've been added upon first (Such as Iron Hands, Unburden, Ice Scales/Fur Coat and my hot takes such as Iron Valiant & Garganacl)

edit: Just read Isaiah's post and I agree, Tera & AAA don't mix well so I'll prob vote ban.
 
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Jrdn

Not a promise, I'm just gonna call it.
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Reading the discourse in this thread makes me think I'm taking crazy pills. To me, no only is Tera easily extremely broken, it is the largest roadblock we've ever seen (considering dmax was consensus ban-worthy in gen 8) regarding healthy development of a metagame. If not taken care of, in a metagame that makes tera even more insane, every other tiering decision in AAA will have tera loom large over top of it. "Is X mon broken, or is it Tera?" "Is this ability broken, or is it Tera?". And keep in mind this is with the few pokemon we have at our disposal right now. Tera already is hard to 'predict'. Add on a slew of broken mons from PLA and previous games and suddenly the already large list of tera-monsters grows ever larger.

So that's my thoughts, it's an insanely easy ban
 

Don Vascus

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Confirmo como te & raaaspadillas (no creo que combinen bien)


Way too many of you are flip floping between banning it or not and i for one can't accept that. Terastal is better than dynamax from almost every standpoint except aesthetically, which is a low bar imo. Its still not very balanced. I dont like to change matchups with a click of a button.

So despite my thorough unenjoyment of current meta which isnt completely caused by tera i asked isaiah for a team (thank you man :)) and hazard stacked through the ladder. I will not be letting tera stay for when my beloved goodraH joins us next year if can do something about it and will not stand for this.


Once people start commiting to building with tera as an xfactoe instead of as a big option we will all suffer. The options are almost limitless, and so are the ways your matchup can get fucked without you knowing
 

tzaur

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TERAAA Soviet Hooker. Incredibly frustrating run. Used astralydia's team posted earlier in the thread. Easily the most consistent build I've played so far--thank you for sharing.

I actually also think this suspect was too preemptive and would have personally liked to see Flutter Mane, Iron Bundle, and Iron Hands (or Unburden) booted before this suspect took place since I see those as more immediate issues--none of them have consistent counterplay. I don't really feel like doing an extensive writeup on my thoughts since I'm not feeling very well (may edit it in later), but anyone reading this should really read Isaiah's latest post, because he brilliantly explains the my exact issues with it. Ban.
 

UT

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Confirming as TERAAA Treacherous please do not ask how many times I misspelled the prefix before actually starting
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I am planning to emphatically vote BAN. Isaiah did a good job summarizing the issues with it, and most of my thoughts are already in the OP, but in short I think the unpredictability of Tera is uncompetitive, and no number of bans will fix that. Having your Body Press Corviknight being setup bait for Tera Fairy Kingambit or your Aerilate Dragonite KOed by a surprise Tera Electric from Dragonite is unhealthy; it takes what should be safe and reasonable plays and makes them risky. It's not like switching out and playing it safe is always an option; if Corv comes into +2 Kingambit, you probably don't have anything that can safely switch in, forcing you to take the risk of it being Tera, or switching and taking unnecessary damage.

By far the most potent application of Tera in my opinion is when used defensively on offensive mons. It is no secret that I have long preached the value of being able to offensively check threats, and Tera makes that wildly unreliable as your offensive pressure could be rendered ineffective. This results in the metagame tending towards extremes, as you either need to run stall/very fat structures to be able to defensively check everything or hyper offense structures that can just keep blowing past the Tera user. I do not think polarizing the extremes of the metagame is healthy, which is a large part of why I plan to vote ban.

As an aside, several voters have mentioned that they wish that other bans, most commonly Iron Bundle, Flutter Mane, Dragapult, Dragonite, Iron Hands, and FurScales, had been carried out first, as they are viewed by the voters as the more problematic elements. I have already explained our thought process in the main thread, but in short, every one of those mons/abilities utilizes Tera effectively to bypass their checks. The council decided we would rather look at Tera first, and then see what other elements remain problematic. Rest assured, once the Tera suspect is concluded, there will be significant and active tiering action to look at the rest of those elements. We know there is a lot more work to do.

Anyway, congrats to all the qualifiers already, good luck to those still trying, and thanks for contributing to AAA and helping make the metagame even better!
 

diegoyuhhi

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probs voting dnb, i haven’t had any problems at all dealing with tera during my run, and i think some other stuff like iron hands, fur coat/ice scales, GOOD AS GOLD (dear lord pls ban that ability i didn’t meet any on ladder but i used it myself and it’s so broken) should be banned before considering a tera resuspect

edit: team i used
 
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RoFnA

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I will most likely vote do not ban. I don't see any overcentralizing or overpowered strategy that revolves around terastallizing. In the current metagame with so many fast & powerfull Pokemon (Flutter Mane, Dragapult, Iron Valiant etc.) but also FurScales still being around i think you can easily predict or outplay opposing terrastalized Mons (or even terra yourself). The metagame will evolve and Pokemon and abilities will surely be banned. I think that a new Terra suspect test will surely emerge in the future but for now Terra should stay in my opinion.
 

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As the name suggests, I had a fun time using Revival Blessing for free reqs. Anyway, Tera is balanced for me and also helps for a more diverse meta. Gotta say though, the timing of this suspect test is extremely bad, and it shouldn't happen until at least 2 months later when meta has more time to settle and we get used to Tera. The latter is enough for me to vote DNB even if it felt broken.
:orthworm: :pawmot: :slither wing: :flutter mane: :skeledirge: :corviknight:
Team I used for reqs. The game plan is simple: You just bash mons with Flutter Mane repeatedly, just literally Calm Mind in their face and let it faint while draining them of all recovery PPs. Pawmot threatens all common Ice Scales users, including Toxapex, Corviknight and Garganacl (You want Electric STAB for that exact reason, I don't recommend Nuzzle/Volt Switch since you give your opponent rooms to pivot into their Fighting-resists, especially Flutter Mane). That helps you revive Flutter Mane (and even some other allies when needed) again and again (usually 1-2 times). My most insane game included Pawmot reviving 5 times, but if you face stall you might even get more. Tip: I tried Orichalcum Pulse, don't do it. It will make your team extremely vulnerable to certain Fire-types. Also, there might be some rooms for Lunar Dance/Healing Wish team, but I will leave it to another person.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9almostanyability-1728351869-dhuiase42c99ecumkgjula14p56p7lypw Average Revival Blessing enjoyer.
 
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While Tera is fun and lets otherwise lackluster mons into the spotlight (e.g. table), offensive mons being able to Tera and blow past stuff that would otherwise check them (e.g. Bundle's Hydro vs Scales Corv), in addition to the other nonsense brought up, isn't healthy. As such, I'm probably gonna vote ban.

Here's the team I used to ladder. Since I went 23-2 with a team that doesn't have Poison Heal, Poison Heal is clearly not broken and shouldn't be banned :) please don't ban it, it's all I have left of BH8
 
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KarpeChan

Banned deucer.
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ty UT for the HO that's really good at farming children https://pokepast.es/450d133a7b468765
kingambit said "it's SDing time" and sucker punched all over the children
dnite said "it's DDing time" and aerispeeded all over the children
poltea said "it's Smashing time" and stored powered all over the children
iron hands said "it's Drumming time" and drain punched all over the children
+2 tera kingambit deletes pretty much everything not called fur coat ice table/hippo, and it's extremely easy to say "it's SDing time" and sucker punch all over the children (amongst other tera abusers)
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