Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v3

[DaddyBuzzwole]

In the spirit of transparency, can we get a Council vote breakdown of Quickban/Suspect/No-Action for the upcoming tiering announcement?

they've done this with every vote, so i'd expect so

 

[gregdawiz]

Sorry for many long posts just wanted to respond to a few things here

1) A poorly thought out restriction would get over 60% support (only 20~% of which might be the anti-tera camp). This would never happen.
2) In this hypothetical tera suspect test, we are only testing yes/no on a restriction, rather than the yes/no on action+ranked choice vote previously used. The anti-tera camp would vote for full ban, not a restriction, if we went with ranked choice, so there's no gaurantee restriction even gets the anti-tera camp's support.
4) Anti-tera people are ok with any restriction. This isn't the case, I've ranked which restrictions I like in the past and explained why. Tera captain, ban STAB tera, and ban no STAB tera are all awful ideas, and tera preview or ban tera blast are better. I don't believe any of them will work, but please stop pretending that I don't care which restriction gets pushed through.

My point is not the vote, it was always about the discussion we're having here. I'm saying we are trying to discuss what could be the best possible restriction. There is no point in discussing with people who are pushing restrictions purely for the sake of getting it banned asap; it does not help us come to a good conclusion. These people are not necessarily you, but people that undeniably exist. You did imply you did not "want to properly make tera fair" from your previous post, which gave me the impression that you dont care about any restriction. All good faith discussion on a restriction IS finding a way to make tera fair (or *more* fair if you don't believe it can be fair).

I'm kinda confused here bc I'm simply talking about people who are making arguments in bad faith and pushing for a certain restriction purely for the purpose of getting tera as a whole banned. The original post I quoted that started this whole discussion was encouraging people to vote for Tera Blast Ban that would normally oppose that restriction simply as an avenue to an Outright tera ban, which is encouraging voting in bad faith and highlights the support that may be artificially given to restrictions by an anti-tera camp. It would definitely piss me off to see us make decisions with Tera Blast Ban, such as a potential vote where it is our only restriction of choice, simply because it was the most popular restriction, which was in turn inflated by people that didn't necessarily support it but only saw it as the quickest avenue to tera ban.

No, the people who are good enough at gen9 to qualify for suspect reqs are the ones deciding which restriction we go with. I sure am glad that my vote isn't going to be cut out just bc they disagree with my opinions.

Again I was talking about discussion not on voting. I think everyone who gets reqs should be allowed to vote I never implied otherwise. What I was assuming was that we would get only one option for restriction on the next tera vote rather than tiered options, where the one option we get would be whatever is the most popular restriction due to our discussions here. I don't think we can trust the true popularity of Tera Blast Ban if people are going to be inflating whatever restrictions get proposed on bad faith. At very least, this discussion should not involve people who do not want to push for a restriction that they believe has a possibility to stick. I think calling for this type of fake support as in the og post is shady and defeats the purpose of discussing restrictions in the first place. As is my belief with all "vote x so y gets banned" kind of posts, this one just seemed like it could have a large impact from my POV.

We most likely will get tiered options for next tera vote, which may make this point kinda mute. But from my POV as someone not on council that is not something I could assume would happen again.

3) The next course of action would be a ban. If the anti-tera camp really is just a puny 20% that has not and will never grow (like some of yall are hoping) then why would a ban be the next thing to happen? All you need is 60% willing to try some other, better restriction, and you'd have it! Good luck finding that restriction though lol.

This point is very funny because I think we all know that isn't the case, aside from the fact that none of us truly know the % in tera camp, which im guessing yes is probably bigger than 20%. General support for tera will go down from people that are unsure on tera if we try a restriction and it doesn't work out. If we try a restriction that *I* support or am even just ok with and it doesn't work out, I will likely move to pro-ban.

 

[Martin]

I don't really understand the point of a Tera Blast ban to be quite honest. Tera Blast like a worse version of Hidden Power in the sense that you have to make a giant up-front commitment just to click it, and we never banned HP for letting Latios bypass Ferrothorn and Scizor or whatever. What's more, banning it doesn't actually appease any group of players. The people who want Tera banned in its entirety are going to continue complaining non-stop about Tera not being banned. The people who are extremely pro-Tera are going to be unhappy because you have arbitrarily removed one of the fun ways to use terastallisation for the sake of something that breaks *checks notes* at most one Pokémon. It doesn't address any particular user of Tera, and it doesn't address any of the key points of contention that anti-Tera players have with Terastallization, which primarily relate to its defensive utility for the most part, with the new STAB/coverage just being icing on the cake. It just doesn't add up.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

I'm not trying to be rude but you're getting paraded around the forum like a show dog with all the reasoning they're providing, just stop talking about it if you have nothing reasonable to rebuttal with.

how exactly am i "getting paraded around the forum like a show dog"? i can't trust that a request for an explanation is made in good faith and with an open mind when the person requesting it considers tera "uncompetitive" and "cheating". and i'm not gonna write an essay for someone who's likely to feed it directly into the paper shredder and give me an f. i'm out of academia, those days are over

 

[ianlazerbeem]

I don't really understand the point of a Tera Blast ban to be quite honest. Tera Blast like a worse version of Hidden Power in the sense that you have to make a giant up-front commitment just to click it, and we never banned HP for letting Latios bypass Ferrothorn and Scizor or whatever. What's more, banning it doesn't actually appease any group of players. The people who want Tera banned in its entirety are going to continue complaining non-stop about Tera not being banned. The people who are extremely pro-Tera are going to be unhappy because you have arbitrarily removed one of the fun ways to use terastallisation for the sake of something that breaks *checks notes* at most one Pokémon. It doesn't address any particular user of Tera, and it doesn't address any of the key points of contention that anti-Tera players have with Terastallization, which primarily relate to its defensive utility for the most part, with the new STAB/coverage just being icing on the cake. It just doesn't add up.

Please stop comparing Tera Blast to Hidden Power, no matter what side of the argument you are on, these are moves that function completely differently, so sick of this comparison, hidden power hasn't been used as a STAB move since Gen 3, and it certainly doesn't allow a Pokémon to get STAB on a third type. Hidden Power was used for taking down specific threats mainly by exploiting 4x weaknesses, not augmenting STAB coverage to ridiculously potent levels like we've seen with Volcarona, Sneasler, Kingambit, Espathra, Regieleki, Iron Moth, Dragonite, etc. The "giant up-front commitment" is also a distinction, though I would disagree on the magnitude of this commitment because in most games terastalizing your wincon is ideal either way

 

[Spheal boi]

Gliscor and Ghold are the top two scoring Pokemon

Tysm for the response

 

[Martin]

Please stop comparing Tera Blast to Hidden Power, no matter what side of the argument you are on, these are moves that function completely differently, so sick of this comparison, hidden power hasn't been used as a STAB move since Gen 3, and it certainly doesn't allow a Pokémon to get STAB on a third type. Hidden Power was used for taking down specific threats mainly by exploiting 4x weaknesses, not augmenting STAB coverage to ridiculously potent levels like we've seen with Volcarona, Sneasler, Kingambit, Espathra, Regieleki, Iron Moth, Dragonite, etc. The "giant up-front commitment" is also a distinction, though I would disagree on the magnitude of this commitment because in most games terastalizing your wincon is ideal either way

The only reason people care about Tera Blast is because you can use it to lure stuff, which is exactly what Hidden Power was used for in every generation after gen 3 (barring I guess HP Grass on Grass-types who'd otherwise rely on pre-buff Giga Drain). That is why people use this comparison. I get that the scope of it is a bit different due to the BP difference and the fact that it is not locked to being special, but the fact is that, as a "free-type" coverage option, it is for all intents and purposes a less flexible Hidden Power with a higher output ceiling, similar to Natural Gift.

Either way, that was not the thrust of my post. The thrust of my post is that a Tera Blast ban appeases nobody and does nothing other than make the mechanic a touch more boring.

 

[Copland]

Yes

Hell yea, thank you.

 

[Rekless_Zombie]

People who want gliscor banned but keep gholdengo in the tier miraculously wiped their memory of how omnipresent glimmora/ting-lu/h-samurott hazard stacking teams were before the dlc.

 

[Cuddly]

I don't really understand the point of a Tera Blast ban to be quite honest. Tera Blast like a worse version of Hidden Power in the sense that you have to make a giant up-front commitment just to click it, and we never banned HP for letting Latios bypass Ferrothorn and Scizor or whatever. What's more, banning it doesn't actually appease any group of players. The people who want Tera banned in its entirety are going to continue complaining non-stop about Tera not being banned. The people who are extremely pro-Tera are going to be unhappy because you have arbitrarily removed one of the fun ways to use terastallisation for the sake of something that breaks *checks notes* at most one Pokémon. It doesn't address any particular user of Tera, and it doesn't address any of the key points of contention that anti-Tera players have with Terastallization, which primarily relate to its defensive utility for the most part, with the new STAB/coverage just being icing on the cake. It just doesn't add up.

Tera Blast’s effective Base Power is 120 in most cases because it almost always has STAB on it. It’s quite the step up from Hidden Power even in gens where you could have 70 BP on it and usually coverage (though some Pokemon like Celebi used to use HP Grass back in the day), so no STAB bonus.
For comparison;
252 SpA Tera Ground Volcarona Tera Blast vs. 252 HP / 212+ SpD Heatran: 384-456 (99.4 - 118.1%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO
252 SpA Volcarona Hidden Power Ground vs. 252 HP / 212+ SpD Heatran: 196-232 (50.7 - 60.1%) -- 82.4% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
Tera Blast can often get those faints a lot more reliably than Hidden Power. Where as HP Ground does barely over half to SpD Heatran, Tera Blast outright OHKOs just under 95% of the time.

Additionally I said before, but Tera Blast does have balance breaking philosophy as a part of it. Namely giving Pokemon with crappy coverage options a really strong coverage option too, as opposed to a coverage option with passable firepower.

 

[Srn]

My point is not the vote, it was always about the discussion we're having here. I'm saying we are trying to discuss what could be the best possible restriction. There is no point in discussing with people who are pushing restrictions purely for the sake of getting it banned asap; it does not help us come to a good conclusion. These people are not necessarily you, but people that undeniably exist. You did imply you did not "want to properly make tera fair" from your previous post, which gave me the impression that you dont care about any restriction. All good faith discussion on a restriction IS finding a way to make tera fair (or *more* fair if you don't believe it can be fair).

I'm kinda confused here bc I'm simply talking about people who are making arguments in bad faith and pushing for a certain restriction purely for the purpose of getting tera as a whole banned. The original post I quoted that started this whole discussion was encouraging people to vote for Tera Blast Ban that would normally oppose that restriction simply as an avenue to an Outright tera ban, which is encouraging voting in bad faith and highlights the support that may be artificially given to restrictions by an anti-tera camp. It would definitely piss me off to see us make decisions with Tera Blast Ban, such as a potential vote where it is our only restriction of choice, simply because it was the most popular restriction, which was in turn inflated by people that didn't necessarily support it but only saw it as the quickest avenue to tera ban.


Again I was talking about discussion not on voting. I think everyone who gets reqs should be allowed to vote I never implied otherwise. What I was assuming was that we would get only one option for restriction on the next tera vote rather than tiered options, where the one option we get would be whatever is the most popular restriction due to our discussions here. I don't think we can trust the true popularity of Tera Blast Ban if people are going to be inflating whatever restrictions get proposed on bad faith. At very least, this discussion should not involve people who do not want to push for a restriction that they believe has a possibility to stick. I think calling for this type of fake support as in the og post is shady and defeats the purpose of discussing restrictions in the first place. As is my belief with all "vote x so y gets banned" kind of posts, this one just seemed like it could have a large impact from my POV.

We most likely will get tiered options for next tera vote, which may make this point kinda mute. But from my POV as someone not on council that is not something I could assume would happen again.


This point is very funny because I think we all know that isn't the case, aside from the fact that none of us truly know the % in tera camp, which im guessing yes is probably bigger than 20%. General support for tera will go down from people that are unsure on tera if we try a restriction and it doesn't work out. If we try a restriction that *I* support or am even just ok with and it doesn't work out, I will likely move to pro-ban.

Even if I was pushing for a tera blast ban in "bad faith" to increase chances of a full tera ban, I still think I would be able to contribute positively to a discussion on tera restrictions. Let me use your previous post as an example:

I do disagree about Tera Captain and that is something I would much rather have a conversation on. Yes you would not be able to react with tera against opposing tera true. But using your tera reactively is already the worst possible way to be tera-ing in OU. Like I pointed out with Cinderace in an earlier post, there are Pokemon that do not beat every pokemon they want to with a specific tera. In the current metagame, the Cinderace user would simply opt not to Tera Cinderace in this matchup and instead Tera another pokemon that has a better matchup. However, with Tera Captains they are forced to commit to bringing one tera every game. This leads them into having teras that have a bad matchup as their only option, something present in earlier gens with any setup sweeper/offensive mon having a bad matchup and now the Cinderace player is locked into that. For the games where Cinderace would lose to say Dondozo but could tera grass to beat it, yes Dondozo would not be able to wall it but Cinderace is far from an unbeatable presence, there are many ways to take it out that do not involve walling it and if the Dondozo team was good it would have a way to take out the cinderace with priority/outspeeding or another mon that does wall it even post tera. The one thing I'm thinking about still is maybe combining this with Tera Preview as well so the Dondozo player doesnt have to lose their Dondozo trying to decide whether its Tera Psychic/Fire/Grass etc. Limiting to 1 possible tera user also prevents the issues people have with Tera Preview which is too many 50/50s. Its ultimately just 1 mon that will need to be worried about. If any pokemon is too threatening with tera still after these restrictions I'm still open to those pokemon being banned.

More specifically:

But using your tera reactively is already the worst possible way to be tera-ing in OU.

Let me use my recent 30-1 reqs climb with xavgb balance to confirm to you that using your tera reactively is necessary. It may arguably be the worst way to use your tera, but there is so much random bullshit that you need to cover in this gen (thanks to tera) that you very often find yourself needing to tera reactively to cover your bases.
Don't just take it from me, take it from OLT winner lax, full post here

It is of the upmost importance to NOT TERA early, because having your Tera in the back gives you more opportunities to react to your opponent's Tera and other techs they may have. Unless your early Tera can start the game with something crazy like a 6-4 advantage, or it's a Pokémon you know for certain your opponent will struggle immensely to handle , it is best to be analytical in your Tera usage.

It is this NECESSITY to save your tera in case you need to use it reactively in the current meta climate that makes tera captain a horrible idea. You would be exposed to all the big tera threats but be unable to use your own tera to cover them (which already isn't enough).

As for combining tera captain+tera preview...that level of complex restrictions would be hugely unpopular, I'm actually confident people would rather ban tera than play with those 2 restrictions.

 

[cosmogii]

ok look i'm not here to input anything new to this conversation cause it isn't even a dead horse at this point, we're just kicking fossil fuels- but can someone explain why people say dragonite uses tera blast? i have never, not once seen dnite use tera blast. like, ever. i'm sure it could, but i haven't seen a single set ever use it. does anyone know like, some common dnite sets that use it?

 

[Finchinator]

People who want gliscor banned but keep gholdengo in the tier miraculously wiped their memory of how omnipresent glimmora/ting-lu/h-samurott hazard stacking teams were before the dlc.

I don’t want Gliscor banned predominantly because of Spikes, but rather because of its versatile overall presence.

I also want Gholdengo suspected regardless of Gliscor.

I think this is a very fair perspective.

 

[Finchinator]

ok look i'm not here to input anything new to this conversation cause it isn't even a dead horse at this point, we're just kicking fossil fuels- but can someone explain why people say dragonite uses tera blast? i have never, not once seen dnite use tera blast. like, ever. i'm sure it could, but i haven't seen a single set ever use it. does anyone know like, some common dnite sets that use it?

Tera Flying DD Tera Blast Dragonite is pretty good and used often enough I’d say. Second most common Tera on it probably.

 

[Srn]

ok look i'm not here to input anything new to this conversation cause it isn't even a dead horse at this point, we're just kicking fossil fuels- but can someone explain why people say dragonite uses tera blast? i have never, not once seen dnite use tera blast. like, ever. i'm sure it could, but i haven't seen a single set ever use it. does anyone know like, some common dnite sets that use it?

shameless ancient plug right here for ya pal

 

[Cuddly]

ok look i'm not here to input anything new to this conversation cause it isn't even a dead horse at this point, we're just kicking fossil fuels- but can someone explain why people say dragonite uses tera blast? i have never, not once seen dnite use tera blast. like, ever. i'm sure it could, but i haven't seen a single set ever use it. does anyone know like, some common dnite sets that use it?

Pretty sure that’s just a Random Battles thing. It does provide Dragonite with Flying STAB that isn’t terrible.

 

[cosmogii]

Tera Flying DD Tera Blast Dragonite is pretty good and used often enough I’d say. Second most common Tera on it probably.

that does make sense, and i'm kinda surprised i didn't think of that earlier. must be what losing dual wingbeat does to a mf

 

[Rekless_Zombie]

I don’t want Gliscor banned predominantly because of Spikes, but rather because of its versatile overall presence.

I also want Gholdengo suspected regardless of Gliscor.

I think this is a very fair perspective.

Very fair and I appreciate the response. I think, without Ghold around, Gliscor could have a much healthier presence in the meta worth exploring. It seems like people are missing the forest for the trees a little when they want gliscor taken a look at over some of the other mons on the radar right now. On top of that, Gliscor is the most likely on the list to get a DNB vote and would feel like more wasted time. Just my two cents.

 

[viivian]

ok look i'm not here to input anything new to this conversation cause it isn't even a dead horse at this point, we're just kicking fossil fuels- but can someone explain why people say dragonite uses tera blast? i have never, not once seen dnite use tera blast. like, ever. i'm sure it could, but i haven't seen a single set ever use it. does anyone know like, some common dnite sets that use it?

its not common but tera blast flying is used sometimes! i like using it personally since it gives me substantially more firepower than tera normal extreme speed but the lack of priority plus being even more reliant on tera does hold it back from seeing more use imo. still tho very legit set

I don’t want Gliscor banned predominantly because of Spikes, but rather because of its versatile overall presence.

I also want Gholdengo suspected regardless of Gliscor.

I think this is a very fair perspective.

i also agree with this since i dont see a world in which either gliscor or gholdengo are healthy at this point in time. gliscor is impossible to switch into, impossible to kill and has several different answers to it that depend entirely on its set and tera type. great tusk might be able to hold off SD gliscor but hows it gonna switch into spikes gliscor without risking getting hit by toxic and being put in a timer? sure you might be able to switch in air balloon gholdengo to take EQ/toxic from spikes sets but what if it goes for SD as you switch? gliscor isnt just broken due to how absurd it is as a spikes setter, so i especially agree with your first sentiment. its versatility in tandem with how consistent it is at sticking around is just absurd to me

 

[Maractus01]

I got a question for the people on the OU council. I need to know why you all are so ban happy this generation. I remember back in Gen 8 pokemon like urshifu and cinderace were around for months at a time before they were ever even suspected, but now all of a sudden it feels like everytime someone looses to a pokemon it gets put up for a ban immediately, and it makes the tier super un-fun to play! Volcarona for example was banned out of nowhere, and throughout the entire suspect timeframe I personally never saw a single one. Hopefully someone can enlighten me as to where the tier is going because trying to ban gliscor of all things because it's "annoying" is literally my last straw. When this guy gets banned I'm literally never playing OU again.

 

[viivian]

because i feel like the much higher power level of this new generation compared to the last makes matters more urgent if i had to guess? im not entirely sure but im also not complaining at all, i love how much faster the council is operating this gen

Hopefully someone can enlighten me as to where the tier is going because trying to ban gliscor of all things because it's "annoying" is literally my last straw. When this guy gets banned I'm literally never playing OU again.

its annoying but people want it banned for more than just that. refer to some of the survey posts made by top players (or the one i made right above your post)

 

[Eeveeto]

Democracy is overrated anyway, I have a few ideas on how to solve this

1) Do a Mortal Kombat tournament, top 8 get to be councilmen, winner and runner up get tiering leader, everyone else gets banned and a lobotomy

2) Give me the power, Ill promise ill listen to all of your opinions and either laught at it and ban you, or put it on the policy and we can be corrupt together as friends who will betray each other

3) Do absolutly nothing

First 2 ideas are really good, it's high time for a reduction in number of good players, so the rest of us can be viewed as better than we really are.

 

[Maractus01]

because i feel like the much higher power level of this new generation compared to the last makes matters more urgent if i had to guess? im not entirely sure but im also not complaining at all, i love how much faster the council is operating this gen



its annoying but people want it banned for more than just that. refer to some of the survey posts made by top players (or the one i made right above your post)

I understand that the Mon have gotten stronger, and ill admit that there are arguments to be made for a lot of the bans. However, I fundamentally disagree with the idea that "this pokemon is unkillable" or "nothing can switch in to this". There are over 1000 pokemon in this game and y'all really expect me to believe that not one of them can KO gliscor or gholdengo? A certain ice/ground type pokemon would like to know your location. I mean for goodness sake people, gliscor doesn't even have roost anymore, it can only heal by spamming protect, the move taunt literally exists

I think my biggest issue is that nobody wants to do any experimentation, or search through the pokédex to find mons that will deal with the problem at hand. Everyone just wants to keep using iron valiant and great tusk. In previous gens it was common for pokémon to be tiered as UU or lower, but still have viability in OU. But now in Gen 9, that is almost unheard of which I think is absolutely crazy.

What it feels like to me, is that everyone in OU is using the same 6-7 mons, and crying about something being broken when the opponent uses a niche pokemon that deals with the OU staples

 

[FruitLoopBoop]

Theres only one mon with the stab types to take on both Gliscor and Gholdengo…


CHIEN-PAO! UNBAN CHIEN-PAO, OR YOU LOVE STALL

Just kidding. Its weavile (and Mamo on the non balloon sets! )

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

A certain ice/ground type pokemon would like to know your location.

i'm sure it does, it's been trying to find ou for about a decade