Metagame Terastallization Tiering Discussion [ UPDATE POST #1293]

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My current feeling on tera is that anything less than an outright ban is insufficient. The biggest issue I have with tera is the elimination of certainties from the game. For example if I have a scarfer with a fairy move that outspeeds roaring moon then I know for a fact I can kill it, but with tera this is no longer true. This is the simplest example. but when playing several other problems presented themselves. The ability for a player in a worse endgame to completely flip it on it's head with tera is as big an issue as revenge killing offensive threats. For example in a 3v3 situation, unless I can outright win the game with my own tera it's a constant mindgame, which mon will tera, what type will it change to, and how can I react to it. This creates completely unreasonable situations for the player whose position you could normally consider comfortably better in previous gen, and essentially makes it impossible to know whether you're trading into a winning endgame or losing endgame. In my opinion it is this interaction that makes tera inherently uncompetitive.

With regard to restrictions, I think it's obvious that tera blast is a non issue, so the options are to show tera types on team preview, limit the number of tera mons per team, or limit mons to only stab teras. I think showing tera types on preview fails to address the core issue. To go back to my earlier examples, just because you know roaring moon can change types, revenge killing it doesn't become much less of a nightmare. You can argue that the change this makes is creating what is now strictly a 50/50 between using a move that kos if it teras or using a move that kos it if it doesn't tera. However this is a 50/50 that massively benefits the roaring moon player. If roaring moon predicts right it likely wins on the spot, whereas if it gets it wrong the game continues, and the opponent potentially has another 5 pokemon that can potentially beat you, in addition to having already likely traded. Additionally, while this does make endgames less guesswork, it still creates so many 50/50s that in my opinion take away from the competitive nature of the game. An example is that in previous gens I can force a 1 on 1 mu that allows me to get a kill and results in a winning position, but this becomes far more difficult if my opponent can tera to prevent this. The counter argument to this is that you have to bait the tera and determine how to win once your opponent has tera'd, however this doesn't feel like it limits tera enough to me personally, and it will still force a lot of endgames to become 20 turns of 50/50s in what should be winning positions.

The most balanced proposed restriction in my opinion is a limit to one mon that can tera per team, which is revealed on preview. However this still leads to other complications. Two of the most problematic mons I've seen with tera are dragonite and garganacl. Dragonite is a mon I used a lot myself when playing, and it won maybe 50% of my games for me. Even though you know it's tera normal, it's still far too threatening for the vast majority of teams. When paired with magnezone to trap it's best defensive check in corviknight, the only bad mu I faced with it was when I ran into 3 ghost types. Garganacl on the other hand was a bigger issue on opposing teams. I found that a lot of the time when I saw it on preview my win condition was hoping my opponent terastalised something else. The main sets I've seen are tera water and tera fighting, although tera ghost is another set I think is very good. Essentially this mon's only drawback is its typing, and when it teras the counterplay is unbelievably limited. I mention these two pokemon because I think however you restrict tera, barring restricting it to stab typing, sets like this will remain broken, and we will be forced to ban several pokemon that would otherwise be healthy in ou. Lots of people here have said stuff along the lines of what's the point of a new gen if we ban the new mechanic and new pokemon, preserving the mechanic will mean far more new pokemon will get banned than if we ban it.

The last proposed restriction is only allowing pokemon to tera to a stab type. While this solves a lot of the core issues I see with the mechanic right now, I think we'd essentially be creating a whole new cast of broken offensive threats while also essentially removing the "fun" aspects of the mechanic.

With that said, I think the two best options are as follows:
1. We ban tera outright
2. We have a suspect ladder where we try either showing all tera types on team preview, or try limiting the number of pokemon that can tera.

While I think showing tera types on preview will still fail to solve the problems created by tera, the support from the community for an option like this means I'm not opposed to trying it. I think limiting the number of pokemon that can tera is basically the solution that leaves no one happy, but it is also likely the most balanced form of the mechanic and I'm not opposed to trying it either.
 
The main issue I have is that I cannot foresee any arrangement, even a combination of heaviest proposed restrictions such as typing revealed at preview+only Tera into natural typings, leading to an acceptable level of normalisation for Tera, nor a stable meta.

I still think, even under the strictest of arrangements, it is still incredibly flexible & unpredictable (posts by Askeia & others outline the Tera users' favour in so-called 50-50 scenarios perfectly) - this will lead to a meta in which there are too many options to prepare for & an unacceptable regularity of near-guesses, thus minimising the impact of a player's meta knowledge in building & play. Even under these conditions, it remains uncompetitive. Not only that, but allowing any Pokemon to have Adaptability for one STAB, is far-and-away above the power level we should be comfortable with, and will inevitably lead to an unhealthy meta.

Furthermore, Tera essentially sets the stage for the Meta to play out on, and confounds any sort of current & future necessary tiering action. With Tera still legal, in any form, it is impossible to disentangle any Pokemon from its interaction & dependency on Tera, barring obvious exceptions. This will lead to tiering nightmares.

Edit: response to almostgood
You don't think that the meta will settle itself out to the point where there will be only 20 or so common terra sweepers that people will be able to recognize from team preview or team composition? I mean, who knows, they might go with the preview option and then 3 months later it'll be clear taht you were right and terra was broken, but personally, I would rather try to keep it than just give up on it right away. If we start running into situations where pokemon start getting banned left and right becasue their terra sets are too polarizing then we can safely say that terra is the issue, but we aren't there yet. All of the bans so far have been for non-terra reasons. Flutter got banned becuase it was too fast, too strong, had too good dual stab, and was too specially bulky. Hounstone got banned bc of last respects, Palafin got banned bc of the taunt set, and bundle got banned because of freeze dry + hydro 2 hit KOing the entire tier. Until we get to the point where pokemon become too centralizing specifically because they can abuse terra, I don't think there is a case for banning terra outright. You might think that the unpredictability itself is the issue, but I'd argue that's normal for a 2 week old metagame. Hell, I've been running around with brambleghast walling half of the physical attackers in the tier solely because people don't know it gets strength sap. Point being: it's too early to ban it outright. We need to give the meta time to adjust to common tera users. If it's 2 or 3 months from now and we've had ten pokemon banned because they abused terra typing too hard then I'll be the first to admit that terra was the issue, but until then I think Terra can have a place in the meta, we just need to have some time to figure it out.
 
What happen if you counter to Dragonite only beats tera Normal and they show teraFire instead?
Hold that shit? Mons can have more than one set. That's something people have been dealing with before Tera.

Also all the pokemon in both team can tera.
No, just one for each team. It doesn't matter if for some reason you can't predict which mon is going to Tera, once the cat is out of the bag, you'll know and who knows, you might have your own Tera to deal with it.

Also people need to understand that "Showing Tera type at Team Preview" isn't gonna fix the main issue we have with it which are 50/50's situations Terastallization leads to.
Like for example?

It's one thing if you can't tell what Tera Type a mon like Roaring Moon is using to try and get around one of its counters. That could end up too strong, but we don't really know for sure because the meta is unstable as all hell rn.

It's a completely different thing if I see "Roaring Moon (Tera Flying)" on team preview because then I know that if it Terastallizes, it'll be into a Flying-type, so I'm probably switching in a fat Water mon with Ice Beam instead of some Mach Punch bot to counter it or whatever.

A lot of Tera's mystery is solved on team preview as is, let alone with bait sets being all but exposed.

Terastal is not as absurdly broken as Dynamax which had little to no counterplay to it regardless of one's ability to correctly identify the opponent's threats.

That means that with some time for people to adjust, it'll be easier to correctly identify which mons are the most likely to Terastal, what type they normally run, and develop counterplays to it. Power scale aside, it's not too different from what happened with Z-Moves.
 
Tera Types has some potentially healthy implications like making certain pokemon like Avalugg or Jolteon better by giving them additional coverage or giving them a typing that compliments their stats which were hindered by their former typing. At the same time however, Terastilizing leads to frustrating 50/50s and turns into “haha I checked your check” game. Not to mention the overwhelming power of every pokemon potentially having an adaptability boost. I would’ve chose “Ban Terastilizing” but there are some interesting alternatives to balancing it.

Banning Tera Blast

Not the decision to make. Its a non issue in the grand scheme of what makes terastilizing problematic.

Limiting Terastilizing to original types

While it solves the unpredictability issue with terastilizing, you take away the personality and the reason for the mechanic’s existence to begin with. It also does not solve the issue with the adaptability boost it gives.

Restricting the use of Terastilizing on a certain pool of pokemon

This seems like a plausible solution. Ban the most broken users of the mechanic so that other pokemon don’t have to deal with the burden caused by their more oppressive peers. Simple right? This was proposed as a way to restrict Dynamax. Restrict it from the likes of Gyarados, Hawlucha, Togekiss, Dragapult, Barraskewda, etc. The issue is where do we go from there? As we start banning terastilizing on the biggest abusers, other abusers will still prove to be a problem. Do we continue banning tera on those threats? Where do we stop? If terastilizing is banned on a quarter of the pool of pokemon, it makes the restriction feel redundant and we might as well just ban terastilizing as a whole.

Making Tera Types visible on Team Preview

Imo the best direction to go with balancing terastilizing and the most realistic outcome if the community decides to restrict it. This would satisfy both sides and remove most of the unpredictability within the mechanic. Though there is still the broken ass adaptability boosts from tera types, but it would be easier to prep for in a battle.

Overall, I’d say the decision is to make Tera Types visible to see if the mechanic is still overwhelming..
 
I don’t usually post and don’t want to post anything lengthy, but I feel like terra is a mechanic that just needs banned. It isn’t as bad as dynamax obviously, because it can be used defensively, but it makes so many 50/50s that can instantly win or lose the game just like dynamax. Giving an extra stab to anything or allowing Pokémon to break through their counters is just too much to play around. It makes every single turn a mind game. Even the defensive capabilities of it are coin flips, you never know when a random Pokémon is going to turn from having a 4x weakness to your move, to being completely immune to it. It can be incredibly frustrating to play against in all aspects.

Of the solutions, I think tera team preview is definitely the best, but that still leads to lots of issues. Even if you know what tera type they CAN turn into, there’s no way of knowing when they’re going to do it. It brings a level of unpredictability that is, imo, uncompetitive.
 
Smogon: We dont want complex ban.
Also Smogon: What we do whit Terastalization?

If they can complex ban Terrastal, so then free DryPass and Houndstone for instance.

O you BAN Terastal as a hold o you don't ban it. Stop discussing what to do when you can basically do a suspect test and let people decide..
LOL? its because everyone is causing a shit storm and the discussions are there ot not ban the gen mechanic and allow it to be discussed
 

1LDK

It's never going to get better
is a Top Team Rater
Im just gonna repeat the point I made at the start of the thread but im gonna go a little bit further, ban it as a whole but only after the new batch of mons arrive
we are in a pretty controlled scenario right now thanks to the limited pool of mons, and therefore, it encourages long term planning and a new dimension of team building with a fair share of risk vs reward depening on how well did you planned and how your enemy is preparing, you can still play around it because he either just changed his type, or just gained a stat boost, sure this will have serious rammifications in the course of the match, but its not as a instawin button as you might belive, of course when already broken mons like the tapus, ultra beasts, genies and whatever come, it will obviously spill out of control, due to the pool of avaliable users skyrocketing and taking the exciment out of the gimmick while still keeping the guessing game that some people feel like bullshit.

and as for the other options

Tera team preview will not solve the stat boost and or the lure, in fact, it makes it worse because both are gonna start playing "5000 iq mindgames" that is just 10000 switches untill one of the does it out of pure frustration

Limiting it to a small pool of mons does not solve anything because even if it is restricted, then what would be the pool, most of those mons are either gonna be trash anyways with or without tera, and if that specific mon is not trash, then its extremly niche at best

banning tera blast, imagine banning hidden power lmao, Gen 3 would like to know your location

No action, I would take no action against tera in any capacity untill it becomes too much to handle, besides, its not like weather in gen 5 or Baton Pass in literally any gen, because we either will adapt or wont bother, but Smogon has learnt that at the end of the day, a balanced healthy meta should always be number 1 priority

TLDR: READ. THE. POST
(and give me likes for it)
 
Having played a couple dozen games now, I thought I would chip in.

I think the 50/50 or mindgames are a bit overstated right now due to the meta being relatively new. Once the dust settles the good sets will become apparent and you'll know what tera types a pokemon can effectively use. Because it's not the 108 billion possibilities that some mention, usually there's only a few that actually help deal with counters or are otherwise useful. You can often scout for them too and once one pokemon has tera'd, you know what it is and that nothing else can do so anymore. It's basically an information game, which competitive pokemon has always been. I cannot stress that enough. Most of this game comes down to figuring out what sets your opponent has, and then playing around that information along with some key predictions here or there. Terastallization simply emphasizes that even further.

So I rather think of Terastallization as an extension of the strategy underlying competitive pokemon. It simply adds another layer of strategy and preparation. You can take terastallization into account in teambuilding when you look at what you have to check a mon. If you automatically lose if say, Annihilape tera's to steel, then you built a bad team. Similarly you can play around it in game. Rather than clicking Moonblast with your Iron Valiant on the angry monkey, you can double to a defensive check that can handle steel/water ape if they tera and maybe deals well with whatever steel they may switch in on the predicted moonblast too. If you auto-lose to a single tera, you likely misplayed somewhere like not conserving hp on a defensive check.
Terastallize simply forces you to think more ahead in game. In terms of team-building it makes you think more about having multiple different/conditional checks available, rather than relying on one pokemon that just hard-walls because of typing.

I think Terastallize makes the game far more dynamic and is honestly a good addition that shakes up an otherwise stale game. Gamefreak went a bit overboard with Dmax last time, but this has serious pros and cons allowing more ways to play around it. The only restriction I would consider is on same-type terastallize. That requires none of the strategy or prediction inherent in other-type terastallize and instead simply allows you to dent your checks much harder. I've been playing around a lot with things like Specs Chi-Yu, Band Roaring Moon and Chien-Pao, and it's a little crazy. The murder fish just doesn't know what a defensive check even is, it blasts right past them. You could argue that it warrants a ban itself then, but I think in the future more pokemon will show up that are too hard to wall with free Adaptability.

All that being said, my personal opinion is that either Terastallization should not be banned OR Same-type Terastallization should get suspected.

I think banning the entire mechanic would be a mistake and lead to a similarly stale meta as in Gen 8. Slight power boosts like this or Megas are honestly healthy for the game.

Side note: Saying that everyone in favor of Terastallization are just 'casuals' whose only argument is 'fun factor' is rather disingenuous to the arguments being made by many people in this thread, and frankly a little immature.
 
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?
 
I know I said I was looking forward to the discussion, but wow this thread has devolved into some ad hominem bullshit. Saying that the only argument the other side has is that they're boring and hate fun/are stupid casuals that want undeserved wins is pointless and just shows u don't know what you're talking about.

Edit:
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?
speak of the devil LMAO. don't pretend that the argument is that people want to play their baby game or whatever. clearly Koraidon and Miraidon are broken, it's not particularily clear to a lot of people (though some seem to have strongly decided already one way or another) if Terra is broken.
 
I don’t know if this has been discussed yet but I want to put this out there as a potential way to handle Tera.

Limit Tera to one Pokémon per team but have it be decided upon during team preview and shown which mon can Tera during the battle.

IMO what makes Tera so cool is the flexibility it gives for the team builder and what makes it so BS is how random it can feel in a match. This could solve both issues I think. This way you can have all your cool offensive nukes and defensive techs but both players will decide and know what the Tera mon is before the game starts. There’s still an element of surprise since you don’t know the set but also for skill since you have a better way to game plan. The way it can be implemented is that you pick your lead and then your Tera mon. Once the game starts that information is displayed to the opponent (maybe the mon glows or something).

Thoughts? Thanks for reading :)
 
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?
This argument is obviously bad faith. No one is saying this because one look at the cover legends' stats and abilities shows that they have no place in the OU meta. Besides Suicune, no other cover legend is currently a part of OU in their most recent generation
 
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?
Because people are made of flesh, not straw. WTF is this take? :totodiLUL:

Also, for the mods interested in the community's health, this is not a prime example, but it will suffice to display the need for a WTF reaction button.
This is a discussion much more important for the community at large than Terastal moving forward, we're all gonna get folded by busted ass mons anyway with this power creep. :psysly:


Back on topic...

I don’t know if this has been discussed yet but I want to put this out there as a potential way to handle Tera.

Limit Tera to one Pokémon per team but have it be decided upon during team preview and shown which mon can Tera during the battle.

IMO what makes Tera so cool is the flexibility it gives for the team builder and what makes it so BS is how random it can feel in a match. This could solve both issues I think. This way you can have all your cool offensive nukes and defensive techs but both players will decide and know what the Tera mon is before the game starts. There’s still an element of surprise since you don’t know the set but also for skill since you have a better way to game plan. The way it can be implemented is that you pick your lead and then your Tera mon. Once the game starts that information is displayed to the opponent (maybe the mon glows or something).

Thoughts? Thanks for reading :)
That would honestly just turn it into a completely different mechanic. No deal.


I've yet to see a coherent argument against Team Preview Tera Type. Any potentially excessive unpredictability would be removed from it and like I mentioned earlier, identifying potential Tera users is about as difficult as identifying potential Z-Move users. Without the guesswork on the type they're running, there's hardly any issue with it in terms of unpredictability.

Alternatively, for those concerned about "simulating cart play", I propose waiting until VGC rulesets drop. If VGC players have to show their mons' Tera Types in tournaments and the like, then it's fair to hold Singles and the other metas in general to the same standard.
 
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?
this is such a bad take, i almost want to think this is controlled opposition from the pro-tera camp
 
No ban imo. Ever since I started playing competitive in D/P/Pt, the mind games & predictions are a huge part of what makes 6v6 pokemon fun for me and tera adds another layer on top of what already exists. Along with the strategic choices of what type to actually make your pokemon, for offense or for defense, and when to use it & with who. I just feel the layer of strategy it adds and predictions it forces is fun, and being 1 different type is not too unbalanced for most matchups in my view.
 
That means that with some time for people to adjust, it'll be easier to correctly identify which mons are the most likely to Terastal, what type they normally run, and develop counterplays to it. Power scale aside, it's not too different from what happened with Z-Moves.
Stop. Please. Stop comparing this to Z moves. They could not be more different. One is a one time high BP move that can potentially break a check. The other is a whole change in matchup dynamics that lasts the whole game, and can potentially swing the game if the other player lacks counterplay to the now terastilized mon.



I think the 50/50 or mindgames are a bit overstated right now due to the meta being relatively new. Once the dust settles the good sets will become apparent and you'll know what tera types a pokemon can effectively use. Because it's not the 108 billion possibilities that some mention, usually there's only a few that actually help deal with counters or are otherwise useful. You can often scout for them too and once one pokemon has tera'd, you know what it is and that nothing else can do so anymore. It's basically an information game, which competitive pokemon has always been. I cannot stress that enough. Most of this game comes down to figuring out what sets your opponent has, and then playing around that information along with some key predictions here or there. Terastallization simply emphasizes that even further.
Most good mons have the potential for several different tera types and unlike other mechanics, you can't really scout these without potentially giving a huge lead to the opponent if you scout wrong. Many set up sweepers majorly benefit from tera and if the opponent is wrong in predicting, they can lose a ton of momentum and potentially the game. It gives a disproportionate advantage in these instances.

I think banning the entire mechanic would be a mistake and lead to a similarly stale meta as in Gen 8. Slight power boosts like this or Megas are honestly healthy for the game.
Gen8 was not stale. Please stop pushing this idea that isn't reflective of what people actually thought. And megas are also not comparable to terastilize either. Nowhere close.

I've yet to see a coherent argument against Team Preview Tera Type.
There have been plenty of simple concise remarks from players who point out how team preview for tera doesn't solve the overarching issue with terastilize as a whole.
 
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?
 
if tera is banned, will it be a forever ban? There's something to be said about the fact we're almost likely to get 3 metagames (pre dlc, dlc1, dlc2), and I wonder if our final metagame will be more fit for tera than rn. This is mostly a curiosity though
 
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.
 
As I've been playing more, I've come to the conclusion that none of the restrictions are good. Either ban it outright, or don't ban it.

I am firmly in the "no ban" camp. Winning with Terastal requires you to position yourself right, and use it at the right time. Blow it too fast and you're playing with less options than your opponent, wait too long and you've missed your opportunity to use it for maximum impact. Terastalization is something that shakes up EVERY aspect of the metagame. It changes how you build a team, and how you play. It's a mechanic that requires a LOT of skill to use properly.

Showing Tera types would lead to weird exploitation of the mechanic that was never intended. One example of a mon who could exploit this would be Iron Valiant. IV with Booster Energy becomes crazy fast, and can use a set like Close Combat, Moonblast, Psyshock, and Thunderbolt with Tera Electric for Corviknight. If I drop T-bolt for Calm Mind to more easily get a sweep. They won't bring Corvi in on the possible Tera T-bolt until they've lost multiple mons to this. Dragonite can do basically the same thing.

Limiting it to just one makes the issue people have with losing at the teambuilder worse, because you literally can't build for basically any threat if you only get one possible Terastalization.

Banning Terablast does nothing. There's like 3 mons that use that move.

The complex ban ideas all make Terastalization's possible issues WAY worse. The only complex ban idea I've heard that's worth considering is the idea of banning Terastalization on certain mons who abuse it, and even that's not ideal imo.
 
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?
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.
 
Stop. Please. Stop comparing this to Z moves. They could not be more different. One is a one time high BP move that can potentially break a check. The other is a whole change in matchup dynamics that lasts the whole game, and can potentially swing the game if the other player lacks counterplay to the now terastilized mon.
I did say "Power scale aside".

I just meant it in the sense that it's not unfeasible to guess which mon is more likely to Tera, just like how one could reasonably guess which mon is more likely to be packing a Z-Move.

They're completely different as mechanics, everyone here knows that, don't worry.

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?
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.
 
if tera is banned, will it be a forever ban? There's something to be said about the fact we're almost likely to get 3 metagames (pre dlc, dlc1, dlc2), and I wonder if our final metagame will be more fit for tera than rn. This is mostly a curiosity though
itll probably will be even more busted than it is now. the meta as it is right now consists of less than 50 more than okay-ish pokemon by normal standards, and with each dlc introducing more pokemon by batch, the versaltility of the mechanic will only just be more ridiculous.
 
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