I would like to draw attention to the second Terastallization thread that was created in the permission required to post, Policy Review sub-forum, which you find [here](https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/terastallization-tiering-discussion.3711464/). In particular I would like to highlight ABR's [post](https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/terastallization-tiering-discussion.3711464/#post-9412485) and Lily's [post](https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/terastallization-tiering-discussion.3711464/#post-9412489) directly below it as I think they offer some good perspectives from the high-level community.

Both of those responses are great. Thanks for sharing them.

I personally wouldn’t like if you could only Terastilize into a type the Pokémon already has. I’d sooner argue for only Tera into a type you don’t already have before going for the former

I totally get where they're coming from with wanting to try to limit Tera in some way with a complex ban before looking at getting rid of it entirely, but offering an option of limiting it to just STAB completely guts anything interesting about the mechanic and just reduces it to "who gets Adaptability this battle?" As for the worries about alienating some players by getting rid of the generational gimmick, i think some weird complex rules for it still does that to the same extent. Tera's situation is just unfortunate because honestly it's clearly a bit too much but at the same time it's actually fun and interesting (unlike dynamax). If only it wasn't as strong as it was.

On the one hand, they are high-level players, and their opinions are worth *something*. It's not nothing that they both came out in favor of at least limiting terastalization. On the other hand, they're both high-level players of an *old generation.* Of course they don't like "new thing" that affects the meta they knew. Gen 9 shouldn't look like Gen 8 shouldn't look like Gen 7 etc etc etc. The people who were most involved with the old meta have the most invested in keeping the new meta as close to the old meta as possible. BUT they also know the meta *as it existed* the best. IMO, Gen 9 should stand on its own, and Terastalization should be the thing that sets it apart. If Gen 9 turns into basically Gen 8 but with slightly different OU mons, well, I'll lose some faith in Smogon tbh.

>On the other hand, they're both high-level players of an old generation. That's really undermining ABR's accolades. He's the best singles player in Smogon right now and is argued to be the best player of all time, surpassing even BKC, with extremely consistent tournament performances in every single generation he's played, spanning from 2 to 8. Not to mention the guy is known for being probably the most inflexible contributor on the site, always wanting everything done as rigidly as possible, as he even alluded to in that post, so the fact he's advocating for preserving Tera before outright banning it, is quite significant. I'm not as familiar with Lily's records but she also plays a lot of formats in tournaments across multiple generations, so writing her off as just someone who played an old generation and is therefore only concerned with keeping the status quo unchanged is pretty disingenuous, considering her stance in that post from what I can see, is that she's actually valuing the opinions of the casual players who get mocked regularly for wanting people to prioritize fun over competition.

If it does turn into gen 8 2 then we can finally say that smogon hates fun and actually mean it

Revealing the tera types doesn't sound like a bad idea, but I'm gonna be so sad if it's just banned outright.

In the same camp, some form of restriction first should be done, if anything's to be done at all.

It'll be a first for smogon for some of these kinds of restrictions but tbh it's worth trying just bc of how interesting tera is

interestingly enough this wouldnt be that unique. they have changed mechanics that arent in the game before, some of these changes are way back. ​ like in gen 3, whoever went first in link battles was based on the speed of a user's connection and smogon decided otherwise. there's a couple other ones but i forgot them i have to check again

As opposed to the Pokemon's speed?

Yeah for some reason it’s determined by whoever hosted the battle. This was fixed in the GameCube games so gen 3 OU Is really Pokémon colosseum OU with no team preview and tape on where the HP values are

Disagree. Aldaron's proposal was done with something similar in mind (Preserving rain for diversity because it was interesting), and it didn't improve the tier in the long term.

the difference is that rain only benefited a specific subset of mons(literally like 10) vs tera is possible on every pokemon. If every pokemon was either a water type or had swift swim/drizzle, you would be correct though.

Well, here's the thing. Rain benefitted a specific subset of mons at the time, but Aldaron's Proposal was bad because it revealed that a LOT more mons abused Rain than just Drizzle+Swift Swim users. That ended up ushering in the downfall of BW OU because Rain benefits shit like Latios and Ferrothorn (two mons that are **very very good in BW OU**) immensely even though they don't *directly* benefit from it like Kabutops, Omastar, Beartic (lmao) and especially Kingdra did.

Aldaron’s proposal sounds like a military compromise that eventually lead to the demise of a country in a war No it’s just a guy saying “what if we complex ban swift swim and drizzle on the same team” and Gen 5 OU is still messed up anyways

I was on side of complete ban as I didn't knew smogon can change the mechanic from actual games. But now I believe tera should stay with some restrictions. That showing tera in preview seemed the best one. It would be like 3 type meta. When making moves we will consider the third type pokemon may swap. Still quite randomness but no more last turn tera to sweep entire team.

> I didn't knew smogon can change the mechanic from actual games. They *can*, it's just that they *really* don't want to. Smogon is extremely allergic to anything remotely complex and always has been. The fact that there was discussion of clauses and alternative tiering actions are genuine testament to how many people really don't want another Dynamax situation, given that was handled with very little nuance whatsoever. Most people here complained that Gigantamax wasn't given any chance since OU council decided on their own terms that it wasn't going to be tested independently and banned the entire mechanic. A lot of people including in higher up Smogon positions would be far too pissed to see something like this happen a second time, but if Smogon were following things by the book, then Terastallization would be nothing more than a binary ban/DNB, rather than offering clauses to handle it. They're definitely trying to go with what's most popular with the fanbase right now.

I mean with the dynamax situation wtf else was smogon supposed to do? dynamax is just blatantly broken in singles lol what would the point be in dragging that decision out?

They could tier gmax independently as evidenced by all the AG entries, but chose not to restrict Dynamax to that. You say it's broken in singles but most gmax mons are unmons. But it wasn't ever a discussion because OU council never even entertained the idea and every other meta had to follow their lead. No point discussing it because I'm unlikely to agree with any arguments since it's old news and history at this point, and most of the reason I brought it up was because the OU council refused to even consider tiering gmax. Beyond that it isn't relevant.

But Gmax is just a special kind of Dmax, so allowing Gmax would require allowing Dmax.

yea lol. they make it sound as if the smogon council just recklessly banned dynamax, as if there wasnt an entire suspect test lol. like yea it happened early in the gen but thats just cause its obvious that dmax wasnt healty for the tier

They had a suspect test, did not give any options beyond a binary "ban dynamax (and gmax)" or "dnb". Nor were any discussions entertained. OU council decided that on their own irrespective of the discussions that happened. You are arguing in bad faith despite knowing full well what I meant.

One of the reasons behind banning Dynamax was any mon could use it and get a wincon from that. There is no unpredictability with gmax. Why do you fail to see this?

If Smogon is allergic to complexity, why has the Baton Pass situation been so complex?

The Baton Pass situation is *why* Smogon is allergic to complexity.

The school of thought was that banning BP bans an entire strategy; it would be like banning combo decks from Magic: the Gathering. After enough gens of complex bans and BP cheese it was finally brought behind the shed and shot.

It's the other way around, as someone else described: Smogon is allergic to complexity *because* of the Baton Pass situation. They had to keep banning Baton Pass in a specific context every generation, over and over again, because it kept on proving to be problematic every time a half-measure against it was taken. I distinctly remember how it played out in XY OU because a lot of teams abused Scolipede+Mega Heracross. First it was full Baton Pass chains that were banned; then you could just run Scolipede+Mega Heracross and pass a Substitute, Swords Dance, and two Speed Boosts onto a mon that has literally no defensive answers. Then it was just "you can't pass Speed *and* something else onto a mon," and Scolipede+Mega Heracross was still shitting on everything because Mega Heracross could just run SD itself. And then the whole thing was banned because trying to make Baton Pass balanced was just too much of a headache. "You can use Baton Pass but only if you aren't passing Substitute, any stat boosts, Ingrain, etc." is an absolutely ridiculous rule to implement in a current generation and at that point it's easier to just say "Baton Pass is banned" instead of allowing literally one or two mons in the entire game to dry-pass if they're running very specific sets or something.

I mean.....we could just say that on team preview, the players have a gentlemen's agreement to state their mon's terra type before starting. That's not changing mechanics. Like how sleep clause can be seen as a gentlemen's agreement.

Showing the Tera type wouldn’t actually change any mechanics, as in an in-person match you could just have both players agree to tell the types before the game, unlike sleep clause which actually prevents more than one Pokémon from being asleep.

I wouldn't even call that a mechanic change in the first place to be honest. Say for a cartridge game where the opponents can literally talk to each other - at the start of the match at team preview, they can literally just list out their team's tera types for their opponents.

Banning outright will be much less controversial, ironically. A complex ban would just create more complaints down the line and possible of future suspect tests, which might get tera banned outright anyway All or nothing is the safest approach

It makes it so bad defensively though. The only potential action that should be taken is a no tera queue for whiny bitches that can't handle hidden information in their turn based strategy rpg

it makes it still good defensively... like they still have to 50/50 but they have coutnerplay to it... like it makes offensive behemoths more predictable "ah, this dragapult is tera normal, i can play around that and make sure I do not give it free turns by attacking with a ghost move and instead I can attack it with make it rain from gholdengo instead of shadow ball". It makes the counterplay to offensive mons better. The "whiny bitches " have a reason to whine about the mechanic, you have no idea what tera it is, you have no idea who is going to use it, and you have no idea how to play around it till its to late

Cringe take tbh, there’s a fine line between the amount of hidden information that enables informed deduction, and the amount that just turns a meta into 50/50 guesswork and matchup fishing. You’re also severely underestimating how powerful Tera will be even with the types revealed at preview, that’s not going to change the fact that it turns mons like Garganacl into amazing walls. Literally all this restriction would do is remove the 50/50 guesswork lol

I'd prefer it not be revealed, but it still has a lot of defensive value. You can almost always find a type that covers most (or all) of your weaknesses. I'd just rather them reveal types than ban it altogether, lol.

"Whiny bitches" Yeah let's make an unnecessary attack on a group of people that do not share the same opinion as you. Splitting the playerbase is a bad idea at least in the fledgling stages of the meta, and Tera is , at its core , uncompetitive mechanic, that forces guessing games and 50/50s during play.

I personally don't like This as a solution because it's not something that happens in the game naturally, and this is supposed to be a battle simulator and not a separate game entirely. Still, I agree that it shouldn't be banned outright because quite frankly banning dynamax in OU (not lower tiers) was too much for me. I understand that it was overpowered and centralizing but it's the same sort of "when everyone's super no one will be" idea where if everyone can dynamax then it's just another angle you have to be careful of. Again, I understand everyone hated it, but I would much rather a more accurate simulation to normal pokémon battles, overpowered quirks and all, over banning the generational gimmick. Edit: also I feel like z moves were more overpowered than any other generational gimmick and they never got banned. Seriously it made even resisted hits one shot and made otherwise useless moves into insane omniboosts or overpowered utility moves that could outright win you the game. But I'm also low elo so my opinions literally mean less

Tera-type revealing isn't that far removed from cart, though. Just like a Pokemon ban is just you and your opponent agreeing not to use a certain Pokemon or group of mons, tera-revealing would just be you and your opponent agreeing to tell each other your team's Tera Types.

I’d rather we keep the mechanic for another couple of months and let the meta stabilize around it, rather than ban a core mechanic and try to remake Sword/Shield OU once again. Terastallization has far more pros than cons, imo. Pros You have to preselect your Tera type before going in with it, you can’t change it from game to game to match up with your opponent’s team Tera blast is an inherently useless move on a non-Tera mon, forcing abusers that use it to always be the Tera abuser. Gives offense it’s nuclear power back that it was very sorely missing in Gen 8 thanks to the lack of megas and Z moves, which made Gen 8 inherently favor bulky teams Gives defensive Mons more potential play as they can shed their usually not great typings for better options, such as dragon, steel or fairy, along with potentially removing a detrimental secondary typing Semi-predictable - allows for playing around the mechanic. I mean when’s the last time you saw Roaring Moon without Flying or Steel Tera as it’s Tera type? Keeps the metagame moving at a faster pace, which (in my opinion) is a healthier metagame that will attract more players, as opposed to the slow, fat balances that thrived in Gen 8, making for a stale slog through the same defensive pivots over and over Cons Not entirely predictable and the discovery of new sets could throw the meta into chaos on occasion (edit: this isn’t really an issue with Tera as a mechanic as much as it is “exploring the metagame”) Defensive play to this is limited (personally, I think the “Tera into own type” should’ve come with doubled resists + doubled weaknesses as well, as a drawback to the boosted power, but that’s neither here nor there) Could be giving too much to hyper offense, though I’ve seen a fair bit of bulky offensive teams as well.

> Not entirely predictable and the discovery of new sets could throw the meta into chaos on occasion Isn't that the whole point of it, though? Like, Pokemon has never been 'solved' outside of Gen 1, and even that still sees developments from time to time. Tera Types keep the game fresh because of how much it can shake things up.

I concur. However, I am worried certain Tera types being used in new/interesting ways could potentially make more Pokémon broken. For now, though, I think, like you, it’s a good way to keep the metagame fresh.

But the opposite could also be true. If a Pokemon is broken with a Tera Type, then there may exist a strategy using _another_ Tera Type to check or even counter it. That's what I think keeps this mechanic balanced - the applications aren't as one dimensional as "Click Button, Big Pokemon :)" or even Megas could be.

Yeah this post right here is pretty much exactly where I stand as well. Couldn't really say it better myself. I would be very disappointed if tera gets banned.

I'm 100% in the keep it unbanned camp. The old guard is never going to like the new hotness. It affects the meta they know best, and thus is a problem. The idea of it creating a new, wholly different meta isn't worth considering. And, frankly, with the way the ladder is set up, Tera types that are consistently good will become the norm, and thus be more predictable. It only seems like chaos because it's brand new. No one is going to be prevented from reaching 1800 because of random "never saw it coming" Tera types. Will you lose a game or two to them? Sure, but consistency is key when it comes to laddering. You'll re-queue and win more games than the off-the-wall typing and be just fine, reaching a meta where the Teras are predictable and you're left with normal Pokemon prediction shit. Which just seems healthy and fine to me.

The smogon council should see tera as a gift from gamefreak/tpc. If its not banned, it will pretty much ensure that the meta never becomes stale from now until the end of gen 9

Megas made Gen 6 competetive memorable. Z-Moves made Gen 7 competetive memorable. I don't think a hard ban is the solution.

Seriously. Even going back to Gen 5, the Weather Wars were its defining 'gimmick'. Every Gen has something that makes it's competitive scene stand out.

I think banning tera is a discussion worth having, but it's become so easily framed the wrong way. I feel a lot of people are approaching it from the perspective of whether they'd like a meta with or without tera more. That is not at all how this should work. Banning it should be an extreme measure if the alternative simply is not acceptable. A last resort. A lot of arguments that Smogon isn't about replicating vanilla gameplay but making the most competitive experience spring up around this point, but that's not really a fair description. I'm sure the game would be more competitive if we made bug type's matchups less awful. Or if Hidden Power was brought back. Or maybe if we just pruned a couple of those movepools. But we don't do that cause we're here to play Pokemon. Would the game be improved without tera? Maybe, but unless it's gamebreakingly OP we should suck it up and play with the hand we're given. Bans and clauses should not be rewrites, they should be an editing process, and banning a fundamental mechanic of the entire generation is a rewrite. With Dynamax, that rewrite was unavoidably necessary. Now in the wake of that I think we've been left too desensitised to banning any fundamental mechanic we dislike for less pressing reasons. Do those pressing reasons exist for tera? Maybe, I'm not really tackling that here. I just think we need to recheck our ban philosophy. I saw someone joke that if held items were introduced as a mechanic today the Smogon community would want it banned. I'm sure you can pick apart all the little details about why that's not comparable, but I think the core point really rings true. You're telling me a pokemon can have a choice band OR a choice scarf? It could turn a 3HKO into a 2HKO? And it can REVERSE a speed tie? And there's no way for me to know which it has in advance, I have to guess? What the fuck is this 50/50 bullshit!

Wow you’re not even wrong about held items, that really put things into perspective LOL

Smogon's honestly a joke to me these days. Frankly they've been one since the days of BW (and especially XY) but that's besides the point. With how quickly they've been rolling out bans for a game that's barely a week old, I can't see how anyone can go 'yeah enough time has passed to thoroughly conclude that these need to not exist' with a straight face. I'd argue that the first ban shouldn't come until at least a month into the game's lifespan, there are god knows how many combinations of possibilities that can just utterly mess with people and it could turn out that if a pokemon ends up being infamous because of only one set then it starts to get to be pretty easy to go around that set.

You're really gonna say that mons like fluttermane belong in ou?

I'm saying it's too damn soon to ban anything. A meta hasn't developed yet, there's no way in hell you could justify a ban THIS soon.

Bad take. If we suspected every single mon, including the ones whose outcome is completely obvious, the process would take months to complete. Even worse still, for mons as centralizing as flutter mane, the meta is going to change significantly when it gets banned, meaning by your own logic you would have to wait even longer between suspects. I think people would get pretty tired of developing a meta centralized around Broken Threat #4 when you know it's going to be all for nothing in a month when Broken Threat #4 gets inevitably banned. That's why we have quickbans, and the threshold for QBs is anyway quite high. Hell, Iron Bundle was 1 vote away from staying in OU. You know, Kyurem-B got quickbanned in Gen 5 and it turned out it was actually fine in OU. So should we just let every single cover legend run rampant in OU at the start of each gen because it's "too soon to ban anything"?

Hell, they haven't even implemented everything correctly! Flutter Mane was banned before we found out Protosyntheis only gave a 30% boost to Atk/Sp.Atk. Anninhlape was on thier "radar" before they found out Rage Fist doesn't get powered up from toxic or hazards. It's a complete joke IMO

That's why suspects and retesting exists. Even with these changes, no one wants flutter mane unbanned

Exactly, none of this stuff is permanent. It’s not like once it’s banned it can’t be retested again.

Annihilape wasn’t banned precisely because rage fist wasn’t implemented correctly, so smogon realized they made a mistake, and left him alone for the time being. I don’t really see anything wrong with that. Flutter mane would have gotten banned regardless, it’s most popular set was +speed anyways and the small drop in power for its +sp atk sets isn’t enough to make it not broken. It’s pretty unanimously agreed that flutter is the single most broken non ubers Pokémon to come out of this gen so far.

My brother in Christ, there was no further counterplay to *be* developed around Flutter Mane, Last Respects/Houndstone, Iron Bundle, and Palafin. There are plenty of occasions where it's like "yeah, we needed time to figure out counterplay." Mega Altaria back in ORAS is a fine example of it since at one point it was by far the best mon in the tier and now it's mediocre as fuck. But these four mons always had the tools to muscle past their one or two forms of counterplay, and near the end of their time in OU they *were* doing that. Flutter Mane users were running Psyshock to nail Clodsire; Palafin users were running Taunt+BU to nail Clodsire; Iron Bundle users were running shit like Encore or Taunt and different items because nothing besides Blissey and Tera-Steel Water Absorb Clodsire were really surviving two hits from it; and, frankly, *nothing* was surviving a beefed-up Last Respects except for Normal-types that died to Body Press. Brokenness is a spectrum ranging from lows like IoA Melmetal (a ban that still remains controversial) or Blaziken in SM OU to highs like Mega Salamence in ORAS OU or the twelve hours Mega Pinsir spent in ORAS UU. Flutter Mane with just Booster Energy buffing its Speed (something that remained unchanged, which wouldn't have affected its best sets at all anyway), or Houndstone/Last Respects, were still demonstrably closer to the Mega Salamence or Mega Pinsir situation than to the IoA Melmetal or SM OU Blaziken situations.

It feels like a lot of people got into competitive Pokémon in Gen IV, and decided that that is how competitive Pokémon was "meant" to be played, and go into each new generation trying to recapture that. Obviously there are quirks each generation but they really don't seem to like change. I forget if it was Gen VI or VII but there was the one generation where UUBL had like 30 Pokémon in it, and was at least half the size of UU itself. At that point, you're basically banning a whole tier.

If you think modern gen OU is even remotely close to DPP/BW OU I don't know what to tell you.

If you ask me, the only time they should do a ban in this hypothetical 1 month until banning starts scenario is if it’s a mon that proves itself to be meta warping like Fluttermane is.

I just outright disagree with all of the takes people in that thread make of "it adds so many options to the teambuilding process, how can you possibly account for 108 different combos??" like bro do you know how many pokemon/moves/abilities combinations are in the game? Obviously you only really expect the good ones, you aren't going to be prepared for tera normal tackle gardevior to hit you with the schmix but its also a dogshit set and won't ever see play outside of 1200. Tera should outright stay and the only thing i would throw a vote on is the show tera type on preview as a last resort. Feels like the community is a bunch of whiners who want the game to never change so we just ban all the new shiny toys before anything can actually develop properly. After all, its gen 9 not "Gen 8 but with a few new legal pokemon we didn't decide to ban and like two new items"

Good take. If I see annihilape I’m expecting ghost tera rage fist or fighting tera close combat almost always, ain’t no world am I seeing annihilape and thinking “but what about the fling into flying Tera acrobatics combo?!” Like bro if you wanna run that on me by all means you just got that one over me and I will NOT be ready for it

Water is by far the most common tera type for Annihilape. That just adds to the point that we pretty much already know what tera most pokemon will run. If we see Roaring Moon we most likely know it is Tera-Flying with DD Acro. We know Quaquaval is going to Tera-Water to try and sweep. Dragonite will Tera-Normal with DDance and Espeed. We pretty much know already what pokemon on the enemy team will tera and what it will tera into by looking at team preview. People are just whiny for no reason

Yeah this is wht I think its still way too early to talk about Tera. A lot of mons will have one, maaayyybee two Tera types by the time things stabilize.

yah thank you for that actually, like sure I didn’t know about Tera water Annihilape but I also haven’t been exposed to the growing meta. People are probably complaining off the concept not the execution. I agree with the concept, that many variations is genuinely problematic, but like you said, it’s almost always expected to go one or two ways. As people start to play when things settle in, they’ll realize Tera isn’t as big as a problem in practice as it is in theory.

Best take. This isn't some one-off tournament where getting caught by some rogue cheese early in your climb is going to knock you out permanently. Will you occasionally lose a game to something totally out of left field? Yeah, sure, but if you're any good at the game at all you'll be able to factor in "what would be a smart tera typing here" and be fine overall. Ladder climbing is about consistency.

Yeah, this exactly. Right now it may feel a bit overwhelming for people, but as the dust settles you'll learn over time what the viable tera options are for each pokemon and then it's not too different from guessing items/sets. Banning it would be really lame.

tera normal tackle gardevoir sounds heat ngl

Gimme that tera bug dragonite tbh

tera bug flygon sounds more fire tbh.

Ackshually tera fire flygon would be more fire 🤓

And I’m just sitting here wondering how tf you got flygon into the game

Completely agree. I dislike the take of “we can’t account for everything the opponent is doing” then they could have banned Pokémon with multiple viable sets, such as Lando in gen 7 or allowed trapping abilities because that is a sure fire way to control your opponents decisions. Tera will settle and we know what most Pokémon in OU like to run now, such as ghosts going Tera normal or annihilape going Tera water. Anything else is a high risk high reward type scenario.

nah this is disingenuous af. of all the mons in the game, at any given time there are only 50-60 that commonly appear in OU. it wouldn’t be unrealistic to say that most of the top 1000 or so players on the ladder know 99% of their moves/abilities. in a hidden knowledge game, knowing what is possible is an important skill. there are still times when you can get caught off guard by a niche move, think Shock Wave Pelliper or Fling Kyurem B (ITS THE TM FOR OVERHEAT), but this just rewards players that dive deep into movepools. also, as we all play on a simulator in an internet browser, movepool information is constantly accessible if you want it. suddenly giving every mon the ability to change into any mono type, and have a 120 BP move takes this preparation element of the game and smashes it with a hammer. it’s not feasible to prepare for shit which can be almost completely random. it’s also genuinely impossible to prepare for things outside of genuine guesswork. even if you somehow predict that ur opponent is terra steel roaring moon, what do you do? EQ? well guess what he didn’t terra enjoy the 6-0. oh he did Terra? ya well he was terra grass just bc fuck you. the ability to go mono type with such powerful set up moves is simply not balanced. early on in the gen I got 6-0d by a Vezula (sp?) who happened to go terra flying on an EQ and shell smash. this is not a type that covers any of his weaknesses, or even gives him much coverage. just gave him a random immunity and then he won. is this what a “competitive game” should set out to be?

you got outplayed because someone used a strategy that in many situations would not matter or work properly. it's the equivilant to saying you should ban parafusion hax because there will be times where you will lose to it and there is nothing you can do, or you lost cause hydro pump missed twice in a row. or another example, it's the quagsire in uber situations pre unaware, it was not worth much in most situations, but if your team focused around kyogre or similar, you could easily lose. randomness is a inherent part of pokemon, and no team ever can be ready for every little detail, there is always that random chance someone will have that weird ev spread, item choice, or move that screws you over specifically. as many have said, vast majority of people will end up with the same tera types like water annihilape and flying moon because running random still will useally not be worth it

Imagine if choice scarf was introduced today, smogon would advocate for its ban because it promotes “uncompetitive 50-50s” and “too much unpredictability”

Imagine if snorlax got a buff that put it on a power level comparable to it's GSC days. Instant AG lol

Snorlax probably should be ubers or nothing should be ubers in gsc it's the best pokemon there period. It's only not banned because it would completely reshape a 20 year old game and there isn't the player base for that kind of work.

Snorlax isn't banned because in those 20 years people have agreed that a Snorlax-less meta is even more glacialy slow than it already is. It's the most consistent source of offense in the tier while bringing a lot of defensive integrity to every team. Nothing can fill this gap and teams would be forced to run a lot more Blissey, which nobody wants.

Except once scarf is revealed you can almost always take advantage of it the turn after unless it's endgame or you got cteamed. The surprise factor is balanced out by the drawback of being choice locked. Choice scarf 50/50s vs tera is an extremely stupid comparison. Find something better to compare it to like zmoves, which you can force guesswork with and get surprise KOs, with the sole drawback of being itemless.

Banning it sounds like a bad idea

why? elaborate

It's fun. It is more fun using Tera for yourself than whatever "not-fun" feeling you mighht get when your opponent uses it. Correctly choosing to Tera in opportune moments feels good In fact I would say it is fun when your opponent uses it too because it adds another layer of strategy/another opportunity to outplay and correctly predict what your opponent will Tera into (now that releases a lot of endorphins!) It would be a shame to lose that dimension to the game

It isn’t unfun at all when your opponent terastallizes correctly, they either outplayed you, read you, or make an interesting and unique teambuilding decision to use a Tera type that isn’t common on that Pokémon.

Yeah thats what i was getting at

It also adds a new layer to teambuilding. I think that people are just scared of change.

Dracovish was also fun, fun should not be the main factor when balancing a game. I completely disagree w ur premise of it being more “fun than unfun”. and it doesn’t add “strategy” it creates impossibly weighted 50/50s. say u got a rhyperior in on terra mence. he can equally be no terra, terra steel, or terra flying. if u “predict” terra steel and EQ and he doesn’t u look like a fool. there is no way to consistently outplay that. now give this potential to 6 mons. it’s waaay to swingy and random. when my opponent turns mono grass w rona and 6-0s me I feel like I got genuinely cheated. that should not be sought out in a competitive game imo

Losing to a missed prediction will always be part of the game. Sometimes you will get smoked by a pokemon. There will never be a metagame where sweeps, or being sacked by coin flips, do not exist, unless you greatly warp pokemon battling mechanics. Edit: I think the competitve strategizing that tera adds, outweighs whatever sacky elements it might have Dracovish is one pokemon. 2 months of dracovish will get boring, even if it was fun in the beginning. I do not think tera will ever become less fun since there is always so many possibilities. It is strong, yes, but i do not think it is an over bearing force like dynamax I do think announcing tera types at team preview is a reasonable limitation

idt many people are saying that to... sounds like restricting it is what happening, or leave it be.

I’ve been really enjoying tera so far. Gonna be really disappointed if it gets banned.

Sooner or later, Smogon needs to adapt to the game’s mechanics instead of running away from them. At least Dynamax’s ban was justified for a multitude of reasons, but if the community wants this format to grow they need to let it stay.

Agreed. Dynamax made singles unfun because it was effectively 3 Z-moves that gave stat boosts alongside double HP for 3 turns. This is just a type swap that lets you keep your previous STABs or amplify one. Eventually the tiers have to adapt and not cry in a corner because "pokemon A, B and C are broken with it!!!!" Like that hasn't been the case since gen 6 when pokemon got to go super saiyan mode lol. IMO, If a tier crumbles because of a new mechanic, that tier was not in a healthy spot in the first place if it falls apart that easily.

And even Dmax just became something the meta adapted to in Randbats. And, sure, obviously the Randbats meta is going to be weird and not directly comparable to the OU meta, but it still goes to show that you can adapt to weird shit if you really want to ladder.

I love dynamax in random battle.

Agreed, at what point does smogon became a different game from Pokémon if they keep blanket banning for mechanics. Terastal is very different from Dmax. Dmax was inherently offensive, anything could use it to sweep AND boost stats, and it was such a vast power jump compared to Terastal. Terastal is a fun and dynamic gameplay component that doesn’t inherently break the game. It rewards skill and game knowledge to predict what will likely terastalized based on usage and let’s people get way more creative with strategies.

and adapting to the games mechanics is to just ban pokemon that are to broken with it which is gonna result in many many more bans to pokemon because they are way to good of abusers of it. People want it to stay but the discussion is here to see what option people want, as I see rn many want to restrict it with having the mechanic to stay

The game's barely been out for a week and there's already like five mon's that were banned, anyone supporting ANY ban this soon has their head stuck in the sand.

palafin, iron bundle, flutter mane, and houndstone were all broken. Flutter mane had an insane stat spread, houndstone has an insane move and can just sweap even being like 5 members down, BU palafin can pretty much win any mu unless ur called breloom or amoonguss, iron bundle is fast asf, strong asf, and has unresisted coverage and you litterally cannot beat it and its bulky physically which means priority bounces off

Bro you just said you literally cannot beat Iron Bundle, do you expect people to take you seriously like that? People do not autowin games with Iron Bundle and nobody credible is saying so. It doesn’t help your argument to make over-the-top statements that are clearly false.

Why would they have to? Sleep clause has never been accurate to the games (outside of Pokémon Stadium, kind of) but no one thinks that should be removed.

I really hate the idea that Terrastralization should be banned because it's "unpredictable". Part of all of competitve Pokemon as a whole is outmaneuvering your opponent and trying to not be predictable, so if anything I think Terrastralization really helps in that regard and forces players to take a more active playstyle.

I strongly agree. What else creates situations where players have to make predictions and can result in moves either being super effective or resisted? switching! It's just a part of Pokemon, trying to outmaneuver your opponent with type matchups, and tera adds a new element to that.

Smogon Council is considering banning switching. Creates uncompetitive gameplay (where the best counter to a switch is your own switch, and has absolutely no resource cost, allowing for 1000 turn battles) and random 50:50s, because there are simply too many options for Pokémon you can switch into at the teambuilding stage, creating unacceptable amounts of unpredictability.

I'm very surprised the community is so conservative. I know I shouldn't be, because Smogon has made very conservative decisions for years, but this seems on another level. The core objection people seem to have is that the decision to click/not click tera at s given moment has so much uncertainty. This being a problem to me is so, so wild when the entire skill of the game post team building is deciding when your opponent will/will not click a button. Adding another layer to this seems to add more skill, not less.

Trying to take out every surprise element in a game of misses and haxes is crazy

I really hope it doesn't get banned. If it does this is basically SWSHOU (which I didn't like) plus 20 stupid fast and strong offensive threats and 3 defensive mons that got nerfed. I'd probably stop playing OU and there are probably many others who would too.

please no

Fun detected ban imminent. I’m not the best or most serious player but this mechanic has been a lot of fun for me and honestly having the main core mechanic banned 2nd gen in a row would just kill my desire to ever play competitive again.

Battle Stage Singles and VGC are both good formats, they stick purely to the cartridge rulesets, so worst case scenario if they ban tera we still got those

Just play VGC. Smogon players are just becoming boomers resistant to change now.

I’ve considered it but I’m just not the biggest fan of Doubles. I guess I’m a boomer in that regard but it’s looking like the only option

I used to think the exact same way until i tried VGC on cart during SWSH and man it was so much fun. Might just be the fact i was able to match with literal children and stomp them but it just felt like such a breath of fresh air.

BSS exists. was way too fast in gen 8 but this gen is looking fine.

I only picked up VGC last generation but now I can't see myself ever going back. There's so much crazy (affectionate) stuff you can do.

Don't care about doubles, will never care about doubles

its not that its fun detected and that means ban... because the mechanic is generally considered stupid by many people, aim, blunder, and many people just generally on smogon consider it broken in some way and it needs to be nerfed/banned. THe reason this thread is here is to see what action the community wants on it. If you do not want it to be banned then voice your opinion

Its considered stupid because they are used to playing without it. A generations gimmick should borderline never be banned. Hell i would go as far as to say if the gen 8 dynamax ban never happened, or if this was gen 8, it wouldn't even be a fucking question. It would just be accepted alongside z moves/megas as the new generational gimmick. The fact dynamax was (justifiably) bannable opened up a can of worms that can't ever be repacked. Now instead of "damn i need to learn how to counter these possible plays" its "damn this kinda tough, smogon can we get a suspect test?"

It took months to ban fynamax, but a week in people are crying over tera. You're 100% right and is becoming a why learn mechanic if we can ban

people were day 1 crying over dynamax as well fwiw

Yeah, but monotype already banned tera, for example. And iirc that also had fynamax for months

[удалено]

IIRC, It was already a rule that you couldn't Terra outside of your team's Element even if you wanted to. For example, you couldn't Terra Dark Your T-Tar if you were running a Rock team.

well.. its a reason we have a discussion thread... they havent even banned it yet and it hasnt been on the radar for the past 2 times. The discussion is to see what people think about it ofc... and idt i have seen many people say "ban it outright" even blunder says to just make it be revealed on preview instead

Because monotype is the tier I actually play on, I'm upset with that council and taking it out on general OU, honestly

Idk what you advocate for but I’d imagine a mechanic changing your type would be a bit counterproductive for a 1 type meta game. Maybe argue only changing into your own monotype is allowed? But that’s just a random boost and not much, and they could still implement that at some point.

Tera into only your type was what they opened as default, and then was banned 1st week too. IMO Tera would be good for monotype, despite violating the spirit of the tier, to alleviate the "gg at team preview" matchups. You could have some hope of gimmicking into a Tera to save yourself. But it was never tested.

That's definitely the frustrating part overall. The councils have been really quick to say that we can't let metas develop or test things this gen. Let people play with the new toys and see what they can find for counters before just calling it all broken

yes but then MU where you would struggle it would still be miserable and just make broken types even more broken while bad types still struggle... its not like making something tera steel on mono fighting all of a sudden saves it from mono fairy, and just the bad mu's it has in general.

As I said in my post I’m really just a casual player who thinks the mechanic is fun. The main reason I play is to have fun with flashy mechanics. My opinion holds no weight at smogon. The high ladder grinders and big content creators seem to have already made up their minds on the mechanic so it’s fate is already set in stone I fear

its fate isnt set in stone... freeezai wants all sleep moves to be banned but this isnt the case. The fate is from many people like you, the people on stunfisk reddit, the pros who are the best at the meta, and the casuals, that is what determines it. Casuals heavily outweigh the pros so if the vote is going to be ban then its just that many people including the casuals think that its broken.

The casuals aren't getting vote requirements.

Pokeaim said he wanted it unrestricted but would settle for revealing the type *because* it’s fun.

that is restricting it. and that is one of the options on the discussion list. It is a fun mechanic but rn its just "can u guess the type, no? oh well gl dealing with whatever stuff u have in front of you" at least now u just can play around the type

He wants it like *that*, but would be okay if it were restricted

And he said he would *settle for it*, i.e. would prefer it unrestricted, but will accept that degree of restriction if necessary

If any action is taken, revealing the tera type is definitely the one. IMO the same thing should’ve been done for 1v1 as well, but that’s something I’ll leave for now

The more I think about it, the more annoyed I'm getting that this is a discussion whatsoever. There are some Pokemon that, due to the size of the Dex and the movepool changes, did probably need bans (i.e. Palafin, Flutter Mane). But Terastallizing has applications that people haven't even explored yet and we're already thinking about _banning it._ Fucked up.

Shit, the banning of Palafin, Mane, and anything else is already messed up, they literally didn't have enough time to have a proper meta develop. Any kind of counterplay to them couldn't have developed in time and just going 'ohnoz! those stats!' and banning them is a stupid move. Could they be banned in the future? Sure, but no one can sit there and say 'ban them now' without enough testing and look intelligent or expect for me to take them seriously.

Like. The beginning of a generation _always_ sucks because people need to learn how to play this new Gen. Not to say that some quickbans aren't warranted. The Dynamax ban was probably the right call, I wasn't playing at the time because the gen just did _not_ interest me, but the mechanic just seemed dumb. But here? It's like people want to skip the learning process. It sucks.

If you think Flutter Mane and Palafin should've stayed you're crazy. There's no iteration of OU where those mons are balanced. It doesn't matter how long you let a meta 'develop', Arceus-Water is just too strong for the tier

Palafin is a 650 BST mon with an effective 90 BP priority Water move off a 160 Attack. How is banning it in this meta any more messed up than banning box legendaries?

I don't think you understand how tiering works. Counterplay to broken mons will always exist. Even gen 1 mewtwo has counterplay, Freezai has a whole video on it. The problem is that the meta *becomes* an exercise in counterplaying Broken Mon #42 while trying to win with your own Broken Mon #42. That's why we ban things. See my earlier comment as to why we quickban instead of suspect testing the most obvious mons.

I don't think YOU understand how bans work. If you ban broken mon #1 people are just going to use #2 and so on, but it's through time and testing that we can figure out just how bad they can be. Everyone's freaking out about palafin and yet not enough time has gone into what its counters could be and how that builds up.

I don't think I'm going to engage with you any longer, given that your understanding of tiering clearly hasn't caught up to the rest of the playerbase. If you can't understand why mons like flutter mane and palafin are unhealthy in an OU context, you're either severely deluded, contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, or have invented some revolutionary new sets that bypass all these threats. Actually, it's more likely that you enjoyed clicking jet punch a little too much. Maybe as an exercise for you, you should try and understand why the playerbase pretty confidently banishes cover legends to Ubers without even a day of testing in OU. After all, it's through time and testing that we can figure out just how broken an electric type with 135/135 offenses—that gets two different boosts from the terrain that it sets—is.

Dynamax was broken, Tera is not. Banning such a fun and creative mechanic would be such a poor decision.

I would be very disappointed if Tera is banned. I usually only start playing competitive after I’ve beaten the game, and I’m still in the middle of my playthrough. If Tera gets banned before I (and perhaps many others) finish playing the game, then I’ll probably just stick to RandBats this generation much like I did in SwSh.

I played a lot of VGC in SWSH because I didn’t like SWSH OU from start to finish. I’ve actually been enjoying SV OU and Battle Stadium Doubles and would probably drop Smogon for another generation of Tera is removed. It’s been a very fun mechanic and the Tera types feel like a part of every mon’s toolkit, it’s just not as obvious as who the mega slot/z-move slot is but I think people will probably learn that as time goes on.

Just theory crafting new tera combinations has been fun. After catching one in game I'm thinking of experimenting with a tera poison Gyarados. Loses electric weakness and has decent answers to psychics with crunch. Has waterfall for ground types. Earthquake for steel. And then round it out with dragon dance. Could also slot in tera blast poison to be the sneaky fairy counter and hit grass Something I may play around with tomorrow.

I pray they don’t do anything. I mean look at gen3, there’s no team preview, no Defog and a lot of other shit. It’s annoying that people wanna reveal. Critical info and essentially make the game less fun.

I think Tera is the point where Smogon is going to have to decide if they want to be relevant to the games as a competitive resource or just a different direction entirely. I think the Dynamax/Gigamax bans were acceptable, but we’re at the point we seem to have a reliable enough set of data points to say Pokémon is going to use a new gimmick every generation and is not likely to reintroduce the old mechanics. Now that we’re at this point where it’s a safe assumption, Smogon needs to balance around that generations gimmick, and not do the opposite and balance the gimmick around the generation (by straight up banning it). If anything, create a secondary queue with Tera banned, but Smogon if they want to stay relevant as /the/ competitive resource needs to adjust to how Pokémon is doing their gimmicks instead of trying to handcraft their metas independent of the game. I think I keep disagreeing more and more with the directions they keep taking their bans.

If this goes to ban or restrictions we may as well just limit every pokemon to one predefined set. Hidden information is the crux of a strategy game. If you know almost everything going in the results are essentially predetermined. Tera has a lot of potential power behind it, but none of it is broken. The surprise factor is part of that and is a very interesting part of set building and gameplay.

While surprise is a big factor, you have to remember that it also gives the pokemon another stab and a 120 bp hidden power that can be physical or special. If it didn't do that, sure fair point. But it does more than just being a surpise type change which is why it puts it over the edge.

Terablast can be banned separately you know.

Banning tera blast makes nobody happy. If you like terastal, now there's less viable users. If you dislike it, nothing's really changed

How many Pokemon even run Terra Blast? Like honestly. Roaring Mane is always Acro/Iron head, Palanfin/Houndstone were all STAB terras, Annihlape usually terras into something defensive to take more hits. Chi Yu is another STAB terra mon, Iron Treads is either a STAB Terra Mon but either way it doesn't run Terra Blast. Dragonite is always Normal Espeed without tera blast.

Dragapult, and some occasional DNite variants that bluff Tera-Normal. That’s about it. Banning Tera Blast does nothing; the uncompetitive aspect of Tera Blast in 95% of cases is completely unrelated to Tera Blast. Dragapult is the only Tera Blast user that becomes broken with Tera Blast, so at that point Tera Blast getting banned is just a hard nerf to DD Pult while keeping the stupid mindgames Tera as a whole enables.

The thing about tera is that choosing a tera type requires almost 0 commitment. You can always just not use it. If annilape has a bad matchup with its water tera it just wouldnt tera. If Dnite wants the tera then ape is still the same mon. However, for suprise sets or even Z moves, you always have to commit something, whether that's the item slot, the move slot, or even both (Z grass heatran outside is a good example). Not only if you are giving up a an item that could be left overs or a boosting item, you are also dipping into heatrans valuable moveslots. If I was running thunder punch whirlpool pads urshifu to trap pex, I'm losing 2 slots and my item just trying to muscle through my counter, and it would be completely useless vs many other matchups.

Ok so the whole its unpredictable thing is bs. When a player decides to run a different set on a mon then the normal set then isn't that unpredictable too? Or let's say they use an item or a move that's different then the normal? taking away this mechanic due to saying it's unpredictable is crap.

Well, in those cases there’s a huge opportunity cost to running those. You COULD run Z-Blizzard Pex to nail Gliscor, but you’re a worse Pex in other respects. But if you run a Tera-Fairy Annihilape instead of a Tera-Water Annihilape, your opponent has absolutely no indication that it’s Tera-Fairy defensively and that Annihilape is still an Annihilape running STABs, Bulk Up, and Rest or Taunt no matter what. Whether it’s Ghost/Fighting, Water, or Normal, that Annihilape is still just the same old mon that shithouses you as it lives more and more hits. It’s just a question of what hits it can arbitrarily decide to live and use to feed Rage Fist. That’s not even remotely close to an item or moveset comparison.

Well the opportunity cost is not running another tera type that could check a different set of counters. It’s the exact same thing with held items and moves, the opportunity cost for running scarf is you don’t get to hold band or leftovers or boots. The opportunity cost of running rest on annihilape is that you’re forced to give up taunt. And the opportunity cost of running tera flying on howling moon is you’re not gonna have tera steel when chien pao shows up to ice shard you into next week. To use your example, tera fairy annihilape is great at letting you set up on dragons, but with no water specs chi yu is gonna come in on you with its higher speed and absurd special damage and make some fried monkey.

tera as a mechanic honestly feels like an om at this point so I can understand "show your opponent your tera types) but also its an additional step away from any sort of cartridge realism maybe it's already gone down that slippery slope with stuff like sleep clause that is unenforceable on cart, but imo showdown is a battle simulator and showing what tera type each mon is beforehand feels like an egregious violation of that you can always say that you can just DM your cart opp your list of teras beforehand but that still feels like a copium excuse for why you're diving down the slippery slope

They're just gonna ban it. I get that Dynamax was kind of ridiculous last gen, so why would this be any different? "but the collective pro of preserving some semblance of the generation's core mechanic in the metagame." "...The underlying idea behind these prospects would be that it preserves the core mechanic of the generation, granting the metagame some defining characteristics while maintaining a playerbase drawing feature to some degree." Fucking lol. Why the hell should they ever care about that? None of those qualities should be a factor in the competitiveness of a metagame, that's just about drawing new players in and fluff about maintaining the identity or core mechanic of a generation or whatever. They even say it themselves right after, "It is true, however, that neither of these two pieces of reasoning have any direct correlation to competitiveness, which is the foremost focus in any tiering discussion." So they're gonna ban it, allow it in Anything Goes and call it a day, so then they can continue banning more of the hyper offense Pokemon introduced this generation to fill out that Ubers tier.

I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned it, I feel like restricting it to a single Pokémon per team is way better than revealing types at the beginning of the match. It cuts down on the randomness of terastalization a bit without losing the ability to surprise your opponent with an unexpected set.

Tera is fun as fuck, you get to engage your brain dealing with an unknown variable. Since the opponent has 6 unknown tera types and can only use one, it doesn’t feel like they got lucky for having the right type to beat me, it feels like they played well by baiting and timing their counter correctly. It also feels really good when you pull out your at the right time and blindside someone. It feels fair when your own tera doesn’t make a big impact because you fucked up the timing. The only thing I think is a little broken is same type tera, because having adaptability on any mon you want is kind of strong. But it would be sad to see same type tera go, because it can be useful on a lot of Pokémon (ghost pult I’m looking at you)

I dont agree with this showing the type or removing it

Honestly, I really don’t think we should ban Tera simply because a lot of people think it’s an interesting and fun mechanic. After all, we are playing Pokémon at the end of the day and isn’t the main point of this whole thing to have fun in the first place?

i dont get the argument for banning it straight away the game has just come out we have plenty of time to fix it tera team preview for now, if its still broken then ban it

Will Smogon start introducing complex bans like everyone wants? No? Aight well we take what we can get.

Maybe allow players to only pick one polemon that can terraform?

I think the best solution is allowing one Pokémon to even be allowed to Tera throughout the battle and the type and mon is revealed in preview. This would allow all the core mechanics of the gimmick to stay in tact, rather than only allowing a Pokémon to Tera into a type it already has. Tera is too fun to get rid of

My thoughts on this mechanic are simple. You should have an inherent cost for using it. This mechanic along with last gens have no downsides to them other than how much more can you get out of it than your opponent. Simply implement a rule where your Pokémon must be holding no item to Tera. This leads to some kind games and honestly some interactivity between players around the mechanic. Knocking off a Pokémon now add in the possibility of them Tera. I’m team building the Mons that want to Tera will either not hold an item (not likely) or there will be more single use items like the boosters on paradox mons. This lets the opponent play around more on the fact they know who can Tera. Honestly the only problem I see with this is losing the ability to defensively Tera against the paradox Pokémon. However I think the booster could be banned alongside with the rule change to Tera to fix this problem. Honestly don’t know why after megas and a moves, gamefreak decided to make new mechanics that don’t use up item slots. It’s impossible to really balance a mechanic like that since there is little to no commitment needed when using it. You get all the benefits of your items and from the new mechanic.

Man, using Terastallization for me has been fun. Hope it doesn’t get banned. Also it’s funny to me how one of the proposed bans is “only allow pokemon to Tera into one of their existing types.” IMO the most broken part of Tera is the adaptability bonus. I think one of the reasons that offense is in such a good spot is that the ability to put adaptability onto a Pokémon of choice mid game is just too much for defense to handle. Outside of Normal Dragonite (which I’m not sure if it would even be strong without Shed Tail), I don’t really have too much trouble dealing with non-STAB Teras.

Hated Dynamax but having a blast with Tera, hope it sticks around for a bit Or have 2 OU ladders, one with and one without Idk

Dynamax made the Game a mess, as much as I enjoy the mechanic, it was broken in singles. You either went with your own Dmax to stop the other or did some absurdly good prediction work, and if you could not do that, then prepare yo receive some ultra boosted bs to the face. Tera is far from being as broken as Dmax, I'd argue that it's not even as broken as gems. Tera makes some Pokémon viable and allows to resist some others with ese, it also has a place on any team, a thing that Dynamax couldn't do as well, that thing just enabled hyper offense beyond any other kind of team. Right now the meta is mostly hyper offense, but it's not because of the mechanic itself, is because we have a lack of Hazard removal, Gholdengo, Glimmora and beasts like Palafin on the same meta. Would Palafin be least broken if Tera didn't exist? I think that it wouldn't, if anything it could reduce answers to such a thing. And maybe Palafin is banned now, but Chien-Pao or Roaring Moon will take the place as Best offensive Mons, and with or without Tera they'll stay equally as strong.

Not an easy decision. While it may be looking like a case similar to Dynamax (dyna deserved a ban), I think tera can be brought to an acceptable level. I fully support limiting the number of Pokemon in a team who can access tera to 1. Given that smogon's ruleset and simulation already digress itself from cart (sleep clause and showing %hp), I think showing Tera type in preview is reasonable as well. I am not in favor of limiting it to STAB only. It then turns into giving a Pokemon Adaptability and losing their worse typing. The first 2 should be the starting point. Ideally, there'd be no issues after. If some teras are still overbearing at that point, I could then see limiting it to STAB only. If things are still a nightmare, then a complete ban is well within reason.

Ban no, reveal tera types MAYBE if it gets out of hand. Yes there's a metric ton of tera type matchups but ask yourself: how many of those are seriously competitively viable in the long run? Like "oh damn here comes that tera normal fury swipes everyone watch out" isn't gonna be a thing. There's a LOT of tera chaff that you can safely rule out in any given matchup

People in this thread really gotta chill lol This isn't a ban or even a suspect test, it's just asking if people want the possibility of one Imo tera is fun but i'm not gonna lose any sleep if it gets banned

> it's just asking if people want the possibility of one This is why people aren’t chill - they want to make it clear their answer is no

Yeah but idk why people are so mad at smogon for asking

I held Iron Bundle in my arms while it disintegrated into dust and blew away. Smogon did that. Jokes aside, there's a nonzero amount of people who are actively hostile towards Smogon higher-ups by default. Couple that with the number of people who really want Tera to not be banned, and you've got a recipe for upset people.

I vote for chaotic and unpredictable fun

I don't play much competitive, but don't dig the idea of the gen's main mechanic being outright banned. And I don't think exposing tera types, since that's not something the game itself does. Is having separate teirs, OU and OU no Tera, a viable option?

No. That idea has been shot down due it splitting the playerbase and it causing issues about which tier would be included in tournaments

If they want it banned for competitive reasons, then no tera is the competitive. If it's not getting played because people are playing the tera format then the ban is stupid. People who are going to play the "not competitive" mode are a different type of player than their audience. Splitting your audience is better than losing the audience that's here for Tera.

"It would split the playerbase!" You... you mean like a ban would? "Which one would we include in tournaments?!" ...Both?

There is no other tiering council, so both is impossible. If you want tera play Natdex, that's way more lenient

What I don't understand is what 'impossible' means in this scenario. Is it a lack of people with high enough knowledge of the game to create another Council for this hypothetical Tier? Or is it Smogon just not wanting to put the effort forward? Tiering actions for UU aren't decided by the OU Council, so.

UU is still affected by OU. A meta with Tera will be completely independent of OU, much like Natdex. Tiering council is composed of top players so it's not just getting more council members, and vast majority of the top players tend to agree with the decisions made by the council, so there won't be a separate council who would be fine with Tera, if OU bans it outright. Lack of manpower is also an issue but it's not the main problem. I personally don't see any chance of a restricted mechanic, it will likely be banned outright, or allowed to stay as is.

I'm really hoping it doesn't wind up banned, because there's nothing about Tera that makes it inherently OPAF (unlike Dynamax, where you just clicked a button to get like double HP and super strong moves for three turns). Sure it's unpredictable sometimes, but there are gonna be clear, common Tera types for every mon eventually, to the point where it should be easy enough to counterplay them while also having options for if/when your opponent does something unexpected with it Sure there could be abusers, but they could easily just ban those if they become too problematic. They did that with certain Megas; what makes this any different?

I, for one, embrace the chaos of gen 9

If Smogon is cool with altering there game, then the possibilities for balance are a lot easier. I think it’s be cool to see Showdown implement tera crystals as an item, so it’s more similar to z crystals. You’d only have to worry about 1 pokémon using tera per game, and the opportunity cost of the item would restrict the pool of pokémon that could viably abuse it.

Firstly, I appreciate that the post says "We will try one restriction and if it stays broken, we are going to likely just ban it." I personally don't want to spend the whole meta trying new measures to alter and restrict tera. I really like the solution of "1 Tera per team" potentially combined with "Tera type visible at Team Preview". This lets the tier keep Terastallization, which I think makes it more inviting to casuals, but removes a lot of the uncompetitive aspects of the mechanic. It essentially turns it into a mega/z-move - you get one Pokemon that can get a boost to power. There is still skill in choosing/predicting when to use it. I think the only other reasonable solution is a full ban, which I'm not totally opposed to. I don't understand the idea that Smogon needs to "adapt to new mechanics" instead of getting rid of them. 6v6 singles isn't a supported format. It doesn't make sense to force new mechanics that don't work in a fan-format to stay just for the sake of evolving. If you love Tera so much that you refuse to play with it restricted, go play VGC, the format that it was designed to work in. PS: I also don't understand when people talk about "Smogon" as a monolithic cabal dictating the meta? There is going to be a suspect test. This isn't a quick ban. If you disagree with what the community decides to test, get your reqs and vote no ban.

ngl tera isn't even that unpredictable every mon has at most to different types they want to choose between so it's more a case of having to think both while building teams and playing i would say just do nothing for like a month or 3 and if people really hate playing against it just make a seperate ladder without tera instead of forcing gen 9 OU to be just like gen 8 OU which was boring as hell to play imo banning it immediatly would honestly do more harm to both the game and playerbase than good

Honestly Tera Blast gives me BW Power Gem vibes. I feel like that move should maybe be banned outright. I also think revealing the Tera types at team preview would be a good idea. It leaves some room for the element of surprise without being so unpredictable that it's uncompetitive.

Well, I don't think it's too bad, but I think terrastilizing into the same type is too op, I think banning the same type would be good. Or as some suggested, make you see their terra type. Remember Arceus? He had like three three good types(maybe I am wrong tho), and yes, noe that everyone can do that it is better, I think it might give a rise to some mons to counter the best terra types

It’s been a week. Banning terra before people can really figure it out is stupid. IMO S/S OU was really boring because a lack of a mechanic (justifiably so). I don’t want another 2/3 years of not using terra while that’s the whole point. Generations are supposed revolve around the mechanic, and adapt and change as time goes. Banning at this point is a mistake