Honestly that just sounds more convoluted than anything. The only tera restrictions I think should even be seriously considered are the open preview options, or stab/no-stab only. I don't even like the latter two that much but they're more coherent than only being allowed to use specific moves on the turn you tera, thats just whack. Now granted, 'can only tera into the type of a move you know' at least sounds somewhat interesting, but the problem with that one is that it just kills certain hard-defensive teras but still leaves stuff like roaring moon running tera-steel iron head sets to clown on fairies or tera-normal dragonite. But hey you prevented garganacl turning into grass or water types. Honestly all that restriction does is slant hard towards pokemon that want to gain stab on a move they want to spam anyways or pokemon that run the tera type of their coverage moves. Classic case of "you've complicated the problem without actually solving it" if you ask me.
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Metagame Terastallization Tiering Discussion [ UPDATE POST #1293]
- Thread starter Finchinator
- Start date
- Status
Part of this is why I try to be so communicative and how I emphasize we have no perfect solution. And this could take one suspect or maybe two or three -- I do not know, nobody has all of the answers. It is a first in competitive Pokemon history in all honesty. I just ask that you bare with us and ask me any questions if you are curious or want insight (my PMs are always open)!
sorry if I got defensive it just is hard balancing all that's going on right now while staying the most levelheaded, that's on me not you.
alephgalactus
Banned deucer.
I feel like the hard ban on STAB/non-STAB tera types is way too restrictive, without actually fixing issues related to tempo. The latter restriction I proposed sounds more promising:
“You can’t use a move matching your Tera type on the turn you terastalize” would realistically allow you to keep all the terastalizing options we have right now. However, it would really hurt offensive terastalization because you would need to basically deploy it BEFORE you can use it.
Offensive mons all need to commit to being the one pokemon on the team that gets the tera, being vulnerable for a whole extra turn before being able to drop a big STAB nuke. Dragonite would need to shed its resistances for a turn if it wants to go for an extreme killer sweep. Chi-Yu can use a dark or fire attack, but you don’t get a 2x STAB specs dark pulse to the face at point blank. If anything, choiced pokemon would need to swap out in order to use an offensive tera type at all.
It would make playing offensively with tera types much more awkward… which is kind of the point. It makes it a lot easier for your opponent to play around, unless you are going for defensive terastalization.
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May I make a suggestion?
What about short term forced rotations/implications of the theorized solutions?
Example:
Sunday Saturday: tera is banned.
Monday Tuesday: Tera preview exist.
Wednsday Thursday: experiment (tera blast vs. 1 mon tera vs. non-stab tera etc, just go wild)
Friday: What we have now since we almost had a whole month of it already.
Or alternatively longer versions (a full week of all of these). Not suspect test but drip feeding the playerbase potential suspect ladder iterations cause rn clearly we don't know where, how, or when the fuck to begin. Suspects are lengthy and once we commit its hard to go back or we have to redo the whole process again so we gotta get it right.
From a data standpoint, you can see the drop of players/hear actual voices who can say they've experienced the metas and which they preferred, and more easily rule out what solutions were just awful theorymon or legitimately slept on, while giving an even proper chance for all them.
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That or say fuck it and code a boolean that is 1 click to change OU every month altering tera and no tera
Every time you start a game there's a random chance that tera is active or not.That or say fuck it and code a boolean that is 1 click to change OU every month altering tera and no tera
alephgalactus
Banned deucer.
…I actually really like this concept. Can this be a thing in Random Battles when they get coded?
At the risk of asking a kind of impossible question, is there a sort of upper limit to the number of suspects for Tera? I understand we don't know at this point. But we probably wouldn't go through like 7 of them, right?
alephgalactus
Banned deucer.
If more than three suspects are held on the same thing in the same gen, that in and of itself is evidence that there’s an inherent problem with the thing, so I’d wager a guess that the upper limit is around there.
It’s pretty telling that there are so many possible restrictions on the table and nobody can reach a consensus on what works. Just ban the mechanic. It’s the easy and obvious solution that would’ve been agreed upon instantly had this not been this generation’s marketing gimmick. I thought we were the community that avoided complex bans like the plague? Yet just because Tera is thrown in all the advertisements it gets a million different proposals on how to keep it intact, none of which will actually work since the mechanic is broken at its core? Restrictions merely sidestep the issue and will only lead to further tiering action down the line. Let’s look at the popular ones:
- Ban Tera Blast
- 90% of abusers don’t even run it, and it wouldn’t change the inherent uncompetitiveness of a type swap adaptability button at all.
- Ban Same Type Tera
- Doesn’t affect type swapping abusers, arguably the most egregious part of the mechanic.
- Ban Different Type Tera
- Extreme bias towards offense and neuters the most interesting part of the mechanic in favor of absurd wall breaking capabilities.
- Show Tera Type on Team Preview
- Doesn’t actually change anything about the abusers or the issue of when someone will Tera.
- Only a Single Designated Pokémon may Tera
- Again, doesn’t actually change anything about the abusers or the issue of when someone will Tera.
Yes it does
I personally question the term of abusers - every Mon that's problematic currently would be without Tera too. Chi Yu has insane stats and insane damage potential without any drawbacks, Annihilape can reach 350BP (albeit, I don't think Annihilape is problematic at all personally), Espathra can do a similar thing with Stored Power... Honestly, just play a few rounds with a friend or something and ban tera during these games, you'll see very quickly how the "abusers" are broken by themselves without it. Only Mon that's massively boosted by Tera is probably Dnite with it's EK set, but that is frankly not too hard to deal with in most games
Showing Tera types at preview would make prediction significantly easier, if Espathra is Tera Fairy, you can have a better sense of the risks that it poses and position yourself more informed. Positioning is the single most important skill in comp pokemon, information is crucial for it and gaining this information and easing (or even eliminating) a potential surprise factor that could invalidate or make your positioning risky is huge
alephgalactus
Banned deucer.
I don’t think so. Dragapult would probably be fine without Tera—it’ll just do the same thing it did last gen, which got kind of annoying but I ultimately don’t think was that big of a deal. Roaring Moon is also one I could see being manageable without Tera, but it’s still hard to deal with either way, so I’m not as sure about that one. Also, I don’t think Espathra would even be good without Tera, much less broken.
I’d normally agree with you that we’re bending over backwards to keep a mechanic that ought to go, but the way the votes are shaking out at the moment, if we did a simple Ban/No Ban vote it wouldn’t be banned and we’d have to suffer through unrestricted Tera until they decide to do another suspect test. We need to approach this carefully—restrict Tera now, then wait until the general playerbase begins to realize that it didn’t really address the actual problems, then ban it in the inevitable post-Home second suspect test. (Side note: I hate that we have to play politics instead of being able to directly take the correct action.)
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Even if discarding 500 or 1000 votes from duplicates its still 3000 votes against 40-60 votes from top ladder, my god. Why keep insisting so much in the ban aspect, let it be or create a new ladder and see which one is more prevalent, this is a game, and while many pro ban arguments can be questioned like people saying it is "uncompetitive", it cant be questioned its a liked feature, with lots of depth and strategy involved and FUN is a crucial of pokemon as this is a game, if the game isnt fun why even play.
Saying the general vote is irrelevant is a huge disrespect to the comunity. While i agree general vote cant be blindy followed, i should ALWAYS taken into consideration as this affects the community.
If even the top 250 players are divided. Most votes for No Action on Tera, followed by restriction (and there is 0 consensus about which restriction should be implemented)
Just create a separate ladder for the anti Tera side, seems quite simple, if it becomes very popular make it the main ladder. Seems the council or whoever is looking at this isnt been objective or has some insistance on taking action against tera even after the results of the pole... with this results it should be clear that overall people is happy with tera and it can be let be for a few months more. There is others Stuff that should be suspect tested and maybe banned with or without Tera (ChiYu, Ape, Roaring Moon, Cyclizar-Grimmsnarl, Dragapult...)
I think that's the best part about this...
It's clear anyone with even a fraction of understanding of the game recognize that Tera is a problem. If it were anything else and/or years ago, we would know exactly what to do.
I understand wanting to cater to the casual player, I understand wanting to be as inclusive as possible. However, I don't think opening the floodgates for this form of gymnastics is healthy.
Hell now, maybe it's not so outlandish to find other ways to hinder otherwise broken "things" in the name of "fun" or being "inclusive". Well hey, I have fun using Crowned Zacian, can we remove her STAB, make her level 82, and unable to be Jolly so I can use it in OU? Thanks.
This "fun" argument is just tiring...
It's intangible, immeasurable, and is different person to person. I personally don't think it should be part of the conversation.
I used to think complex bans were the one thing we tried desperately to stay away from, and now we're showing it was only the beginning.
I just find it wild how all these years later, we've vaulted over Complex bans into hand shakes and House Rules. Eh, maybe I'll just extend my hiatus lol. Guess I'm just old. Just stuck in the past lol.
I'll be expecting this conversation to be had again early next year anyway when Home drops and the ACTUAL floodgates open and we find out we just wasted our time.
Doesn't Tera Magearna sound "fun"?
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alephgalactus
Banned deucer.
So you’re going to keep running with this narrative, then? The Restriction and Ban camps both agree that something needs to be done about Tera, and we outnumber you among qualified voters. The binary here isn’t “keep” versus “ban”, it’s “action” versus “no action”.
There is no binary as there are 3 options and if there is the binary is Ban vs No Ban imo. Restriction voters agree with no ban that Tera should stay and it ban is the more radical and least voted option.
Also, "we outnumber you among qualified voters" when takikg both restriction and ban together adds up to a total of what? 90 top ladder votes??? Vs at least 50 no ban top ladder votes and thousands of general public no ban vote??
And we looking at the same data? How do u make this interpretations with the presented data? I do not understand.
At the very least Tera should be given more time to develop, settle and get some new toys from home and such.
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alephgalactus
Banned deucer.
Last I checked, 90 is bigger than 50.
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90 votes assuming ALL restriction players are pro ban and even then its only 90 votes, a laughable amount.
I don't understand why you're spending entire pages of this thread arguing fine nuances of how to interpret the results of the survey rather than just... waiting for the suspect test that's essentially confirmed to happen soon? Like, the entire point of the suspect process is to gauge opinions from experienced and committed players in a less clunky way than Google Forms (in a way that forces them to play a lot of ladder games over multiple weeks in order to learn and evaluate the effects of the questioned factor on the metagame, even).
I realize that I'm being a hypocrite insofar as this message doesn't contribute to the discussion on Tera either, but like, surely you could both find a more productive use of your time.
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Furthermore, I hate this idea that it's too soon to take at-least-preliminary action. Would you rather the debate on Tera hang over the tier for the next three months, all our future tiering choices being forced to be considered from multiple angles because there's ambiguity on what action, if any, will be taken on Tera? If you're confident that the no-action side will win, surely you should want the suspect to conclude ASAP so we can move on to talking about other metagame issues without everything needing to be contextualized with "well, it depends on what we do to Tera, but..."
The most egregious example here likely being Espathra, but considering how foundational Tera is to the current state of gen 9 OU, it can really apply to anything. Would Annihilape be as good if Tera was removed? Maybe it would be, maybe it wouldn't be, but it's ambiguous enough that there's room for debate on it — to the point where a discussion on what action to take on Annihilape cannot be based off whether the Annihilape we know in the metagame we play is broken, but also end up talking in circles as to whether an Annihilape we don't know in a metagame we haven't played is broken as well. This can apply to any Pokemon considered potentially problematic, really (I'm inclined to believe that Chi-Yu is busted either way personally, for example, but I could see a reasonable player thinking that removing Tera would ease switch-ins to the extent that it's no longer obviously banworthy). It's these kinds of impossible-to-progress debates that Smogon's tiering process, with all its community suspects and prohibitions on complex bans, is designed to prevent happening.
I also dispute that it is "too soon" for us to have a good idea on how Tera affects sets and the metagame — what new uses/abuses of Tera have popped up in the last week or so of metagame development? People figured out stuff like ESpeed Dnite or Tera Flying on Ground-week mons within the first couple days, and even "new" Tera abusers like Tera Grass Chi-Yu (made a couple appearances Round 3 of No Johns) are mostly following established principles. Sure, some new sets might pop up, but people have figured out how Tera plays on a fundamental level and have seen its influence on the metagame play out in every single game, including three rounds of No Johns. Do you really think the metagame (which by all regards seems fairly stabilized around well-established archetypes — Grimmsnarl + Cyclizar HO, Gholdengo hazard stack BO, fat Ting Lu teams, etc.) will change to such a radical extent that it would influence opinions on Tera? How many people are around that are still genuinely undecided? Obviously you won't look in a suspect thread for "undecideds" since only people with opinions bother to comment here, but even if you ask in random roomchats or Discord servers or whatever, essentially everyone has already made up their minds — how could spending more time in the same metagame, one that cannot be reasonably updated or balanced because Tera adds an asterisk to every tiering decision, change opinions? The only real major shift I could see is the release of Home, but Finch has mentioned the council being open to a second suspect test after Home if there's reason to believe the new additions would change the outcome.
Besides that, this just seems like a stalling tactic — delay action with shouts that "it's too soon, the metagame needs time to develop", then over the course of a few weeks, gradually phase them into "it's too late, the metagame has developed around the mechanic". We at least need to make a decision here.
(Not to mention, it seems that the suspect is planned to be longer than usual. If 3 weeks after it starts isn't enough time, then what would be enough time? Where's the line drawn? Should we just abide by having an effectively-unfixable metagame until a couple months after Home drops? SPL is coming up soon, should we sacrifice its integrity based on these vague, unsubstantiated aesthetic criteria about what's "too soon"?)
I realize that I'm being a hypocrite insofar as this message doesn't contribute to the discussion on Tera either, but like, surely you could both find a more productive use of your time.
———
Furthermore, I hate this idea that it's too soon to take at-least-preliminary action. Would you rather the debate on Tera hang over the tier for the next three months, all our future tiering choices being forced to be considered from multiple angles because there's ambiguity on what action, if any, will be taken on Tera? If you're confident that the no-action side will win, surely you should want the suspect to conclude ASAP so we can move on to talking about other metagame issues without everything needing to be contextualized with "well, it depends on what we do to Tera, but..."
The most egregious example here likely being Espathra, but considering how foundational Tera is to the current state of gen 9 OU, it can really apply to anything. Would Annihilape be as good if Tera was removed? Maybe it would be, maybe it wouldn't be, but it's ambiguous enough that there's room for debate on it — to the point where a discussion on what action to take on Annihilape cannot be based off whether the Annihilape we know in the metagame we play is broken, but also end up talking in circles as to whether an Annihilape we don't know in a metagame we haven't played is broken as well. This can apply to any Pokemon considered potentially problematic, really (I'm inclined to believe that Chi-Yu is busted either way personally, for example, but I could see a reasonable player thinking that removing Tera would ease switch-ins to the extent that it's no longer obviously banworthy). It's these kinds of impossible-to-progress debates that Smogon's tiering process, with all its community suspects and prohibitions on complex bans, is designed to prevent happening.
I also dispute that it is "too soon" for us to have a good idea on how Tera affects sets and the metagame — what new uses/abuses of Tera have popped up in the last week or so of metagame development? People figured out stuff like ESpeed Dnite or Tera Flying on Ground-week mons within the first couple days, and even "new" Tera abusers like Tera Grass Chi-Yu (made a couple appearances Round 3 of No Johns) are mostly following established principles. Sure, some new sets might pop up, but people have figured out how Tera plays on a fundamental level and have seen its influence on the metagame play out in every single game, including three rounds of No Johns. Do you really think the metagame (which by all regards seems fairly stabilized around well-established archetypes — Grimmsnarl + Cyclizar HO, Gholdengo hazard stack BO, fat Ting Lu teams, etc.) will change to such a radical extent that it would influence opinions on Tera? How many people are around that are still genuinely undecided? Obviously you won't look in a suspect thread for "undecideds" since only people with opinions bother to comment here, but even if you ask in random roomchats or Discord servers or whatever, essentially everyone has already made up their minds — how could spending more time in the same metagame, one that cannot be reasonably updated or balanced because Tera adds an asterisk to every tiering decision, change opinions? The only real major shift I could see is the release of Home, but Finch has mentioned the council being open to a second suspect test after Home if there's reason to believe the new additions would change the outcome.
Besides that, this just seems like a stalling tactic — delay action with shouts that "it's too soon, the metagame needs time to develop", then over the course of a few weeks, gradually phase them into "it's too late, the metagame has developed around the mechanic". We at least need to make a decision here.
(Not to mention, it seems that the suspect is planned to be longer than usual. If 3 weeks after it starts isn't enough time, then what would be enough time? Where's the line drawn? Should we just abide by having an effectively-unfixable metagame until a couple months after Home drops? SPL is coming up soon, should we sacrifice its integrity based on these vague, unsubstantiated aesthetic criteria about what's "too soon"?)
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To be fair I think I have made up my mind honestly, if I could vote I believe I would probably vote ban as even with restrictions home is gonna bring so many pokemon that would be problems with tera even with the restrictions, and there really is no good solution here so honestly I think it for the best that I vote ban, as much as I enjoy terastal, I don't want this to drag on for months and I feel like tera causes too many problems already honestly.
Can't wait for the suspect test to start so we can be done with this discussion once and for all.
Hello,
I'm not a good player, the best ELO i got was around 1300 and it was many years ago, but i still enjoy watching competitive pokemon matches. I'm more often on the quiet side of discussion, and i know i'm not qualified to say what's overpowered and what's not. I've seen a lot of discussion about Terracrystalisation, should it be banned or not, how should it be nerfed. Seeing the opinion of the best players (which are often right, when it comes to balancing a competitive game), Terra is obviously overpowered as it is. But there's one solution I haven't seen anywhere i've looked and which could be good :
Ban Terracrystal+Item on the same Pokemon.
I may seems like a complexe ban at first but it's not. What it means is only Pokemon who don't carry an Item can terra. It doesn't break the game as it's something your could play on a Switch in S/V, and it's not that much more complexe that revealing every terratype to the adverse player before the match for example.
There are 3 issues with Terra from what i could read (in that order) : unpredictability, defensive utility, offensive utility.
→ unpredictability : if terra is only avalable without an Item, then terra isn't a « trump card » anymore, it's a « set », you would run terra like you run choice scarf, specs, leftovers, etc... So if you encounter let's say a Dragapult
you can check if he isn't boots, cause it tooked your hazards, neither leftovers cause they didn't activated, nore Band/Specs cause of the damages dealt → so you know it's probably terra and you can play around it. If you see an Item on the mon, you know it's not gonna terra and you're safe. With this, Terra loses a lot of unpredictability. There would still be the terra type unknown but i think it's much more manageable.
→ Defensive utility : The most obvious : terra would means, no boots, no lefto, no eviolite, no AV etc... so the benefice of changing typing now comes with a price. No Lefto when almost every recovery moves were nerfed, and no Boots when hazard stacking is that powerful etc...
→ Offensive utility : Well same as defensive utility, if you terra for double stab then you don't get Specs/Band/Life orb on top of it, You can't boost both your speed with scarf AND your damage with terra. And if you terra for third stab, then you loose on potentials bonus on your main stab.
I've seens people complains that Terra wasn't an object you had to carry, like mega-stones or Z moves, and this solution basically makes it a pseudo-object. You obviously can't trick it or remove it with knock off but it was the same for mega-stone/Z moves. And there is almost no pokemon with knock off anyway in gen 9 (for now) so not that impacful overhall.
Maybe this solution is stupid and all, but I think it worth listening to. As i said, i'm not a very good player, but i heard and listened to what good player said. And i'm open to every criticisme
I'm not a good player, the best ELO i got was around 1300 and it was many years ago, but i still enjoy watching competitive pokemon matches. I'm more often on the quiet side of discussion, and i know i'm not qualified to say what's overpowered and what's not. I've seen a lot of discussion about Terracrystalisation, should it be banned or not, how should it be nerfed. Seeing the opinion of the best players (which are often right, when it comes to balancing a competitive game), Terra is obviously overpowered as it is. But there's one solution I haven't seen anywhere i've looked and which could be good :
Ban Terracrystal+Item on the same Pokemon.
I may seems like a complexe ban at first but it's not. What it means is only Pokemon who don't carry an Item can terra. It doesn't break the game as it's something your could play on a Switch in S/V, and it's not that much more complexe that revealing every terratype to the adverse player before the match for example.
There are 3 issues with Terra from what i could read (in that order) : unpredictability, defensive utility, offensive utility.
→ unpredictability : if terra is only avalable without an Item, then terra isn't a « trump card » anymore, it's a « set », you would run terra like you run choice scarf, specs, leftovers, etc... So if you encounter let's say a Dragapult
you can check if he isn't boots, cause it tooked your hazards, neither leftovers cause they didn't activated, nore Band/Specs cause of the damages dealt → so you know it's probably terra and you can play around it. If you see an Item on the mon, you know it's not gonna terra and you're safe. With this, Terra loses a lot of unpredictability. There would still be the terra type unknown but i think it's much more manageable.→ Defensive utility : The most obvious : terra would means, no boots, no lefto, no eviolite, no AV etc... so the benefice of changing typing now comes with a price. No Lefto when almost every recovery moves were nerfed, and no Boots when hazard stacking is that powerful etc...
→ Offensive utility : Well same as defensive utility, if you terra for double stab then you don't get Specs/Band/Life orb on top of it, You can't boost both your speed with scarf AND your damage with terra. And if you terra for third stab, then you loose on potentials bonus on your main stab.
I've seens people complains that Terra wasn't an object you had to carry, like mega-stones or Z moves, and this solution basically makes it a pseudo-object. You obviously can't trick it or remove it with knock off but it was the same for mega-stone/Z moves. And there is almost no pokemon with knock off anyway in gen 9 (for now) so not that impacful overhall.
Maybe this solution is stupid and all, but I think it worth listening to. As i said, i'm not a very good player, but i heard and listened to what good player said. And i'm open to every criticisme
i never thought about that but that is an amazing idea i mean i'm not a great player either but to me i think this is how showdown should do tera.Hello,
I'm not a good player, the best ELO i got was around 1300 and it was many years ago, but i still enjoy watching competitive pokemon matches. I'm more often on the quiet side of discussion, and i know i'm not qualified to say what's overpowered and what's not. I've seen a lot of discussion about Terracrystalisation, should it be banned or not, how should it be nerfed. Seeing the opinion of the best players (which are often right, when it comes to balancing a competitive game), Terra is obviously overpowered as it is. But there's one solution I haven't seen anywhere i've looked and which could be good :
Ban Terracrystal+Item on the same Pokemon.
I may seems like a complexe ban at first but it's not. What it means is only Pokemon who don't carry an Item can terra. It doesn't break the game as it's something your could play on a Switch in S/V, and it's not that much more complexe that revealing every terratype to the adverse player before the match for example.
There are 3 issues with Terra from what i could read (in that order) : unpredictability, defensive utility, offensive utility.
→ unpredictability : if terra is only avalable without an Item, then terra isn't a « trump card » anymore, it's a « set », you would run terra like you run choice scarf, specs, leftovers, etc... So if you encounter let's say a Dragapult
→ Defensive utility : The most obvious : terra would means, no boots, no lefto, no eviolite, no AV etc... so the benefice of changing typing now comes with a price. No Lefto when almost every recovery moves were nerfed, and no Boots when hazard stacking is that powerful etc...
→ Offensive utility : Well same as defensive utility, if you terra for double stab then you don't get Specs/Band/Life orb on top of it, You can't boost both your speed with scarf AND your damage with terra. And if you terra for third stab, then you loose on potentials bonus on your main stab.
I've seens people complains that Terra wasn't an object you had to carry, like mega-stones or Z moves, and this solution basically makes it a pseudo-object. You obviously can't trick it or remove it with knock off but it was the same for mega-stone/Z moves. And there is almost no pokemon with knock off anyway in gen 9 (for now) so not that impacful overhall.
Maybe this solution is stupid and all, but I think it worth listening to. As i said, i'm not a very good player, but i heard and listened to what good player said. And i'm open to every criticisme
hate to break it to you, but the discussion is just going to move threads when it starts bro
Welcome to early generation OU, where everyone is suddenly the protagonist savior of the metagame
We just gotta weed out the nonsense and focus on productive discourse. Nothing will ever be perfect
I thought about this as well, but my holdup is largely that some sweepers don't need items to do their things (esp with shed tail + screens support), and it would largely remove the defensive element from the mechanic since every defensive Pokemon really needs its held item. You'd basically only use Tera for offense since you can't afford your Skeledirge not holding something just to give it a niche in a matchup you might not even come across, and we don't need more offense this gen. I'd be open to trying it though.Hello,
I'm not a good player, the best ELO i got was around 1300 and it was many years ago, but i still enjoy watching competitive pokemon matches. I'm more often on the quiet side of discussion, and i know i'm not qualified to say what's overpowered and what's not. I've seen a lot of discussion about Terracrystalisation, should it be banned or not, how should it be nerfed. Seeing the opinion of the best players (which are often right, when it comes to balancing a competitive game), Terra is obviously overpowered as it is. But there's one solution I haven't seen anywhere i've looked and which could be good :
Ban Terracrystal+Item on the same Pokemon.
I may seems like a complexe ban at first but it's not. What it means is only Pokemon who don't carry an Item can terra. It doesn't break the game as it's something your could play on a Switch in S/V, and it's not that much more complexe that revealing every terratype to the adverse player before the match for example.
There are 3 issues with Terra from what i could read (in that order) : unpredictability, defensive utility, offensive utility.
→ unpredictability : if terra is only avalable without an Item, then terra isn't a « trump card » anymore, it's a « set », you would run terra like you run choice scarf, specs, leftovers, etc... So if you encounter let's say a Dragapult
→ Defensive utility : The most obvious : terra would means, no boots, no lefto, no eviolite, no AV etc... so the benefice of changing typing now comes with a price. No Lefto when almost every recovery moves were nerfed, and no Boots when hazard stacking is that powerful etc...
→ Offensive utility : Well same as defensive utility, if you terra for double stab then you don't get Specs/Band/Life orb on top of it, You can't boost both your speed with scarf AND your damage with terra. And if you terra for third stab, then you loose on potentials bonus on your main stab.
I've seens people complains that Terra wasn't an object you had to carry, like mega-stones or Z moves, and this solution basically makes it a pseudo-object. You obviously can't trick it or remove it with knock off but it was the same for mega-stone/Z moves. And there is almost no pokemon with knock off anyway in gen 9 (for now) so not that impacful overhall.
Maybe this solution is stupid and all, but I think it worth listening to. As i said, i'm not a very good player, but i heard and listened to what good player said. And i'm open to every criticisme
The other weird option I thought of is banning boosting moves/abilities in conjuction with Tera since everyone seems to more or less agree that's the problem, but that sounds kinda weird and arbitrary.
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