Suspect STABmons Suspect - Terastallization

[NeonJolteonWasUsed]

(Shoutouts to funny crab Youtuber.)

Here we go again.
The STABmons council has reached the verdict to suspect test Terastallization once more.
As I'm sure many are aware, Terastallization was banned as a result of a suspect test much earlier into the tier's life, and subsequently, the entire tier changed heavily with it. However, recently, among both the vocal community, and in its most recent survey, there has been shown to be quite a bit of pushback against this decision at the current time, the community seems to be split directly down the middle between unbanning Tera, and keeping it banned. As a result, it has been deemed worthy by the council to receive a suspect test to allow the community to decide the fate of this mechanic, and how the tier will be shaped afterwards.

At this point, it is unlikely Terastallization requires much of an introduction. But for the unaware, its initial reasoning for its ban involved the high degree to which it seemed to take already strong wallbreakers to almost overwhelming levels, such examples being Pokemon like Rillaboom, Latios, Gengar, Volcanion, Gyarados, and Gholdengo, who become significantly more difficult to deal with due to this mechanic in a vacuum.

This does not, however, show the whole picture of Tera as a mechanic, in the same way Tera can power up wallbreakers to new heights, it can also improve defensive stability due to its inherit abilities. In the same vein that that threats like this become far stronger, many defensive staples are also able to quickly switch to resistances against these threats in order to more reactively deal with the threats that otherwise are extremely difficult to deal with.

There is far more nuance to it than this, which is why this decision is left in the hands of the community as a whole, the results of this suspect text will have heavy implications for how the tier will be managed from this point forward, so if you are able, participation is highly appreciated.
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Requirements:
NOTE: THIS TEST WILL BE USING A NEW SUSPECT PROCESS!

The instructions to participate in this test are as follows:

Create a new account on PS. You do not have to follow any specific naming convention, but your suspect account must have never played a game in STABmons before this suspect test went up or you will not receive valid requirements (resetting W/L does not count for this - the account you use must never have played STABmons before the test, full stop.)
At any point on your new account, use the command /linksmogon on Pokemon Showdown! You will receive instructions on what to do once you run this command.
Double check that you're listed as a voter here! If you aren't listed as a voter despite having valid reqs, please contact Giagantic, Isaiah or a member of staff.
If you have any questions about this new process, feel free to PM me or post here!

The requirement to vote in this suspect test is a COIL value of 2900 with a B-value of 3. The deadline for getting requirements will be Sunday, January 12th at 11:59PM EST. An unban vote of 60% is required to unban Terastallization. Good luck to all!

 

[dhelmise]

https://www.smogon.com/tools/suspects/view/64

here's the suspect thingy

 

[Betticus IV]

Tera is too much for this tier offensively. This was demonstrated the first time during its initial ban and there has not been a significant change in the power level of the tier that makes tera feel healthy or necessary.

I don't understand the argument that defensive tera is what this tier needs. Offensive mons benefit much more greatly from tera than defensive ones, and if you want to look to tera as an out for some of the more busted mons/moves, why not look to the individual things? Tera is an inherently offensive mechanic, and while some games yea you will be using your defensive tera proactively, a good amount of the time it's reactive to offensive threats that have already tera'd. The whole point of tera getting banned from here in the first place was that playing that coin flip game with offensive threats on-top of the absurd damage output they could create with their strongest stab moves just wasn't healthy. While tera can create some more dynamic gameplay, it naturally creates a more offensive meta, and seeing how the state of this tier already heavily leans towards that, I don't see how this will make it more defensive as I have seen discussed.

As of right now I don't see how tera impacts the meta in a positive way, offense is still king, and this will only make it better. Balance will still struggle against the same mons except now they have a potential to circumvent your check if they loaded the right tera and you loaded the wrong one. Hell even if you load the right one it won't really matter because the power level here is naturally stronger and they can just brute force through with STAB amp. Walls were already checking so much and have been spread thin, I don't see how tera makes it better for them, if anything it makes it worse as check overloading will become easier than ever, especially if you can force a defensive tera from an opp. On top of this, the simple threat of a tera from these mons is game ending, as mentioned earlier sweepers here are naturally more powerful, and the 50/50s you are put into even when tera isn't even being chosen is unhealthy in comparison to other tiers where it is an option.

Personally I have found the tier much more fun and balanced since tera's initial ban. The tier was still goofy to build for because there were just so many ridiculous moves/mons to check, but at least there was a semblance of balance, but already borderline moves/mons just become better in a tera meta. I don't think this is the right direction to take tiering or balancing for STAB, and there should have been a more aggressive and clear vision for what the tier should have been after its initial ban. I know it's beating a dead horse at this point to say that, but it feels a bit warranted here, especially when it took over 6 months to get rid of something like damp rock.

Reintroducing tera to this meta will cause offensive threats to benefit much more greatly than defensive pieces to what I view is an unhealthy degree and won't substantially address the core issue of this tier having too much offensive jank to check in builder (and if anything just exacerbates this last point).

Of the few games I have played, it honestly felt so much worse and I really don't even know if I want to bother playing it out bc I did not have a fun time with it at all. If I do end up getting reqs then I'll vote keep banned but will see what happens.

EDIT:



Got reqs, was experimenting w diff team structures/archetypes and I think what I said above still holds true. Balance feels in the gutter, doesn't help ladder is just an HO fest rn, but even when trying to take this into account w anti-HO tools it still just felt bad. For the team above, just stacked brokens and slapped on a resist/immunity tera to either set-up in their checks face or just KO them as this loses p hard to any fairy type w/o the mechanic.

On average, my offensive mons benefitted much more from being able to tera and even when a defensive mon would tera in front of them they could just set-up to the moon and muscle thru or another breaker would be opened up by the tera. While it did open up different options for me in builder, it really felt lopsided to offense, and many of the tera's I used on my defensive mons just felt like cope that didn't really work. Sure you could point to the individual mons on the team here, but I think tera enables these already great mons to an unhealthy degree, and if the individual mons were to be looked at, then the next best user would just rise up to take its place. This feels especially easy in stab as movesets are much more easily transferrable (the best and second best water types can still run the same strong water moves so it really becomes about that one slot of coverage/if they just want to use tera blast to cover it up). Easy keep banned for me.

(Also my name comes from a Fleetwood Mac song, a bit ironic but it was the first alt I already had that qualified lol)

 

[ghostlike]

Teams built by people who hate this metagame:


The bisharp one is pretty bad maybe because I made it and I don't even play the tier. I went like 15-0 with the second one so it's great. It's made by cotta a long long time ago but everything got banned so I have to change 4/6 of the mons so I think it's fair to say I made it.
Anws, this tier has many problems and tera is not one of them. I was very against tera in every metagame a year ago but I'm appreciating it more and more. I think it opens up a lot of options when playing a game and that's a good thing. Maybe I'm bias because I spammed HO for the suspect test but I really don't think tera is the issue here.

 

[Fissure]

Got reqs with the worst HO, but that's par for the course.

I have been very vocal about Tera in the past, and my opinion on the matter still has not changed. Easy Keep Banned from me.
If you care what my opinions are on Tera, just go read my old posts in the stab thread. I do not think the game-play Tera creates is a healthy one. Simple as that.

 

[Slither Wing]

(For anyone curious this is Bonk/Slither Wing)
Finally got reqs after repeately bashing my head into this ladder for two days straight (I have legit played ~100 games in two days there might be something wrong with me)
Used some variations of this team, it's not great and it requires you to get a lot of correct predicions but when it works it works:


Back in April when Tera was first getting suspected, I was pretty unsure what my thoughts were, but I was leaning mostly towards DNB as seen in this post. After it got banned, I was pretty quickly on the train that the ban was a mistake and that tera was actually fine, but after playing on ladder for the last two days my thoughts have shifted a bit, and I'm now leaning more into Tera being a bit of an unhealthy mechanic for STABmons. To dive deeper into it, lets start by examining STABmons itself. STABmons is a meta that gives attacking Pokemon access to stronger moves (often via higher Base Power, but could also be other things such as priority moves like Jet Punch or Water Shuriken). This means that on average, offensive threats will generally hit a lot harder, while defensive Pokemon will be unable to mitigate this damage (While gaining powerful utility moves is great, most of the time they don't actually help answering offensive threats directly). This naturally results in the meta leaning more into offense, with offensive Pokemon having more tools to break down defensive Pokemon. This leads means that offensive counterplay will often be the most optimal way in dealing with threats, as most Defensive Pokemon are simply unable to keep up with the increased power-level. There are some exceptions to this, notably and , as they are able to essentially "statcheck" certain treats via their high Base Defenses and HP. "Now, this is a lot of yapping, what the fuck does this have to do with Tera?" you may ask, and it's simple: Tera is broken in STABmons because it lets your offensive threats circumvent offensive counterplay, which in turn makes these offensive threats even more oppressive and frustrating to play against, and with the fact that you have to be able to hande six different offensive threats who all require specific counterplay on top of now being able to circumvent that counterplay thanks to Tera, leads to some very frustrating experiences and an overall unfun and "coinflippy" metagame. Overall, I think Betticus summarizes the main issue with Tera well here:

Reintroducing tera to this meta will cause offensive threats to benefit much more greatly than defensive pieces to what I view is an unhealthy degree and won't substantially address the core issue of this tier having too much offensive jank to check in builder (and if anything just exacerbates this last point).

(Small sidenote but the reason Tera is also hideously oppresive on ladder might be in part because the tier hasn't been balanced around Tera in months, meaning that threats like Volcarona/Regieleki/anything with setup really are currently extremely oppressive which might contribute to the tier feeling very unbalanced. Had the tier been balanced around tera it might've been a bit better but I still think his point stands.)

Now, there's another thing I wanna touch on as to why I don't want Tera reintroduced again, and it has to do with STABmons' tiering as a whole. If we were to reintroduce Tera again, that would essentially mean that we'd erase all tiering action that has happened over the last ~8 Months (Because STABmons with Tera differenciates itself too much from STABmons with no Tera, meaning we'd have to go look back at all the things that got banned/unbanned, which could take way too long, leaving the tier in an unbalanced state). Naturally, most people (myself included) haven't been exactly overjoyed with the tiering during that time period, but that doesn't mean that we should just give up on it and essentially reset the tier. I believe that Teraless STABmons still has lots of potential to be a great tier, and that our focus should lean towards working with that instead of trying to reinvent the tier. Oh and if it wasn't clear I am voting Keep Banned, I think Tera as a mechanic is very fun and leads to a lot of cool/hype plays, but I don't think a meta like STABmons, which already heavily leans into being offensive, can work well with Tera without being too overwhelming.

 

[dhelmise]

https://www.smogon.com/tools/suspects/view/64

SPHZ Treeko928 IEGT Demon Queen cat Murphy Lawden pannu deeton7 Betticus IV clerica Yoko QT Fissure Slither Wing ghostlike

Voting is up, you have until Wednesday, January 15 @ 11:59 PM EST (GMT-5) to cast your vote.

 

[KaenSoul]

Voting will stay open for now, but the result is already set.
dhelmise