After a lot of games, decided to throw my uninteresting 2 cents about the metagame.
Not gonna lie, this has to be the most frustrating experience I had during my laddering.
The reasoning behind this frustration is simple:
Yeah, this gen has a lot going for it but it feels frustrating to me
Carl you know you are my g but, come on now. This post hardly expresses the depth of the topic you're speaking of and the fact that other people have used it as a compass to express their discomfort kinda speaks of the dynamics of SV in a very shallow and misleading way. I will go through your points one by one.
- Terastalize and Koraidon just makes the mind game unbearable. Having to guess the tera type and the moment where the opponent is going to tera just makes your gameplan worthless. If you ever happen to have a mon locked into a move and Koraidon sets up Swords Dance and Scale Shot it’s basically over
No it doesn't, it does not make your gameplan worthless and there is no mindgame lost. It seems we're going back to early SV times thinking tera revolves around "50-50s". Most arguments expressing discomfrort when it comes to tera revolve around this and it is hardly the case, tera types depend in their majority on teambuilding composition, there is always logic behind them. If you were in a position where Koraidon using Tera would end the game for you then it was probably because you put yourself there or your team was not good enough to account for Koraidon changing types. It is often not a matter of mindgames but rather of skillful play and building.
- Terastalize as a whole. While you can « predict » what Tera type the opponent is probably running, it is really unsatisfying to try to set up your mon just to end up losing 2-3 turns because the opponent Terad into a Fairy, Ground or whatsoever. It just makes a lot of mons unusable. Stelar type is what should have been Tera to begin with if I had to be fair. The timing in which you use the tera has such an immense impact that it changes a game you had winning to an instant loss.
Can you provide concrete examples of this? How do you end up losing 2-3 turns after your opponent teras? What mons are unviable because of this dynamic? Yeah, activating your tera completely changes the outlook of the game, but that doesn't mean it is completely lost because your opponent did first. It is essentially one's trump card and you need to use it correctly. A skillful or bad tera can end games for you or your opponent respectively, it's not a one sided mechanic. It takes metagamme knowledge to know what tera types are more common on each mon, it comes with experience and play.
- Miraidon is an extremely versatile mon and I had a blast using the tera flying sub cm set. Makes a matchup you lose vs Clodsire (that for some reason people are running Unaware now instead of Water absorb?) to a deadly sweeper. Again, the ability to tera between Fairy, Flying, Electric, Dragon, Grass is just too much for this to be just a simple mon to check.
Miraidon is a mon that when it comes down to it, it has little potential to be checked defensively. Nevertheless, it doesn't mean that it's impossible to do so, If your team loses to any of the different sets Miraidon can use then it is simply not a good team, period. This is a top tier mon, you should be prepared to face even the most uncommon of its sets.
- Whoever says Dual Screens is not busted has not face it enough. There is no gain to lead Zacian, being reflect on and then parting shot into Necrozma Dusk Mane. All you do in best case is waste up your tera Ground but really this matchup is hard. The lack of Defoggers outside Gira O makes this playstyle a real menace.
I've played against screens with more passive teams and never lost to them. I've also played screens with HO and never lost to a single screens team. Excuse the tone but, if you are having a hard time against screens then what are you even using? I am not saying playing against screens doesn't require a degree of good play but, at this point, if you can't comfortably beat screens then I don't know what to tell you, it's one of most common archetypes for a reason.
- lastly, Ekiller being Ekiller is just annoying and the fact it tera into ghost to make Ditto useless or play a 50/50 is plainly bs. Add to that the fact that Koraidon runs Tera Ghost is just for Ekiller.
Ekiller doesn't use Ghost tera for Ditto, mainly for opposing ekiller and Koraidon's Low Kick. Koraidon uses Tera Ghost for Ekiller but that means fire moves will never get STAB boost, I think this is a very important point people miss talking about sometimes, the stuff you give up for using a certain tera type. If Miraidon uses tera fairy, it is not weak to Dragon or fairy but it is weak to Steel. If Koraidon uses tera fire it better end the game there, otherwise it is weak to rocks, not to mention, water and ground.
Gonna reply to this post too as it sits upon Carl's
Having played hundreds of SV Ubers games over the last two weeks, building dozens of teams, and recently peaking ladder, I wanted to give my two cents about the state of the tier regarding the three unhealthiest culprits: (1) Koraidon, (2) Terastallization, and (3) Miraidon.
- Little needs to be said about how restrictive Scale Shot variants of this are to the builder. The simple fact is that Koraidon forces nearly every team composition to run multiple Fairy types. You cannot get away with having a single defensive check. Some players argue that a timely Tera Fairy from things like Ho-Oh, Lunala, and Arceus-Water can stop Korai immediately. I've started using Substitute over Low Kick to force a Tera Fairy from would-be "checks," only to OHKO them with +2 Flare Blitz. When it comes to checking Koraidon, you're forced to allocate at least two slots, use up at least two defensive tera types, and pack a revenge killer for insurance (although Tera Ghost Korai cucks priority moves from EKiller). Koraidon is about as oppressive to the builder as SV Calyrex-S was. Sure, Calyrex-S had no checks and could snowball way faster, but their overly restrictive stronghold on the builder is asinine. Calyrex-S mandated a Normal type + 1-2 more defensive tera's to "play around it." Koraidon is doing nearly the exact same thing. It's a bad faith argument to list a bunch of mons used in conjunction to check a single threat that can potentially out-predict and end games instantly. The most solid defensive core versus Scale Shot Koraidon is Tera Fairy Kyogre + Arceus-Fairy. While Koraidon will not (usually) outright win on the spot, a skillful player will force their opponent to use their Tera early on in the game and then take advantage of this interaction with other threats like Zacian-C & Miraidon. Remember, the game is a 6v6, not a 1v6.- Terastallization - This mechanic is only tolerable because Koraidon exists in the tier. If it weren't for Tera, Koraidon would somehow be even worse than it is now. However, the fact is that Tera turns the game into a defined sequence of 50-50s. As Carl Murray mentioned, a timely Tera can flip the game from a winning position to a losing one. While Terastallization promotes "skillful gameplay," a fine line exists between outplaying your opponent and winning a potentially game-ending 50-50. Terastallization can be abused offensively & defensively by too many things, but what makes the mechanic unhealthy is boiling pivotal turns against the plethora of dangerous threats that reign over the tier to a guessing game, detracting from the mechanic's overall competitiveness.
- While not as oppressive as Koraidon, Miraidon has no defensive checks, thanks to Tera. It can power through every one of them. The way players deal with Miraidon is by revenge-killing it. However, on certain team structures, such as Screens Hyper Offense, Miraidon can afford to run a Weakness Policy Double Dance set, which can 6-0 teams on the spot if it's Tera Stellar. CM + Taunt Miraidon can single-handedly wipe fatter teams out, while Sub + CM Tera Flying Miraidon feasts on teams relying on Clodsire to check it.
To be perfectly blunt, the current state of SV Ubers is
volatile & pitiful. Both Koraidon and Miraidon feast off Tera, yet Tera is the main force keeping them "in check." However, the mechanic turns nearly every game into a 50-50. Each of these forces amplifies their oppressiveness through a chain-like positive feedback loop. I would argue this is the order in which things need to be examined in order for the tier to truly flourish.
1. I don't get how restriction in the builder is a cornerstone of pro-ban argument. Throughout its gens, Ubers has had more restrictive pokemon than Scale Shot Koraidon; Primal Groudon, Xerneas, Calyrex-S in gen 8, and none of them were considered banworthy when it came down to it. Needing multiple fairies is a fallacy, you can just run 1 fairy and a decent fire resist and play around it. Also, the fact that you need multiple phisically defenive mons on your team is not solely attributed to him, some of the best pokemon on the tier are physical sweepers; Necrozma, Ekiller, DD Groundceus, Rayquaza, to name a few. You need several physically defensive pokemon because just checking Koraidon doesn't win you the game. You also mention something important, Koraidon doesn't necessarily win on the spot, you are comparing to Caly-S, prior to Calyrex-S' ban, it was plainly obvious that the play who set up with him first won. Same was the case with pokemon like Mega-Rayquaza back in gen 6.
2. I've spoken enough on Tera and my stance is still the same, it is a healthy mechanic, it is nowhere near toxic as some people make it out to be, if Tera keeps Ubers playable as you mention in your post then it should not be a topic of discussion, plain and simple. The 50-50s argument has been oversaturated since the release of SV and as I've said many times before, those are often very specific and can be avoided a lot of times.
3. See what I replied to Carl addressing Miraidon. Some sets are often also telegraphed to the point where its easy to see them coming, personally, I don't see Miraidon sets as unpredictable as people make them out to be.
People are entitled to their opinion and it is often cathartic to post it here. But the way these posts are being written is by recycling the same arguments people have been using since the beginning of the genrration. I don't see how current gen is less playable than where it was prior to this DLC. I'd say we are well within the adaptation peiod and there is no clear "suspect" that just makes it not worth playing or simply uncompetitive. If those pokemon were as unhealthy and outright uncompetitive as recent posts have made them out to be, they would have been banned months ago.
