The New Tera Type Might Shake Up Competitive Pokemon Yet Again

After breaking their heads trying to figure out why Raikou suddenly became a giraffe (there’s actually a good reason for that), another new trailer made that Pokemon trainers will also have to deal with another significant change in the game’s core design: the introduction of the nineteenth Tera Type in the Scarlet and Violet titles.

The latest trailer for The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero DLC focused on the second half of the update, The Indigo Disk, highlighting the return of all starters. While some were already anticipating this, they couldn’t expect the introduction of the brand-new Tera Type, which can spell trouble (or maybe salvation) for the competitive metagame. 

A New Type to Rule Them All

During the final portions of the trailer, we can see a new Terastallization type being shown in the game’s interface. The official site later confirmed it as the nineteenth Tera type in the game. While its icon relates it to Terapagos, the new Legendary to be introduced in the DLC’s second half, it’s Baxcalibur who uses it, implying that all Pokemon can have it.

And from what we could gather from the official announcements, it works slightly differently from other Tera types. All moves have the rainbow highlight, which implies that all of them are receiving the Same-Type Attack Bonus (STAB). This usually only happens for the type the Pokemon Terastalized into. If it’s really an omni-STAB Tera type, this will be extremely broken for competitive battles.

Its exact effects aren’t confirmed just yet, but we know for sure it has some unique interaction with move types. But for balancing purposes, we could expect something like a weaker STAB bonus than usual or a defensive drawback. STABs are the bread and butter of competitive Pokemon, regardless of that, so be ready for the new Tera type to be dominant after it’s available.

Related: All New Known DLC Pokemon for Pokemon Scarlet and Violet

The new type will be added alongside a few new moves also shown in the trailer, namely Upper Hand (flinches the enemy if they use a priority move, similar to Fake Out) and Psychic Noise (prevents the enemy from recovering HP). These moves are direct counters to popular competitive strategies too and could get really insane with a possibly omni-STAB Tera type.

Yeah, this is all too exciting and scary! But we’ll still have to wait a few months before this new type is actually out. The Indigo Disk doesn’t have a concrete release date yet, but the Teal Mask is scheduled for September.