What's the meta like in this game?

[Salem Graves]

Just bought this game and am looking forward to it. I'm curious what the meta is like, when I reach the "end game", is everyone going to be using the same tems because they're just the "best"? Or is it similar to Pokemon in that many varieties of teams can be viable?

[Cupcake]

The vast majority of temtem are usable in pvp, especially if you're just laddering you can basically use anything you want and have some success. Though obviously with fiercer competition, naturally some tems will be seen more than others. Even though their power levels aren't far off, every little advantage can make a difference at a high level of play.

https://www.tortenites-garden.com/tierlist/

This is a pretty good tierlist to go off of, but keep in mind it hasn't yet been updated since the recent 7.02 patch. (yowlar and kinu, both S tiers received some changes/nerfs.) Speaking of, that's another thing to keep in mind is that the devs actively balance the game around player feedback and likely internal data and such. They do frequently buff struggling temtem through base stats and movesets changes. For example gazuma recently got tornado added to it's moveset, so its a lot more viable now than the tierlist's outdated C rank suggests. One last thing is that a lot of the unviable temtem are just things like koish and chromeon which can have any type as a dual type, so only a handful of their variations end up viable for competitive.

[Salem Graves]

Originally posted by Drizzle:

The vast majority of temtem are usable in pvp, especially if you're just laddering you can basically use anything you want and have some success. Though obviously with fiercer competition, naturally some tems will be seen more than others. Even though their power levels aren't far off, every little advantage can make a difference at a high level of play.

https://www.tortenites-garden.com/tierlist/

This is a pretty good tierlist to go off of, but keep in mind it hasn't yet been updated since the recent 7.02 patch. (yowlar and kinu, both S tiers received some changes/nerfs.) Speaking of, that's another thing to keep in mind is that the devs actively balance the game around player feedback and likely internal data and such. They do frequently buff struggling temtem through base stats and movesets changes. For example gazuma recently got tornado added to it's moveset, so its a lot more viable now than the tierlist's outdated C rank suggests. One last thing is that a lot of the unviable temtem are just things like koish and chromeon which can have any type as a dual type, so only a handful of their variations end up viable for competitive.

That's encouraging, thanks for the answer!

[MrGowdy]

2 key issues to consider:

1) How much balance/nerfing do you think they'll manage to do in a game that requires potentially 100's if not 1000's of hours of grinding to catch and breed a creature? Imagine if some player(s) invested all this time into a specific really good unit they like, and then in comes the nerf hammer and makes that creature useless or nearly useless? People would be pissed and quit.

2) While most units are viable in most situations, the "rock-paper-scissor" design makes battles more about proper elemental matching. That said, some units have more favorable elements and attacks.

[Toastpiratewilly]

Originally posted by MrGowdy:

2 key issues to consider:

1) How much balance/nerfing do you think they'll manage to do in a game that requires potentially 100's if not 1000's of hours of grinding to catch and breed a creature? Imagine if some player(s) invested all this time into a specific really good unit they like, and then in comes the nerf hammer and makes that creature useless or nearly useless? People would be pissed and quit.

2) While most units are viable in most situations, the "rock-paper-scissor" design makes battles more about proper elemental matching. That said, some units have more favorable elements and attacks.

Which is why you bring more than 1 temtem to a fight lol. Build a team to work with and synergize with eachother.

[Wolfguarde]

Originally posted by MrGowdy:

1) How much balance/nerfing do you think they'll manage to do in a game that requires potentially 100's if not 1000's of hours of grinding to catch and breed a creature? Imagine if some player(s) invested all this time into a specific really good unit they like, and then in comes the nerf hammer and makes that creature useless or nearly useless? People would be pissed and quit.

There is literally nothing in the game at the moment that requires thousands of hours of grinding to get. Unless you're aiming for a perfect 5% luma, in which case you're taking the optional hard path to acquire something with no functional game value. At all.

I've grinded 5% creatures to breed before. It takes maybe a few days to get breed stock without radars. it is nowhere near as time-consuming as you're making it out to be. Bad breeding gender RNG can extend the grind time for breed stock a bit, but if you're taking more than a week to breed a perfect you're doing something wrong.