Imma be real: leading SV OU has been a trip lately. No matter what is acted on or purposefully left untouched, the majority of people are going to find themselves upset with something relevant to the metagame. You could ask a dozen top players (including people on the council) what the problem with the metagame is and likely come up with close to a dozen unique answers ranging from nothing at all to wanting a lot of bans. There’s the people in the middle, myself included, who just want one or two things to go now, too.
Something I’ve accepted since I took over last generation is you can’t please everyone and, if you try to do that, you’re just going to end up disappointed. So while I listen to everything people say, I do it mostly to inform myself and potentially even share with the council or fuel justifications, not necessarily to dictate every last decision as it’s impossible to make decisions that jive with every informed perspective - they have impossible overlap far more often than not when you take a decent sample after all.
Tera is a great example of this as plenty of good players still want it acted on, but the majority clearly doesn’t and it feels like the writing is on the wall when it comes to a full ban given what we have seen. Some people accept this premise and focus on the next steps to make the current situation more competitive/balanced while certain others act out of protest and spite, voting to not ban anything ever again until course changes, spamming the survey with extreme scores for every option, and haha reacting posts before they can even read them fully. It’s an interesting range and just taking it all in from afar is kinda reflective of actual society in a lot of ways. I’ve always found that interesting about how people handle stuff.
Similar to Tera as a whole, a lot of Pokemon prompt a scattered range of responses from players, too. A lot of guys want us to overhaul stuff and quickban various Pokemon, which is really extreme and wouldn’t even be possible as nothing has council support for a quickban. Others want us to leave the tier as is and view it ideal. The reality will always find itself in the middle, which often leads to suspect tests.
Finding 60% on anything right now is really a challenge and you can make of that what you will. Personally I think it’s just due to variable beliefs and understandings of what is broken in a tier with so many options, especially with the cap for possibilities blown up with the Tera dynamic kept in mind.
Stuff like Wellspring is arguably textbook broken due to lack of good switchins, but a lot of people mention metagame context with hazards and speed tiers. Stuff like Volcarona can put an immense strain on preservation in the battle and even having sufficient measures for it in the builder, but a lot of people mention the handful of stops and metagame evolutions that can stifle it or the fact that it can only do so much within any single set. You can extend this give-and-take logic to other Pokemon like Kyurem or Dragapult as well, which people have called for action on while others have vehemently opposed action on.
I think that like just about every other generation, more of a consensus will come with more time and development, especially as the tier grows closer to a settled state. With Tera and power creep on both ends, it definitely takes longer to reach that point this generation, evidenced by prior states like DLC1. However, we will get there. Just hoping people keep an open mind in the meantime rather than being defeatist or counterproductive. Don’t think the tier is terribly far from where it needs to be and I am having fun despite some limitations.
