Terastallization is easily the most polarizing and controversial topic in the history of competitive Pokemon. It’s important that we get this right.
For me personally, it’s been pretty humbling being in charge of the format with so much on the line, but it’s also a big responsibility that I take really seriously. Given that, I think I owe the community my thoughts and full transparency on the process, Tera itself, and recent developments.
Tera is unique and has evoked a wide array of responses. You have talented and long-tenured players on both extremes saying the game is ruined by the mere presence of Tera and that the game would be ruined by the removal of Tera. As a councilmen and leader, you have to throw all of your people-pleasing instincts out the window and just find out what’s best for your metagame. I think our approach in finding that has gotten better over the last couple of generations (obviously always room for improvement though).
Historically council decisions have been determined internally with the council deciding on early quickbans and the subjects of suspects without much external consultation. This isn’t a shot at 10+ years of councils, including the first 3-4 years I was a councilmen, but just how Smogon was. Since I took over and TDK came up with surveys during the middle of last generation, we have transitioned to a data-driven approach fueled by our playerbase with surveys. We also have tried to be as transparent and communicative with any parts of the process that have to be handled quickly or internally during this time as well. It certainly hasn’t been perfect and as recently as the Volcarona ban, there have been controversies and learning experiences galore, but we are trying to make this a tier by the players and for the players.
And to me, it seems like many players want to keep Tera around. In particular, the vast majority of posts in the PR thread indicate a desire to keep it around while a smaller, but still clear, majority of the points made in OU discussion thread reflect the same. Of course, there are still a lot of reasons to keep Tera discussions going such as its survey response and the ardent expressions of anti-Tera sentiment in the other posts. In all honesty, you can justify a suspect on Tera now in various formats right now and it is entirely on the table. However, you can also justify pushing the envelope a bit longer be it in a matter of weeks or looking again after DLC and then tackling Kingambit first with a suspect. The council has been discussing these options and will continue to. I do not expect a verdict today or tomorrow, but likely next week as we ramp up in the coming days.
Personally I think Tera is pretty complicated. It is a whole mechanic, so looking at it in the same exact way as a Pokemon is tough and that is our normal approach for suspects, so we have to be careful here. With this in mind, over time you can draw conclusions about how it impacts the balancing of our metagame and the competitiveness/skillfulness of the format through the lens of the Pokemon throughout the format. Obviously there is the whole debate of aggressively tiering Pokemon impacted by Tera (i.e: what we have done) vs touching Tera, and I do not think it is a super linear argument as there is so much makeup behind both, but in going to a suspect, we would essentially give the community a chance to determine if the current approach is optimal or of the fundamentals need to be altered to maximize this generation's potential.
I think that Tera itself offers a lot of skillful interactions to our metagame. For starters, it rewards a lot of playing experience/knowledge as to what does what as there are so many nuisances to Tera. In addition, sequencing and the risk-reward to Tera'ing at a certain point, using a Tera offensively or defensively, etc. offers great strategic merit. There is no denying that there are more decisions made by players throughout games with Tera than without. However, it is also true that not every single decision is a balanced one and not every inference can be viewed equally as some have certain confidence and intuition behind them while others a bit less so. It's hard not to look at it a bit through the scope of how many Pokemon have been impacted by Tera to the point that they have been deemed banworthy, which you can likely say applies to Regieleki, Espathra, Volcarona, and Annihilape. It is not a perfect or really relevant (to the current metagame) to largely go off of things already banned though -- if anything, this just opens up discussion on Tera Blast, which caused 3 of those things to be broken arguably. I think all things considered: if we are looking for the most balanced metagame that results in fewer bans and aligns with the norms of prior generations, then Tera may not have as much of a place. However, if we are looking for the most skillful and completitive metagame with layers of strategy that still has potential for balancing, then Tera very much has a place. While my historic tiering insight makes me feel the former is important and we should do something on Tera, it seems like a lot of the community embraces Tera and aligns more with the latter. I take no issue with that myself.
A lot is up in the air and I hope to update people more formally next week, but the council is discussing a lot internally, including the contents/vibe of this thread, and I will do my best to keep you updated. Formal testing on Tera still remains an option, but so does pivoting to something else like a Kingambit test and potentially looking into this down the road.
