Genuinely? I don't understand the "there are too many breakers to realistically prep for" side of things. Isn't that just any tier? I'd love to be pointed to one where every viable wallbreaker (or just threat in general, I suppose) has solid counterplay that you can put on every team, every time. If that exists, then maybe we should use that as our model for balancing AAA. I complain about stuff being broken in the OM Discord all the time LOL, but I don't actually want to go around banning everything--usually, most of these things can be handled or played around with a reasonable team. Otherwise, sometimes you'll run into stuff you can't beat--that's just inevitable, and as someone whose teambuilding method involves a lot of brute forcing unideal teams on the ladder and making tweaks afterwards, I experience this myself very often. It doesn't necessarily mean the metagame isn't competitive or relatively balanced.
I guess I have to answer considering you're explicitely quoting a line (see my
suspect test's post) I also used. So what do I (not Heracross2.0) mean by "there are still too many offensive threats to deal with"?
First, yeah, obviously, in every metagames, you can't realistically prep for everything. That's just the game we're playing with these many options. The point is not there.
It's about being able to understand why Iron Bundle was broken but, let's say, Glaceon, is not. Both lack switch-ins after all and it's extremely hard to take them into account while building without ending up playing suboptimal things that you weren't going to use otherwise.
It's a matter of cost. Put Iron Bundle on a team provided speed control, weather control and fast pivot in additon to its "first role", breaker. It was way more easier to make Iron Bundle work thanks to its insane speed and the cost was extremely low because it managed to fullfil other roles to help its partners. We definitely can't say the same about Glaceon. Its role is only breaking and it's particularly hard to enter due to hazards, lack of defensive utility (more a defensive burden than anything else) and its bad speed.
So if you want to abuse Glaceon's raw power capable to break many common defensive cores, you have to pay a price. That's what makes Glaceon perfectly fine even though, its breaking abilities are crazy with regards to commonly used defensive cores.
The same aplies for mon like Lucario to another degree. Lucario is an exteremely good breaker but provides almost no defensive utility and its mid speed means many things are able to revenge kill it or prevent it to come. Against Bulky Offense teams or more offensive style, Lucario will sometimes be a burden due to these negative aspects whereas it will destroy many common defensive cores played by balanced, fat and stall teams. Lucario is the kind of mon "unbalanced" in the sense that its effectiveness depends on the opponent teamstyle. There's again a non-negligble price to pay to use it and what's make it balanced to me (not mentionning you also have to make the right play for Lucario to break). However I understand arguments explaining this mon could be too much and close to the broken territory even though they come from fat player, playstyle that tends to be weak to Lucario ofc.
Now when we talk about Gengar and Zoroark-Hisui, things are not that clear anymore. Those mons are extremely effective at breaking common defensive cores but they're also quite fast meaning offensive counterplay is also limited. The price to pay is their extremely bad bulk (even though both have some defensive utility thanks to Fighting immunity for instance). Now, does the interest exceed the cost or the opposite? Debatable.
A positive answer to this question will not make these 2 brokens anyway. But it's a criterion that, combined to other such as
restrictiveness in the teambuilder for instance, can lead to think these mons are too much and should go.
Iron Moth is another beast because its offers defensive utility. This can be seen as a positive value for the metagame but a negative value for the
healthyness of the mon itself with a more unbalanced ability/cost ratio.
Not mentionning Dragonite because it may have been banned in the meantime (edit: it has been).
But overall, I don't think they're many people who think these mons are perfectly fine and why support for a serious discussion or suspect test about them will maybe rise in the future. The conclusion is thus, by "there are still too many threats to realistically prep for", I mean: "there are still
too many restrictive threats
with low cost to realistically prep for". You can take them into account but they require really specific options defensively that are big restrictions and that can easily lead to create other weaknesses. Don't get me wrong, even though I do see some elements as problematic, I believe the metagame is in a quite enjoyable and competitive state right now; especially with Dragonite's ban freeing more offensive counterplay!
One of the concerns raised during the FurScales suspect test was that whether or not you think Fur Coat and Ice Scales are broken, removing them wouldn't just handle bulky setup--the resulting metagame would definitely be strapped for defensive counterplay to things (in particular, my gripe is with special attackers, but I won't write that essay here). I don't think there's much denying how true this is, and
you can look at Heracross's post as an example lmao.
Personally, I wouldn't mind having double Regenerator (and other abilities) and I was obviously in the camp that was fine with 2AC, but our surveys so far have generally shown that people tend to be against returning to 2 Ability Clause, so that'll probably be a tough sell.
But the real question is, to what extent should we do something about it? Like yeah sure, Iron Moth is a nuisance, but how many teams are you really building without at least considering Garchomp, or some combination of Fire/Electric resists in general? If we ban Iron Moth, will those offensive/defensive elements suddenly stop seeing use? I would hope not. Talonflame is annoying, but does that really matter when almost 30% of Corviknight (which has 70% usage btw) are Well-Baked Body? Same with Ceruledge--not to mention that stuff like Dondozo, Garchomp, etc. handles it just fine. And then you have Pokemon like Lucario, which naturally has the STAB moves and coverage to blow up just about anything--but I don't think anyone is seriously lobbying for a Lucario ban.
Another point you raised in your post in that, the metagame would currently be a bad (or not great) state due to lack of defensive counterplay? Backed up by Heracross's 2.0's post saying they're too many breakers to deal with and this is not good.
I think this opinion has a great chance of being biased due to an overly defensive approach of teambuilding ngl. Ofc, if you're trying to cover the whole metagame, you will reach the conclusion that you're lacking defensive options (even though it's impossible to cover everything anw). MU (match-up) is a part of the game we're playing but obviously, if you're playing team based on Garganacl + Corvknight + Scream Tail + defensive Garchomp/Ting-Lu, you should not be surprised to be somehow weak to Lucario. The same goes for people running Bulky Offense teams thinking Fluffy Corviknight will be enough to deal with Dragonite.
Building is not about dealing with everything (or as many things as we can) defensively. It's about managing the MU you will encounter and choose things against you will have more or less difficulties to manage. If something is breaking your defensive core but you want to keep a dynamic playstyle for the team to work and not relying to another defensive mon, then you should think to possibilies to play around with offensive counterplay for instance.
It can take the form of Speed EVs on AV Roaring Moon to potentially kill Lucario with EQ before being killed. If you have trouble dealing with MGLO BU Talonflame defensively, then maybe a classic WBB Corviknight is sufficient as long as you bring a Scarfer like Rotom-W, Sandy Shocks, Hydreigon, etc? Your core explodes to boosted 3 atk + CM LO Pixi Scream Tail? Then you should at least prevent it to sweep with a MGLO Talonflame being able to win the 1v1 against a Scream Tail at +1 or a Band SoR Meowscarada killing with small chips.
So yes, they're
many (hopefully not too many) things to take into account in the builder that are quite restrictive de facto (but that's for any metagame really) but hopefully we also have sufficient defensive counterplay paired with offensive one. If something starts to be too restrictive or becomes broken then we know what to do to, open the way to a ban.
So yeah, there's my take I suppose: I'd rather add things to the tier (such as 2AC or Ice Scales, for example) than continue down this slope of banning things in bursts of activity.
E: I just realized that this might seem like an April Fool's post, but it's a serious take LOL, this is real.
It would have been funnier if it was a joke lol.
This feeling about the current state of the metagame being "strapped for defensive counterplay" doesn't reflect my opinion. I think we finally reached a quite enjoyable, balanced and competitive metagame (to me at least) where we obviously have defining meta threats but also room for enough creativity. Where this feeling comes from? The metagame I see through ladder and replays of tournament doesn't reflect a lack of defensive options tbh; especially considering many people are running fat teams with success. Now,
hopefully we have mon like Lucario, Gardevoir, etc with limited defensive counterplay able to punish fat teams making them "balanced". Otherwise we're all going to play fat teams and yeah the metagame will propably become more annoying and less popular.
The return of 2AC will be a disaster again for the fun. I seriously don't want to deal with Regecore like Garchomp + Scream Tail, or Ting-Lu + Tinkaton or Dondozo + Roaring Moon. We managed to reach a pretty satisfying state in terms of fun with overall not too long and quite dynamics games, 2AC will remove that completely with the possibility to nullify progress so easily thanks to Regecore. And again, it's a fiction to think we lack defensive counterplay especially when we see the success of fat teams. You should however accept the impossibility to cover everything defensively and the dependence on the MU.
The AAA community is also mostly opposed to 2AC as shown during the survey.
Ice Scales has been banned through a suspect test due to how stupid this ability could be, especially when paired to setup. Things have changed since then with probably less setup abusers (although we will find new ones dw) but also less (or less broken at least) special threats that could have justified to let such unbalanced ability in the metagame. Overall, my take is that free Ice Scales will be a clear negative addition to the metagame.
TL;DR: There are indeed many threats but overall there are enough options to cover most of them decently with both defensive and offensive counterplay. Exceptions being maybe Gengar, H-Zoro, Iron Moth and
Dragonite that could end up being too much but otherwise things look pretty fine. We're not lacking defensive options. 2AC or Ice Scales no thanks really it will definitely lead to a worst metagame.
