Like the annoying person I am, I must add my grain of salt on this topic
For or against a come back to 2AC?
Before anything else something must be clearly stated:
This is too early!
It's been not even 2 weeks since home release and you already want to completely change the metagame again? That's not serious. Posts supporting 2AC have been quite numerous since home-release although that's a complete different metagame that is certainly not yet mature! Before even looking at the option to come back or not to 2AC, perhaps it would be good to let to this metagame more time to develop. It means let the council take necessary actions against broken or unhealthy to an unreasonable degree elements
*.
Once the metagame gets a more defined shape, then perhaps it will be time to talk about it.
*Ofc I'm not of the side thinking something should be banned in last ressort ; this reasoning feels harmful to the metagame health. Hopefully when people get the opportunity to vote, so far, no suspects ended with a DNB in AAA yet. But let's leave these questions aside for the moment.
We heard a lot people complain during pre-home about how we lack specially defensive options but we just get 3, Goodra-Hisui, Meloetta, Muk-Alola and even stuff like Mew, Heatran, Slowking-Galar, Cresselia, Uxie, Landorus-Therian or Diancie. This reshuffles the deck when it comes to special defensive options even though I'm on the side special attackers were fine with the options we had in home meta especially after Ghosts removal.
However a good point have been raised:
most of them are reliable special walls if and only if you play them RegenVest. The issue being obviously to take your Regen slot. Because people feel constrained to use their Regenslot to this end, they feel oppressed in the builder. Multiple things in fact lead to this feeling:
- AAA is an
extremely violent metagame. The concept of check is often abused due to the increased power leading to transform 3HKO in 2HKO, 4HKO in 3HKO, etc. A Garchomp (without Regenerator or something ensuring long term recovery) is a very poor choice to deal with Desolate Land mons like Iron Moth, Heatran, Ceruledge, Cinderace or Typhlosion-Hisui because you need some huge invest just to avoid being 3HKO by a resisted Fire move. A Corviknight is no longer able to deal with Zarude, Roaring Moon, Slither Wing or Kingambit without Intimidate because they can all run a damage boosting ability. Basically your only options are to take something closer to a counter (RegenVest, Intimidate/Fluffy, immunity) if you want to deal defensively with something. This is not something new and an aspect that can be seen as positive or negative within the search of a balanced metagame. Is a metagame with nuclear defensive and offensive options is balanced or is that something reached when things are less polarized? Vast question that can that could change the very fundations of AAA. But at the end of day, it's also about what people want? Do they search well balanced metagame and competitivity like OU or perhaps they want to trade a part of that to more fun? As a (retired hehe) competitive player, I walked the path of competitiveness and balance because that's where I find "my fun". This is subjective.
I could live in a metagame without damages boosting abilities (MG is included there) because it would feel less oppressive and MU reliant although less "diversified". In such a meta perhaps SAC is perfectly fine because the pressure to support isn't that big.
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Power creep. This takes into account not only the new quite dumb mons but also the healing moves pp nerf, the removing of some great defensive options and even the simple loss of recovery on mon like Mew. We should however mention that, the nerf of healing moves doesn't really play a role. Who's ever found themselves in a situation where they've used up all their healing pp? In my experience, it happened so rarely to me and considering the typical duration of a game, it seems my case is not alone. The power creep then mainly comes from the new busted abilities we got as well as the introduction of always more broken stuff. Hopefully they got banned because free dumb things like Ice Scales or Fur Coat to "balance" things is not realistic even if the idea has some merits. The issue will always be bulky setup being dumb and uncompetitive.
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SAC. Well of course if you're looking for defensive options, SAC is not the way lol. Things were violent last gen too but you had this magic option called Regecore to distribute offensive pressure. At this stage, Regecore are a positive addition to the metagame. The issue about Regecore stated last generation doesn't originate from this defensive enabling possibilities. It's an issue of Regecore themsleves stemming from their ability to go back and forth nullifying progress easily. It's way easier to nullify progress with Regecore than making some against them because you need to play some almost perfect sequences sometimes (win an unreasonable number of 50/50 in a row) while not losing at preview. At this point, the line between getting every predicts right against a great opponent being skill or mere luck is unclear.
Regecore were also known to often push the game at an annoying point especially when it came to some balanced/fat vs balanced/fat MU making AAA boring, feeling shared by some people at the end of the 8th gen.
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Perhaps, our playstyle isn't suited to the true nature of the current metagame. If you look at official metagames and especially OU, it should be clear that this generation is completely different from the previous ones. This generation is much more offensive and oriented towards Offense/BO rather than balanced or fat. The dynamic is completely different and people adapted. If the metagame doesn't allow to go for bulkier playstyles with a defensive approach, then you should not try to make it work and accept the fact you should play more offensive playstyles.
This feeling of "lack of defensive options" is also built by
a reject of the current state of the metagame and a will to try to come back to a more balanced/fat state-like AAA was previously.
I don't claim to know everything about the metagame and perhaps, even myself, I know nothing about it. But we should definitely consider our way to play this AAA metagame as an issue and not the metagame itself.
This being said, I would like to come back to a point that I would like to discuss: the
pre-home metagame was fun and competitive to me. Again, this is subjective and I heard people complain to this or that so I know my feeling isn't necessarily representative. However, from my point of view as a player and observer, the pre-home AAA metagame seemed well suited for the competition with interesting and dynamic games.
However, a point has been raised by Isaiah above (but realistically any AAA player know about it), teambuilding in AAA has been quite centralized around the top tier, Corviknight, Garchomp, Iron Moth and Scream Tail. However, it should be noted that AAA is not the only metagame in that case. OU, the usual reference in terms of balance, is also quite centralized with greater usage of the top with respect to last gens. That's just what happens when we have some mons that stand above others by a fair margin with an overall lack of consistent options.
Something else I also noticed is the fact some seem to play a different metagame. Yes, CorvChompMothScream are top tier but they're far from being our only options. Perhaps some people are just lazy to try new things and innovate leading to redundant structures?
This has been very clear when l took a look at the last VRs. The AAA council seems to consider the metagame as about fifteen mon viable and many other elements below of somehow much lower viability. On the other side, stats from OMPL or ladder clearly show a broader metagame with many B-ranked mons (Rotom-Wash, Glimmora, Tinkaton, Ceruledge, Hatterene, etc) with usage probably worth A-rank. Therefore, this picture of "CorvChompMothScream" everywhere might have been a bit outdated or, at least, didn't take into account most recent metagame developments.
That's why, even though yeah, of course, you will always find the top tier (in any tier realistically) in your team because they just provide a lot, there was still enough freedom to build effective, interesting and innovating teams.
Now what's about the current metagame? As I said before, we first need more time to develop and explore it before anything else. That being said, are we going to lack defensive counterplay ending up to redundant structures again with limited teambuilder?
It's possible yeah but at this time we don't know. Or again, maybe we're wrong to stick to this defensive approach to deal with things and we should go for a more offensive approach.
About coming back to the 2AC (regecore + some MG core), I am against for now. As someone who played quite a lot SS AAA, sure it wasn't horrible and I managed to enjoy the metagame especially because the teambuilder was quite broad. However, I definitely enjoyed less playing due to regecore spam. I'd like to show some stats between SS AAA and SV AAA, a metagame with 2AC and one with SAC.
Statistical parameters | SS AAA | SV AAA |
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Average number of turns | 71,31 | 44,57 |
Standard deviation | 35,64 | 17,75 |
I made these stats by using 47 competitive games from SS (OMPL X + WCuP V) and 22 games from SV (OMPL XI + money tour final and semi + ssnl final and semi). The result is quite clear,
SV AAA games are much shorter (about 26 turns) than SS AAA games. Of course different parameters may play a role but
the presence of Regecore and some MG core in SS will likely be the main element leading to this big difference.
Looking at the standard deviation, SS AAA also seems to fluctuate much more than SV AAA. Either you go for a 30 turns game either you go for a 100 turns game lol. We can see that in several ways. Maybe it's an indicator MU played a big role in SS AAA, either you get it and you manage to break or not break fast either the game will last long. Perhaps it shows SS AAA was more diversified with different archetypes leading to really different outcomes in terms of duration while SV is more consistent.
But anw, from a practical point of view yeah, I rather play about 45 turns than 71 in a quite consistent metagame than a fluctuating one. I'm worried about the nefast aspect Regecores can bring again in the metagame with people spamming RegenVest Goodra-H/Melo/Muk-A/whatever + Garchomp/Ting-Lu/Mew/Dondozo/Slither/LandoT/whatever which is realistically just another type of disease.
If any action should be taken to slow down/come back to a more balanced approach, I will be more open to something else than 2AC. They're 2 options I'm thinking about:
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Suspect test back Poison Heal. The pros and cons are quite obvious. On one hand you get more defensive options but on the other you open the field to some dumb bulky setup (hi Scream Tail, Cresselia, Mew, Diancie, etc). Bulky setup might be in control if the metagame is violent enough to not let those bulky setup sweeper manage to setup easily or win the game by themselves. SAC and Scald removal helps
as well as banning Calm Mind haha just kidding.
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Nerf the power level in AAA. It's about banning several abilities like SoR/BoR, Hadron Engine, Sheer Force and perhaps MG (allows to spam crazy moves for free with hazards, RH or any residual damage immunity), Adapatability or Tough Claws. Those abilities are the biggest issue due to their splashability and the amount of power they provide basically forcing nuclear defensive options like RegenVest, Intimidate Corv or immunities.
The cost is of course the ban of many abilities, something AAA is trying to avoid usually. Target can be abusers but again, what's the best between getting rid of many mons to save abilities or the opposite?
To conclude this post, I don't think coming back to 2AC is something good for the metagame health. Perhaps it allows more diversity because Regen is such an amazing ability enabling so many things to suddently become viable but, at the end of day, we will mainly stick to the same Regenerators we currently have but stacking 2 instead of chosing 1 lol. The only merit this option has is to alleviate some pressure in the builder but the cost is of course a slower metagame with more hazards spam (more effective in long games), double regen and perhaps double MG to aim for long term gameplans. The MU will also likely play a bigger role exacerbating bad MU.
But again, before anything else, we should let (much) more time to the metagame to develop, get rid of the broken/too unhealthy elements, and see where we come in. Basically, this discussion should at least wait for the end of the OMPL XI.
However, I greatly encourage people to
host a Poison Heal free, 2AC or power creep nerf tounament to see in practise what could look like those metagames (like the Change-Happy tour last gen but we don't waste time and rounds freeing broken like Weavile or Blacephalon last gen lol. The idea will be to get at least 2-3 rounds of observation to perhaps see something.
Thanks for reading and have a good day you all