Hi everybody, I didn't want to take part on the recent discussion about the metagame because yeah, you know, I'm
RETIRED!! But since
The Number Man (I hate you friend) quote me like that
without asking for my consent, I have no choice to get out from the shadows to precise things smh.
So yeah, while being retired I enjoy talking about AAA with friends especially TNM,
Atha and the small
Osake (while he's retired as well now and doesn't want to talk about AAA with me anymore
). I played a lot AAA early and mid gen (when Camomons was so bad) and honestly enjoyed it a lot at a point it becomes my favorite OM. Since then, while I stopped playing it, I followed the changes and the AAA games while playing sometimes friendlies. But enough talking about me and the past.
As TNM, I don't like current AAA at a point where watching AAA games becomes boring and I'm less and less interested in following it while it was my prefered meta.
As TNM explained well in its post, I think AAA has issues with both consistency (MU) and fun (fat teams meta and long games due to how hard it is to make progress sometimes).
Fat meta and long games
Well, nothing news here right? I don't remember exactly when the meta shifted to this state which is, to my point of view, not ideal but it's impossible to contest that, while there's some diversity in teams, fat dominates.
If we try to adress this, the question to answer will likely be: why?
This is my point so yours might differ and ofc one can disagree but let me explain.
Why people start playing fat teams? Is it because defensive stuff is better than offensive one so, the best style is to abuse from defensive things? Well, let's be clear, both offensive and defensive stuff are strong. Nevertheless, a thing above everthing is running the meta and favorise mainly fat styles: regecores. Regecores are a consistent way to prevent progress while trying to make some. Based on my experience, it's so hard to overwhelm a regecore with a less favorable MU because you will need to play almost perfectly, something that a human (and even a machine?) cannot do.
Regecores are practically everywhere and you can even find one Regenerator in offensive style. I honestly think that Regenerator is fine and essential for the meta
BUT this is not the case for Regecores which are more of an unhealthy presence in the meta leading to a fat (and quite boring) style.
The other reason to play fat teams is to deal with many offensive (and overpowered sometimes) threats. Why this? Well, if there's too many great threats to deal with
BUT the offensive threats are somehow inconsistent, the only style that offers enough space to support the pressure while trying to make progress is the fat style.
Consistency and MU related elements
To introduce this point and discuss it I love to start with an exemple, the fish
Barraskewda is a terrifying mon ngl. One of the fastest threat in the meta with super busted Water moves. What makes Barraskewda interesting compared to other Water mons like Inteleon is physical Water moves. Because Barraskewda hits physically, "usual" ways to deal with busted special Water (Regenvest mon or Blissey) are innoperative. But it's also hard sometimes to deal with it using "classic" physical defensive mons like DS Corvi/Mew due to busted Flip Turn chipping them too hard while preventing them to recover with the help of a partner threatening them.
So, why Barra isn't one of the greatest mon of AAA? Inconsistency. And we all know that, if Barra has all these tools making it powerful and threatening, it can be completely shutted down by a Water immunity. Water Absorb/Dry Skin being the absolute counter while Desolated Land can conduct to primal weather war and suffers sometimes from Weather Ball.
One of the only way to deal with Barraskewda consistantly is using the combination of high/mid Def stat + resist + Regen = Fini/Ferro mainly.
In practise there's altough more ways in Scarf Regen Def Mew, RH DS/Intimi, hazards, etc but that's not the point here.
Barra is thus often half insanely strong half shit. A mon too good in the right MU but null in the bad one. So now I can reach the conclusion: a fish fishing. Haha. Hmm hmm... forgive me. Fishing also goes in the other side. If you put a Water immunity without utility (ie: Water Absorb) but the opponent don't play any Water move, it's a useless ability which is, in general, a heavy burden.
Barraskewda is just an example of something deeply rooted in AAA. I will not pretend to have the solution to that because I even don't know if one exist but if the lastest point is adressed through the SAC, this point will have to be adressed as well. If it's positive for the meta to me, the removal of regecores is also detrimental in the sense that you will lack from space to defensively answer things. So yeah to reach a balanced state, SAC only isn't sufficient and we need to go forward banning overpressuring threats (especially those you can't check without hard defensive mons).
Now you can maybe better understand my point quoted by TNM.
Single Ability Clause (SAC): To me that's the starting point. When writing this, I saw
avyrie's post talking about Magic Guard (and honestly I talked about that with my AAA friends too while it was not discussed by TNM) as a potential unhealthy element for the metagame. I nevertheless think that banning MG atm isn't the play. SAC both ends the Regecore but also MG cores (less numerous than the later but which exist ngl) which are the two main elements involved in the issue of "making progress in AAA".
But yeah, SAC as the only tiering action will not improve the meta because, it will solve this issue I think but another one will emerge due to the lack of space to defensively answer things. The below ban will be needed.

Honestly the more I see it in games the more I find you have to be blind to think Koko is balanced. The fish being inconsistent, Koko is basically the fastest mon in AAA. But with the Pixi set, it's also one of the strongest mon in the meta. Because it pressures well usual DS/Intimi mons, you often forced to dedicate a Regen slot to check Koko. But Pixi Koko is certainly not the only Koko set and CM MG, CM Bounce or Physical MG are also around meaning that, you often dedicate 2 mon to properly try to answer Koko if you don't want to run a hard counter like Regen Exca or Nido. Koko put a huge pressure on defensive core but also in more offensive style due to how fast it is. This mon is just too restrictive and should go (with or without SAC tbh).

We all see how stupid this mon was in Blace meta benefiting from the fact that it scares away people from running Jira or Gene as check to things. If banning Blace acted as a nerf to Lele, is still think this mon is particularly borderline. So I don't know about now but in SAC meta this thing should go due to how "precious" your Regen slot will be meaning you can't that easily fit something for Lele. Koko being banned, Jira and Genesect are also less useful making Lele even more unhealthy.

If it hasn't this utility part in checking threats with it's Regenscarf set, Gene would have been banned since a loooong time and I will not explain why. Well, following this order in banning things, the utility of the Regenscarf set dropped a lot without Koko and Lele meaning Gene is more broken that anything now. And broken mons are banned ofc.
About
Magic Bounce, let's be clear. I don't think it is broken. I think it's an unhealthy element relying on MU to get a significant advantage preventing some fat teams to put hazards. It's an interesting point to say that, anyway, hazards are kinda nerfed in AAA due to how common MG is and Regecore being able to overcome the pressure exerting by hazards at a time. But now, let's see in SAC meta. 1 Regen and 1 MG per team at most. What does it mean? Hazards should be better. And if hazards are better, Magic Bounce too. And finally, if Magic Bounce starts to be more reliable, it will not be a good thing because it means that more games will suffer from this MU based element. With this simple reasoning, banning Magic Bounce is also something to do with SAC.
Moving forward
Finally offensive pressure will need to be nerfed to a reasonable point. Do you know what makes AAA so different from other metagames (some OMs include)? To me, one point is how polarised both defensive and offensive mons are. Offensive mons are too strong with ability like Adapta/TC/SF so the only way to support that is using too fat defensive mons with ability like DS/Intimi or Immunities. I will not dot it here because I'm too busy but, if you want to be convinced by that, you can check how many mons are able to get a OHKO (or OHKO roll) on Mew (without invest), a mon with a natural good bulk, with a neutral move (change its typing if needed). This can be done for OU and OU-based meta (AAA, STABmons and Camomons). OMs like Sketch doesn't count if typing is ignored (coverage and boost ignored) and Inhertiance has the same issues than AAA. What you will see is how strong AAA threats are meaning that, standard ways to deal with threats like synergy and checking early-mid terms is impossible. One can check Heatran with SpD LandoT in OU while the opposite is impossible in AAA due to the increased damage output from Dland set. You have no choice but to brings something closer to a counter, Regenvest, Regen resists, Immunity, etc. This point is hard to adress if you fear banning many things that could lead to the lose of the identity of AAA and honestly I can understand that.
But if you're not fearing banning things after SAC, you should take a look at too powerful abilities or abusers to open the teambuilder to more balance teams. Actually either you try HO/Offense teams or fat because they're the 2 only playstyles that work when offensive pressure is too much. HO/Offense because you kill before being killed and fat because, unlike balance, you have enough space (enough defensive mons) to support the pressure.
If you don't really like the state of the current meta, don't fear doing things and especially bans, as we say, later is better than never. You can't know if you don't try.
I will stop here because I'm busy and retired but I just wanted to clarify my point because TNM only quoted the tl;dr from our debate smh. Hope it helps a bit and good day everybody
