alright so OMPL is over I made a post
here with the teams I used and some explanations about them, will post a few more that I like but didn't use although they aren't all finished and give my thoughts on the meta
some of them were made by/with
cumps who I forgot to shoutout on my post LOL I'm really bad, I'm sorry that you couldn't play more and that I often went with my own ideas despite the many cool teams you made and I couldn't help you the way I would've liked, I hope you still enjoyed the tournament come back next year and prove your strength
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- MG Tran + AV Samurott-H made by cumps, this team is surprisingly cool to use in everything not named Quaquaval, Heatran can delete the RegenVests for Kilo and CM Boom Wish Psyshock Scream Tail is a really good cleaner (I think I owned
LordBox 4 or 5 times with it lol) since Scream Tail usually forces passive plays / is hard to 2HKO without being killed by Boomburst and you can setup easily when the opposite team is weakened, really cool mon that I never brought tho bc hoodra is still a pain
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- this is an alternate version of Tinted Ace + TSpikes that is still very weak into Pao but eh anf you also to Inteleon but who uses that, Garg probably has some potential but being so hard walled by Quaqua really sucks and Decidueye is an awful mon that you should never use and you would prob not use it on the ladder and outplay the ladder if they have a quaquaval (easy) but I dislike having such a 0-100 MU if pichus had brought Quaqua so Deci was needed anyway I didn't bring it
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- this is what I would've brought in finals if I was confident enough but I'm not, it's actually super cool and that's when I built it that I knew I still liked AAA despite being bored of the meta for the last 5 weeks because it's fire and not that bad I smashed some good players with it. What's really cool is that you can do a ton of edits depending of what you want (and there's probably an optimized version that I didn't make cuz I didnn't bring it but there are a lot of options over everyone) with 2 fire techs that I wish I brought : Red Card Heatran or in fact Red Card anything which is like Quick Claw Ursaluna but actually good aka they hit you and a random mon is sent and if you hit Magma Storm they die. It is very random and
Career Ended called me a psycho for that and it's right but it's actually very funny (maybe Fire Blast would be better for accuracy here though) and probably a tech that could have other uses. Other tech is Proto Lucario with the main idea being that the team sounds and is physical spam and at some point they're gonna sac their special wall if you play well and then luc comes and cleans. It's really fire and surprises a lot because you expect to outspeed Luc easily with something that will live ESpeed or something but nah now you're slower :3
I almost brought Band Weavile to the finals which would've destroyed pichus team (why do you lose to pao so hard :pain:) OR SD Sash Stench Beat Up Counter Weavile which would've been really good too but I respected too much
pichus to bring that, maybe I shouldn't have.. I also tried Lilligant-Hisui with SoR (and I discovered it had an analysis in the calc with this set but seriously who ever used that?), it's bad but I tried to pair it with Kingambit to take advantage of Corviknight not having both Body Press and Brave Bird which is another build path I wanted to exploit but never was able to, and also Lilligant is just walled by Scream Tail I hate this mon. RegenVest Dondozo, SFLO Hydreigon with Crunch, Specs Beads of Ruin Knock Off Hoopa, shit with Guards Dog or w/e is the ability to prevent Goodra DTail (Volcarona??), and the famous demon shocks that no one used despite being super good were all in my range of ideas but well you can't build everything and still try to win, even though I tried my best to bring funny/interesting techs and picks when I could (not W1, not really W5 and W7 even if SD Lefto Triage Luna or Deci are somewhat niche picks) because that's what makes the game interesting to me and what I enjoy in tournaments, I spoke of it with Isaiah when I was wondering if I could bring the Proto Luc team and he told me "boring is what wins" yeah I know but idk how ppl have fun bringing boring teams LOL
I always tried to innovate and well it's nothing new but I think people in OMs always tend to either stay with their basics and what they know and almost never cross the line of creativity or either cross it too much (hey
Isaiah) and maybe forget a bit that we're still trying to have good teams LOL (I do know that I just can't agree with you when you say "well if you can't win this MU it's life you'll have 9 others when you can play" and I hate having teams that can just straight lose and I can't do anything, only did this W7 to meme
Atha cuz he's bad), it's also something that I saw in NFE which
Shing mentionned in their predicts and it's completely true that NFE builders lacked a lot of creativity and that's why I admire
ojr bc he always had fire techs that were doing work and he's at a level I haven't reach yet but that's what makes Pokemon fun and interesting to me anyway not a big deal but I appreciated that we had many cool teams in AAA this OMPL (even if many others weren't), shoutouts to
Career Ended and
The Number Man for trying too (although Scarf WA Ceruledge is NOT a set bro) and
LordBox Tranquility for being able to incorporate cool ideas inside your builds despite being relatively new and classic at the beginning :3
About the metagame itself well it's no surprise that many us didn't enjoy it much, at least AAA starters that are playing the tier for a long tiem (atha, TNM, Ivar even if more recently, and myself) and it was certainly a factor in atha's and ivar's records that do not reflect their skill, I talked of this a lot with atha and Siamato alongside the tournament and I think the tier has several problems, issue is that I do not see how we could solve them easily and do not think it's feasible easily so I'm also writing this to share my feelings and see what are other people thoughts and ideas. I will not do any proposal in this post (this is the job of
Siamato) bc I'm bad at it but I'll just expose some issues I had during the tournament.
Some mons are too restrictive 
On top of that list there's obviously Chien-Pao which is the main reason of Corviknight so high stats. My team in finals didn't have it and I had to pack Pex + Fluffy Zapdos + Bulky Quaquaval to have a relatively OK MU against it and I still lost to it (with bad plays, but still). pichus team didn't have Corviknight and unless she had a secret tech, Pao was very esaily beating her team with good positioning. Chien-Pao is wayyyy too restrictive, it also was pre-home (and my prep against shiloh was literally they'll forgot Pao and lose to it, it worked cuz no intim corv) and even though Zamazenta-C (mainly) helped a bit to build non-corv structures, you're almost forced to have a Corviknight in your team and, if not, you need to use Intimidate + Fluffy on two different mons to have a chance against physical breakers. Obviously it never appears as broken because it'll struggle against Corv (even though in many games Pao does beat Corv because of good positioning / Icicle Crash flinches, yes
Atha im talking of you) but it is too restrictive and it needs to go.
(an argument could be made about Weavile replacing Pao if it's banned. I think Weavile is less threatening than Pao, but it could be true and I don't know. Maybe.)
Zamazenta-Crowned is in a similar situation even if less restrictive and less broken overall, but it is also a real pain to deal with it with absurd bulk and coverage options for almost everything you need, and yeah you can use Fluffy Landorus with Earth Power and stuff like that to deal with it but I often made teams and was like, well I lose to Zama / lose if X is a bit chipped which is realistically happening in a long game (and Zama against HO is a really good MU anyway) and had to delete the team. If Pao goes it won't be anymore a Pao check and it will just be a pain in the building imo, I think it's less likely to be suspect/banned that Pao but it still feels very annoying.
However, even if Pao gets banned it won't change Intim Corv's superiority in the tier and that's why
Too many mons are 'needed' in a team :
They're obviously not 100% needed, but if you need a physical check, you'll put Corv, if you need a special check, you'll put goodra, if you need anti setup/anti fish, you'll put Scream Tail. And they don't have good replacements, Goodra-H is by far the better RegenVester and the others only fit in very specific teams, and Cresselia is still generally worse than Scream Tail. And I hate having so little options in my teams to check things. Maybe I'm a bad builder and I tried to build teams without those, I brought AV Diancie, AV Muk, Blissey, 2 teams without Corv, and 4 teams without Scream Tail even though I hate Scream Tail I felt forced to bring it 4 times. I do not have a magic solution for that, but this is what makes AAA boring and annoying to build, it kinda feels like Ubers in 8G (I think it was Ubers?) when you had Yveltal/Eternatus/NDM/Zacian in every team and then 2 slots to fullfill with what you wanted. Having such proeminent mons, and not only one but many forced you to play either weird team structures to say "look I'm not using Intim Corv" (Isaiah's post just above is almost a caricature of that, teams may be interesting but saying "I don't want to use Intim Corviknight, I'll use Scream Tail Intimidate instead" is not how I see building in AAA kek) or always use 2/3/4 mons in 80% of your teams and it's just annoying. Obviously you could not change anything, it isn't broken or unplayable at all but I dislike it and will probably get bored if I don't find a way to not have to use always the same mons/cores or lose to 5-10 threats that I can't handle with other structures (losing to any special attacker when not using a RegenVest etc).
It leads me to my last point that is
I don't find the meta competitive
I expressed this in the last survey with the worst grades I ever gave on a survey with 4 and 4 to both fun and competitivity iirc and I do know "casual" AAA players were mostly happy and I respect that, but I genuiely think that AAA as a top level is not really competitive because you rely a lot and in my opinion too much on the match-up and I never had that feeling before, and I really feel it since Home is out, that you're either playing what everyone plays and that's boring or, if you try to change your habits, you'll always have threats that you just can't handle or will have a terrible MU into with little to 0 counterplay to it (example: the team I made for MZ completely loses to Inteleon. There's nothing you can do. And it's a really good team outside of that with a lot of great MUs. But you can't improve it to not make it lose to Inteleon, and probably other threats but Inteleon is the most blatant one) and it's rly different from the feeling I had in 8G where I felt you had more room to outplay / have tools in bad MUs. Maybe I became better and realised that, or the meta is really not enjoyable, I don't know. But many mons can be completely walled in some MUs and you can't do anything about that and that is, to me, the mark of a bad mon ; that is why good players usually don't use Belly Drum Fish and stuff like that because they know it is not reliable and unless you're specifically trying to catch your opponent's habit or have a team that knows this weakness and has ways to pressure Scream Tail on something, you don't use that. And I feel like there are too many mons/structures that can just lose if you roll the wrong MU with wayyyy less tools to make progress than in 8G, because it's normal to have good and bad MUs but I felt like it reached a point where it is not "bad" MUs but just unwinnable [if the opponent plays well, which fortunately doesn't happen often]
Now what ? I don't know. Minor changes like Pao ban won't change all of that, and the only thing that was discussed so far is the 2AC. This is probably a change of that extent (not necessarily being AC related) that could make the tier better imo but which one (or multiple ones), I don't know lol and I'm not confident in taking complicated paths (like banning 2-5 Abilities, 10 mons, etc) for an unexpected future due to some bad player rants, but if anyone has ideas..
About 2AC specifically, I honestly don't know. I feel like everyone came to have strong opinions about it, "it'll save the tier" or "it'll kill it" with some whimsical expectations of what the tier would look like. I don't have a strong opinion, and I think the solution of putting a slot in the incoming AAAPL is a good middleground, although it's very weird to build and play in a meta that doesn't exist. We'll see ! Unsure yet if I'll play or manage or watch atha getting destroyed every weak, but I'm quite happy this tour is happening nonetheless.
Take care of y'all
Meloetta A to A-
Galarian Slowking
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, or just get outsped or walled by other teammates. Sometimes even the worse case scenario, all of the above .
:Drei is very slow and has a hard time getting a boost and can be baited into 
: Lando-I isn't very slow, but it isn't particularly fast considering the context of AAA and struggles to find that one boost. Also has problems if the regenveseter appears to 
, basically being stonewalled by it's brother or having the wrong coverage.
: Imagine if you made Drei but amplify all of its worst problems. This guy is so damn slow, lil bro is outspeed by minimal speed investment 
, Primsea 
-1 252 Atk Life Orb Arcanine-Hisui Head Smash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 105-125 (34.5 - 41.1%) -- 53.3% chance to 3HKO after Black Sludge recovery
252 SpA Life Orb Electrode-Hisui Chloroblast vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Donphan: 304-359 (79.1 - 93.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+2 252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Thundurus-Therian Focus Blast vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Donphan: 315-370 (82 - 96.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
@ Life Orb
Great Tusk
Zacian-Crowned (it can only have intrepid sword)
Enamorus
Sneasler
Gholdengo
Walking Wake
Poison Heal
Zoroark-H
Gengar
Dragonite