I completely agree that Trapinch is banworthy as well right now, but my stance on Abra itself hasn't changed from my metagame discussion post; I believe Abra, as a standalone threat, is broken. I feel that Abra is such an overloaded offensive threat that it should be seen as an issue on its own. My understanding is that most of us agree that Abra + Trapinch is too strong, so the rest of the post is written with that in mind.



First things first - I am not arguing that Trapinch isn't broken. I'm not even arguing that it's less broken than Abra, even if that was what I believed when I was setting the suspect up. I am arguing that Abra is also broken, and that if you believe the core of Abra + Trapinch is broken, then your vote should go towards voting to ban it here by all metrics; we shouldn't delay the removal of a broken mon from the meta just to see if it would be better in a theoretical (Trapinch-less) future metagame.



While Trapinch does aid in Abra's viability, I do not believe it to be in a manner that should discount Abra's own brokenness. Trapinch's influence on Abra can be broken down into two factors: a) as a direct support, and b) as an overbearing influence on the metagame that shifts it in Abra's favour.



For a), I think it's fairly clear that Abra doesn't need Trapinch on its team specifically to be extremely strong. I listed a bunch of LCWC replays in my metagame discussion post to showcase how Abra came off as the dominant member of the GastBraPinch problem, and this conclusion hasn't changed; other means to abuse GastBra without Trapinch have since become uncomfortably prevalent, including Gastbra webs and Gastbra spikestack. As of the end of LCWC, Abra sits at a 59% win rate as the fourth most used mon, which is the most of any mon with over 20 uses if we exclude burntzebra vs tko for semis (which didn't matter). On the other hand, Trapinch is the 8th used mon with a 57% win rate. The fact that both of the central vs west semifinal SM games that mattered were GastBra web mirrors is pretty telling. Usage stats aren't everything, but I won't argue for this further as I feel it's pretty readily accepted that it's Abra the mon, not just AbraPinch the core, that's so powerful in the Trapinch metagame; its ridiculous combination of offensive strengths puts it head and shoulders above most of its competition.



So that leaves b), Trapinch overly shifting the metagame in Abra's favour. Let's break down exactly what has changed in the Trapinch metagame to make Abra so much stronger. I will be referring to the LCWC usage stats and the LCPL 7 usage stats here, but I don't mean to use them as definitive numbers because again, usage stats aren't everything; I'm just using them to paint a picture of how the metagame has changed. There have been some shifts related to the Wingull ban as well (pursuiters are less necessary, Snivy has an easier time, Trapinch becomes less risky to run over Diglett), but I don't think they impact Abra's brokenness in a hugely meaningful way outside of benefiting Trapinch, though it's hard to say for certain when Trapinch spent the last couple of months on the rise before the Wingull's ban.



1. Trapinch's rise has made Magnemite less viable; it went down from 7th most used mon in LCPL to 12th in LCWC. If my memory serves, it's mostly Scarf Magnemite that has become less common, as SturdyJuice Magnemite has risen to become its more popular set. However, Magnemite the mon is still reasonably common, and more importantly, it just isn't very reliable an answer to Abra to begin with. This becomes clear when we look at how how even non-Trapinch Abra builds don't really worry about Magnemite. In the case of Abra + Spikestack, Magnemite can be put into range of even an LO Psychic after coming in on rocks + spikes 3-4 times, and doesn't reliably OHKO with Thunderbolt anyways, often forcing it to Volt Switch first. In the case of Abra + webs, Scarf Magnemite of course isn't a check at all.



2. Trapinch's rise has not made Pursuit users noticeably less viable. It act as a nuisance to Pawniard and Grimer, yet they maintain similar usage and win rates (which are still abysmal for Grimer). Why is this the case? It becomes clear when we look at arguably the most notable part of Trapinch's influence -



3. Trapinch's rise has damaged Diglett's viability. Whether it's because Trapinch now directly competes with Diglett or because it countertraps Diglett, it doesn't matter - the end result is that Diglett has dropped in usage, win rate, and in the eyes of many, viability. Replacing Diglett with Trapinch as the dominant trapper hurts Magnemite, which generally struggles more against Trapinch, but it doesn't seriously affect Pawniard or Grimer. Because Trapinch hurts Diglett, Pursuit trappers have remained comparably strong. On the other hand, this is pretty clearly beneficial for Abra, as Trapinch is easily worn down into Abra range early on, whereas Diglett can KO Abra as long as its team is healthy enough for Beat Up, maybe even later into the match if Diglett is running Eviolite.



4. Outside of the above, the trends associated with Trapinch either do not significantly affect Abra's viability or actively hinder it. For example, the biggest Trapinch-related shift in this regard would be the decrease in Onix, but Abra doesn't really care for that. Mienfoo and Foongus becoming less popular as a direct result of Vullaby / Ponyta / Abra itself becoming stronger with Trapinch support means that Abra can no longer abuse them as often.



In other words, I think we can narrow down almost all of Trapinch's influence on Abra's viability to how it hampers Diglett; the other shifts resulting from its rise, at best, benefit Abra only trivially.



Another way to look at this is that we have strong evidence that a single Pokemon, Diglett, is more or less the sole reason Abra is balanced in a Trapinch-less metagame. This should drive home just how strong Abra is: if you aren't running an Arena Trap user, Pursuit user, or a GastBra webs of your own, you're probably weak to Abra. Of the Pursuit users, Grimer and so on have inherent disadvantages that make them unreasonably difficult to fit onto the average team, while Scarf Pawniard is a single set on a single mon that carries the opportunity cost of not being able to run Eviolite Pawniard. Defensive answers are flimsy (we're not really about to call Ferroseed a reliable Abra answer, are we?), and most revenge-killers can't switch in + require sacks to deal with Sashbra anyways; in fact, even the aforementioned Pursuit users lose to Counter Abra. This leaves us with Diglett. In prior metagames, Diglett and Diglett alone was common enough to keep it in check. It was evidently still heavily constraining toward builds - it just wasn't as noticeable because Diglett was so splashable. We now have a metagame where Diglett isn't as splashable anymore.



Abra does not have a healthy amount of responses. Gastly is easier to revenge-kill because of its worse speed tier; more importantly, it has far more options for general counterplay, such that it can actually lose 1v1s, simply because it can't run sash for free and isn't immune to passive damage. Ponyta matches Abra's speed tier, but is even more susceptible to hazards. No other offensive mon can approach Abra's immediate threat level; they don't have its speed, its power, its coverage. Abra, by design, has strengths that are too powerful, too numerous, too difficult to counterplay for it to be balanced in any metagame at a comparable level of power to ours (so it was probably fine in Tangma).



In short, Trapinch's rise doesn't push an otherwise balanced mon in Abra over the edge. It serves to highlight how inherently problematic Abra has been all along.