pokeaaa rant wip

Hi everyone, Eggs here representing the PokeAAA council. We've been listening to your feedback on the metagame and really appreciate it! As fantastic as this format is, there's still some obvious issues and frustrations with the format. To fully explain the state of the metagame and potential solutions, I'm going to provide a history of the format and the unique circumstances that lead to the current situation, and then delve into the meaning of Opportunity Cost and what sets PokeAAA apart from its base formats.



[SPOILER="The History of PokeAAAbilities"]

Chapter 1: The Beginning



IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS LIGHT. This light was quickly extinguished by Primordial Sea Kingdra and Desolate Land Venusaur, who's grasp on the tier made it nearly unplayable. These two offensive juggernauts invalidated every other sweeper, wallbreaker, win condition, and revenge killer in the meta, thanks to their doubled speed, boosted STAB and coverage moves, and excellent setup moves in Focus Energy and Growth. I personally hated this so much that I took it upon myself to become Tier Leader solely to ban this combination. Thanks to the help of the council, we were able to get the meta under control, and ended up banning every ability combination that doubled one's speed, on the principle that maybe being at +2 speed without being locked into a move was absolutely f***ing nuts.



Next up on the chopping block was the defensive behemoths. First and most importantly:



:ss/clefable:



Nothing. Breaks. Clefable. Already an OU staple thanks to its two broken abilities, the combination of Unaware and Magic Guard simultaneously means Clefable can't be dealt with via setup moves OR passive damage, which sets it apart from other walls as it frankly doesn't care about two of the three ways walls can be broken. The third way to break a wall, slapping it with a powerful wallbreaker, can easily be negated by Dauntless Shield Clefable, who can afford to set up on most physical and special wallbreakers with Calm Mind. The sum total of wallbreakers who could deal with Dauntless Shield Clefable consists of:

-Mold Breaker Steel types

-End of list



We banned it. You're welcome. In the same slate that contained Clefable, Prankster also went on the stand. Thanks to Prankster, Toxapex and Quagsire were able to sit on and absolutely oppress anything that tried to outspeed and 2HKO them, making them nearly as difficult to get through as Clefable (although fortunately neither could act as a win condition). Prankster was banned succinctly due to the frankly oppressive nature of the two watery blobs.



Thankfully, the metagame began to settle down now that most of the obviously broken mechanics were removed. For a period, the metagame thrived and went smoothly; that is, until the discovery of the Regenerator Squad. These teams, consisting of 5-6 Regenerator users, could heal off literally any damage dealt to them, and were clearly uncompetitive (and the longer we had these teams around, the chances increased of two of them meeting and causing an endless battle). I and many others have gripes with Regenerator as an ability, but it's a staple of AAA and its related mashups. Simply banning Regenerator would effectively gut the format, while also not solving the issue of running 4-5 native Regenerator users to bypass 2 Ability Clause, which only applies to the chosen abilities of a team. Thus, the most elegant solution was a complex ban: an extension of 2 Ability Clause that applied only to Regenerator. This solution has worked very well, and was the least damaging way to (somewhat) preserve the status quo while also preventing Regenerator Squads from runing the tier.



Regenerator Clause (and some other bans) was implemented on April 21st, 2021. For a blissful 9 days, all was well. The absence of broken offensive and defensive combinations allowed the metagame to thrive, as many previously outclassed Pokemon like Wishiwashi, Lurantis, and Luxray began to make their way into the metagame with creative and innovative sets.



Chapter 2: The Dark Ages



Clever readers may have seen the foreshadowing. On May 1st, 2021, the Pokebilities format was removed from the PS! main server (ironically the day after PokeAAA became an Official Mashup), citing general bugginess as the reason. Shockingly, PokeAAAbilities does not function without Pokebilities, and the format was rendered unplayable for a time. Thankfully, @CringeMeta was later able to recreate the format on The Trashchannel, allowing people (realistically, just me) to play it. Unfortunately, the inability to play PokeAAAbilities on main was devastating, causing the metagame to lose almost all player interest and stagnate for several months. During this period, the playerbase consisted almost entirely of OM Mashups Staff and the people i forced to play with me, and little progress was made. Occasionally, the council would silently ban mechanics that were banned in either Pokebilities or AAA, such as Poison Heal, Noivern, and Dracozolt, as the reason they were banned in the base formats also applied to PokeAAA, but not much changed for a long period of time.



Chapter 3: Revival



Pokebilities was chosen as the OMOTM for January 2022, and with its return to PS!, PokeAAAbilities was finally freed from The Trashchannel. The metagame reached a point of relative stability thanks to the bans during The Dark Ages, and the playerbase grew into a small but stable community who enjoyed the creativity of the format. PokeAAA more or less stayed this way until May 2022, when it was chosen as the LCOTM and recieved a ladder! Now, we're up to date.

[/SPOILER]





Thanks to the very large gap in time between periods of playable PokeAAAbilities on PS! main, there was a long period where PokeAAA recieved no innovation and merely copied certain bans from its base formats. This stagnation meant that when PokeAAA ladder went live, there were quite a few elements that had not been adressed simply due to a lack of a playerbase to test them with. Thanks to the ladder and the large number of games available to look at, we were able to identify the most broken elements of the ladder metagame and ban them.



The history and context of PokeAAAbilities is important to understanding what the council is planning for the future. Our watchlist/to do list includes:



:zapdosgalar: Zapdos-G: A fantastic STAB combination plus base Defiant allows it to be the tier's best wallbreaker in the absence of Obstagoon. This thing is hard to wall and hard to switch in to, but suffers from a lack of recovery, coverage, and an average speed stat for a wallbreaker. Zapdos-G also dislikes being locked into one move, making Choiced sets powerful but very unweildy.



:comfey: Triage: We've heard your complaints and are listening!