Discussion The Anti-Bench Meta

Lanstar

Lanstar

The Cutest of Ladies
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Ever since Breakpoint, I'm noticing an incredibly disturbing trend: It's getting much harder to get a bench of support Pokemon set up without it getting torn apart, or having your opponent take advantage of it. Think of all the cards that have come out lately: Greninja BREAK, Trevenant Break, Zoroark, and Parallel City. There have been just too many games that I've had to have no benched Pokemon and one Big Basic in the active spot in order to stop these threats.

Usually, I like having multiple support Pokemon to work as a team, but right now, thanks to the two new breaks, it's nearly impossible to make this work. I can say that I've not seen a single M Rayquaza build for a very long time online.

It's just so boring to just use 1 Pokemon so often... Is this just me? Are heavy bench supports playable anymore, outside of using a Rough Seas build?
 
None of the cards you list actually have an impact on your point. The card you should be listing is Lysandre.

The thing is, this format has a bit of a reliance on the card, and is used for multiple reasons (stall, for example). On the topic you're discussing however, Lysandre is doing two things that make bench support-reliant decks less strong:

1. It theoretically allows your attacker to be rendered useless in two different ways (a KO on the attacker, or a Lysandre KO on the support Pokemon).

2. It allows players to compensate for an underdeveloped board position.

However, there's also a third point that's more for general purposes, and that is that Lysandre becomes a card that you have to calculate and take into account when thinking of variations, and a lot of games (and as a ToadTina player, this is especially the case for Toad-based variants) come down to whether or not you can Lysandre at the correct time.

In a format like DP-UL, or even MD-CoL, you saw more "attack/support" types of decks simply due to the almost-nonexistent "guaranteed gusting" available. Sure, Luxray GL Lv. X was in both formats, but for anything not SP-based, it was an eight card investment (because of PokeTurn), and is probably part of the reason why SP did well as an archetype, because the investment wasn't very large, just like how the investment to splash gusting isn't large now (in fact, it's almost insignificant).

But does Lysandre create a balanced format, given the lack of "attack/support" based decks? It's definitely subjective, but I personally believe it adds an important element to the game, that is, not benching things unnecessarily.
 
Lanstar said:
Ever since Breakpoint, I'm noticing an incredibly disturbing trend: It's getting much harder to get a bench of support Pokemon set up without it getting torn apart, or having your opponent take advantage of it. Think of all the cards that have come out lately: Greninja BREAK, Trevenant Break, Zoroark, and Parallel City. There have been just too many games that I've had to have no benched Pokemon and one Big Basic in the active spot in order to stop these threats.

Usually, I like having multiple support Pokemon to work as a team, but right now, thanks to the two new breaks, it's nearly impossible to make this work. I can say that I've not seen a single M Rayquaza build for a very long time online.

It's just so boring to just use 1 Pokemon so often... Is this just me? Are heavy bench supports playable anymore, outside of using a Rough Seas build?
Click to expand...

Parallel City is highly dependent on the type of deck. I use it in my Vespiquen deck to simply get rid of Shaymin EX and while it is damaging yes, if you opponent plays it against you and you have cards that are a liability, you are able to simply toss them away. The thing with Greninja is they're still required to evolve if they use Archie's Ace in the Hole while Trevenant and Zoroark have to evolve twice to get to their BREAK from. So keep in mind they're most likely going to have a more tight deck than you will and may be slower because of it. In my opinion there aren't as many useful bench tech Pokémon to use, that and the ones that are useful has rather low HP compared to last rotation.
 
Lanstar said:
Ever since Breakpoint, I'm noticing an incredibly disturbing trend: It's getting much harder to get a bench of support Pokemon set up without it getting torn apart, or having your opponent take advantage of it.
Click to expand...

I hope this does not seem like a nitpick, but I would say it has only become a little more difficult, not "much harder".

The biggest issue with developing a Bench has been the game's pacing; it has been rewarding decks that setup and start attacking for KOs ASAP since... um... wow it has been a while. I mean what has really changed is the exact turn when this is expected to take place. Long gone are the days when it was common sense to use your first turn or three on attacks that helped you setup your field.

Then comes Lysandre, as @malamarch brought up. Personally I think it works reasonably well; any complaints I have about its usage really apply to other aspects of the game; fast and reliable hard-hitting attackers, abusively effective non-Supporter based draw/search, VS Seeker, etc.

You are quite correct about how recent cards have made it more difficult to keep a large Bench, but by the same note for a while the game was excessively rewarding the large Bench, with cards like Emerald BREAK M Rayquaza-EX and Sky Field. Zoroark is a Stage 1 Pokémon that needs [CC] to attack; without Double Colorless Energy that would be much less of a concern, and even with it your opponent needs to do some work or you need to be running something that requires a fat, fat Bench but nothing too big for the Zoroark player to really cash in. Every turn Trevenant BREAK goes for spread is a turn your Active attacker took only minor damage. Most support on your Bench should survive at least one such spread attack, probably two. Greninja BREAK and Greninja w/Water Shuriken are pretty resource heavy.

So... this all seems more like game pacing than everything else. If my opponent is (for example) getting out multiple Stage 2 Pokémon plus the BREAK Evolution for at least one of those Stage 2 Pokémon while also keeping enough Energy in hand for the discard costs, they have earned some relatively easy KOs on the Bench.
 
I have noticed this as well. I use Golduck Break and Octillery but by turn 2 for my opponent (sometimes turn 1) I'm already hurting and trying to get my setup because my opponent is able to OHKO my Pokemon. The biggest issue here is game pacing and how it awards fast aggressive deck. I do agree things need to change.
 
The big thing, I think is that those who do not like this aspect of the game are best off cultivating a demand for it... and for it in a specific fashion. Cards that are simply given a slower pace. It will take a while, but the alternative is what hasn't worked that well already; forcing rule changes. What do I mean? FTKOs were a big problem in the BW-era. The only reason they are not now is because the-powers-that-be changed the first turn rules to prevent attacking... and even before walking that back a bit by creating Latios-EX (ROS) which can attack first turn anyway, there was Poison (usually via Hypnotoxic Laser) and Virbank City Gym to get around that for the smallest Basics.

The slow-and-steady improvement method is the-powers-that-be simply design Pokémon without damaging attacks that can be accessed on either player's first turn (preferably first two turns, to allow time to Evolve). This has to factor in all forms of acceleration (Energy, Evolution... anything that affects how fast Pokémon can access attacks or effects that lead to KOs). Once the rest of the current offenders (or at least their worst examples) rotate out, the first turn rules shift so you can attack on your very first turn but we now have created a period where "set-up" attacks are the wise investment. The biggest drawback is not just how long we have to wait, but how far ahead the-powers-that-be must plan. There are some other things as well, but you don't need the entire spiel. Raising HP scores without similarly raising damage output though is short, sweet and directly on topic. In fact if we are slowing cards down, that would be an easy balance to keep the new stuff from being useless when compared to the old.
 
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