Metagame shift
The latest change, reducing STAB damage to 1.2x and increasing resistance/weakness damage to 1.4x will radically change the meta game. Rhydon with megahorn will be more useful, and all of the defenders with double weaknesses (Dragonite, Gyarados, Tyrannitar, Rhydon, and Exeggutor, I'm looking at you) will be far less effective as defenders, since everyone will know to counter them. The overall shift of the game will move from CP being everything to CP and matchups being important.
This means that the mon that are best at taking out a specific big mon (Lapras (Dragonite), Jolteon (Gary), Scizor w. bug (Eggy), etc.) will become more important; for the Boss battles, you'll want 6 of them to give you the best chance to take down the boss. So my 4 Laprases may finally be useful as a group, if I can power the rest of them up.
Additionally, the best defenders will be the ones with the fewest weaknesses. Blissey and Snorlax should dominate the gyms, and possibly strong mon with few weaknesses like Donphan becoming more important.
And of course, with Blissey and Snorlax dominating gyms, the fighting mon will have their day in the sun. Machamp will be one of the most important attackers, to take down Snorlax and Blissey, as well as Tyrannitar. (Expect every solid gym to have one Snorlax and one Blissey.) Hopefully machop will be a bit easier to get - right now he's near impossible in my area.
Comments?
Answers
STAB decreases from 1.25 to 1.2, but effectiveness increases from 1.25 to 1.4. Overall, the damage Machamp deals to Blissey increases by 8%, from 1.56 to 1.68. But Zen Headbutt, Dazzling Gleam, and Psychic are not STAB for Blissey. So the damage they deal to Machamp goes up by 12%, from 1.25 to 1.4.
This said, think Alakazam with Psycho Cut and Focus Blast is now better then Machamp. PC looses only 4% from STAB, but FB gains 12%. At the same time, he takes 12% less damage from Zen Headbutt and Psychic.
In my opinion to simplify what these changes are they make specialists better mons. Outside of very rare cases they don't make non stab attacking moves that special for attackers since there are likely better stab versions still that will be more powerful than ever. It does cheapen non effective moves for generalists like Dragonite.
It doesn't really change much on defense at all. Non stab defensive moves do more damage but not enough to overcome strong stab and SE attacking moves. Plus the same way "folks know that they can counter these mons better" folks will also know not to risk something that can be hit SE by a defender (if they care). And most of those charge moves can be dodged or the defender himself won't be around long enough to use it more than once anyway.
Blissey and Snorlax are still the best and everything else is back there somewhere. All of the "back there somewhere" mons all became easier to beat as a group and none stand out no matter what their moves are etc with a few very special examples like Lapras. Especially if I can TM IB/HP in the future. But even that isn't going to stop a gym from going down more quickly and easily than ever.
