Eurogamer Germany has released a video of the new trainer battle. And Gamepress has carefully reviewed it and suggested some possible changes to battle mechanics. It looks like potential changes won't have a large effect on the meta-game. Chansey/Blissey/Lugia might rule the PvP game, unless there are stat or move changes. Lets walk through the changes in detail.
- No charge bars. This means old 2 & 3 bar moves will also lose energy when trying to fill the energy bar to 100%. This also implies that charge moves won't always cost 33, 50, or 100 energy and maybe even more than 100.
- Power up of charge move for 3 seconds after starting it. They suggest a 1.2x multiplier
- Charge moves are instantaneous and don't take any time. I added it to the calculator but I'm not a fan of this change.
- Putting aside STAB and type effectiveness, I believe the best charge move just becomes highest damage per energy. Personally, I thought the interplay between damage, energy, and duration was very interesting.
- I liked that dodges were in real-time, making short/fast charge moves difficult to dodge, which brought an interesting aspect to the game.
- If the game is about augmented reality, then pausing the game during a charge move doesn't feel like AR.
- It looks like damage taken will not translate into energy. I'm sad that this might be removed because it is a nice handicapping feature. If your Pokemon is getting hit hard from a powerful opponent, you get to do more charge moves in return. Comparing the two calculators, it looks like Blissey/Chansey/Lugia would dominate with or without this feature.
Lets first take a look at the original calculator for Great League Trainer Battles, Ultra League Trainer Battles, and Master League Trainer Battle. The [General] Rankings show that Chansey/Blissey/Lugia might rule the PvP game. If you change the [General] opponent and examine each type, these three are even best against a majority of opponent types. This is unfortunate since Chansey will be level 40 for the Great League.
I've also created a second calculator with #1, #2, #3, and #4. Going though all three league battles, and the [General] opponent and specific type opponents, we have a similar result: Blissey/Chansey/Lugia will probably dominate the PvP game.
Because I was curious, I've modified the regular calculator and created a third calculator with just #1, #2, and #3. Comparing these results to the second calculator, we still have similar results. I like #4 so I hope they keep it.
Another change is the new limit of only 2 dodge/shields. This is a very interesting feature and I'm still trying to figure out how to analyze this. I don't think any of the other features mentioned would impact the calculations/analysis.