World Beyblade Organization by Fighting Spirits Inc. Beyblade Discussion Beyblade General

Discussion to unban Metal Cap drivers from Classic Format

Jan. 16, 2023  10:35 PM
 
I know, I know, this proposition sounds insane at first, but the truth is there's three Metal Cap drivers that are banned from Classic, and I just don't see any reason for it. These three drivers are:

Metal Accel
Metal Defense
Metal Fusion

Despite also having a Mold 1 Metal variant (for those of you that don't know, older Metal cap drivers have sharper caps and in turn more burst resistance, among greater wear issues) Metal Survive was never placed on the Classic banlist, alongside Metal Xtreme for being purely Attack based, and through my attempts to make Metal Survive good in the format I've only found it... just bad. Of course Survive isn't the best Stamina tip at all, but in my testing I've deciphered that it's more than just this: There is a flaw in the Metal cap designs that make them not only difficult to use, but nerfs them a ton in Classic as a whole.

All drivers have two tabs on top, to mesh with the layer's teeth. For regular and ' driver variants these tabs are the same length and mesh well with even the shortest teeth, such as those on Maximum Garuda, Guardian Kerbeus, or many of the MFB remake layers. Metal cap drivers have two shorter tabs instead, which may not mesh with teeth that are too short. That's my big kicker here: Many Basic and Dual layers which are legal in Classic do not mesh with Metal cap drivers as they should, and therefore metal cap drivers are incredibly weak in terms of burst resistance and are not a threat to the metagame at large, especially due to the increased burst resistance of the format in recent years.

I've tested every legal TT layer in the game just to see which layers actually can mesh with these Metal drivers, and my results are posted below:

Amaterios - All 3 teeth (beware of part wear)
Acid Anubis - First two teeth only, but tightly
Baldur - 3 of 4 teeth, barely meshes
Beast Behemoth - Yes
Chaos (mold 1) - No
Chaos (mold 2/3) - Only the first tooth, and just barely
Deathscyther - No
Dark Deathscyther - All 3 Teeth
Evil-Eye - 3 of 4 teeth, barely meshes
Exceed Evil-Eye - No
Fang Fenrir - No
Gigant Gaia - First and third tooth only, but tightly
Horusood - 3 of 4 teeth, barely meshes
Holy Horusood - No
Inferno Ifrit - First three teeth only, but tightly
Jail Jormungand - No
Kerbeus - 3 of 4 teeth, barely meshes
Kaiser Kerbeus - 3 of 4 teeth, barely meshes
Minoboros - All 3 Teeth (beware of part wear)
Mad Minoboros - All 3 Teeth
Neptune - First tooth tightly, second and third weakly, fourth not at all
Nova Neptune - First 3 teeth, but very tightly
Odin - No
Obelisk Odin - Only the first tooth, but tightly
Psychic Phantom - No
Quad Quetzalcoatl - Only the second tooth, but tightly
Ragnaruk - First 3 teeth, barely meshes
Rising Ragnaruk - No
Spriggan- Only the third tooth, and just barely
Storm Spriggan - No
Trident - First 3 teeth, barely meshes
Unicorn - First 3 teeth, barely meshes
Unlock Unicorn - No
Valkyrie - First three teeth only, but tightly (watch for part wear)
Victory Valkyrie - All 3 Teeth
Wyvern - First 3 teeth, barely meshes
Wild Wyvern - No
Xcalibur - All 3 Teeth
Xeno Xcalibur - All 3 Teeth
Yggdrasil - First 2 teeth, and just barely
Yaeger Yggdrasil - No
Zillion Zeus - Second and Third teeth only, and just barely
Dragoon S - All 3 Teeth
Dragoon F - All 3 Teeth
Draciel S - All 3 Teeth
Draciel F - All 3 Teeth
Dranzer S - First and third tooth only, but tightly
Dranzer F - All 3 Teeth
Driger S - First three teeth only, but tightly
Driger F- All 3 Teeth
Wolborg - All 3 Teeth

Now, anything which I've given a hard "No" to will absolutely not work here, they cannot use these properly at all and don't even click once, thus invalidating them pretty hard. Yellow and orange are also terrible ideas to use, as they may mesh a little bit but will overall be much less tight than even a standard driver lock will, not to mention a ' spring. What we actually need to pay attention to here are the two shades of green, where we can peek through for any layers that might actually be good here (let's be honest, even a Metal lock will not save Draciel Shield). This gives us a meta viable list of these layers:

Acid Anubis, Dark Deathscyther, Gigant Gaia, Valkyrie, Victory Valkyrie, Xcalibur, Dragoon S/F, Dranzer F, Driger S/F, Wolborg.

Seems like quite a few powerful layers still have some functionality, but let's be honest, anything too aggressive like Victory Valkyrie and Xcalibur just don't want to run Metal Accel or Metal Fusion so those are pretty bad ideas. Valkyrie might, but given how badly those teeth wear you will be shredding your layer in a single battle so it's no threat. Same thing with Dragoon S/F, it wants LAD to try and win and these three banned drivers do not help it with that goal. Let's shorten this list a little more and knock those out.

Acid Anubis, Dark Deathscyther, Gigant Gaia, Dranzer F, Driger S, Wolborg

Question now is, are any of these layers really that much more powerful using Metal Defense over Defense? If they could, wouldn't they be using Metal Survive by now to try and make use of the extra burst resistance in some situations? Gigant Gaia is already nearly impervious to bursting, is Metal Defense really that much of an upgrade? I'd say it's really not. Dark Deathscyther can already use Yard' if it wants to uppercut things, Metal Defense isn't really what it's looking for unless it's to capitalize on the weaknesses of QuadStrike's +Kick/+Survive/+Never, which could use some kicking down anyways. Acid Anubis has other sets, adding in Metal Defense isn't that much.

Metal Accel and Metal Fusion are similar to the already banned ' Staller archetype (there's many questions floating about if those even still need to be banned in the current Classic game, but that's a whole different discussion), but that's the only reason to consider them at all and I don't think they matter nearly enough given their limited layer options and excessive wear. The usual Staller layers (Neptune, Odin) do not work with either of these very well, and using it on Valkyrie instead is asking to destroy your layer in minutes. There is no home for these with the layers that they work for.

And that's aside from the wear these drivers will do on your teeth. This alone is a good reason not to use these drivers at all whether they're banned or not, so if people are already disincentivized to use them why are they so problematic?

If you disagree with me somewhere, please feel free to say so. This is a thread made to discuss the idea, don't hold back if you think I'm wrong. either way I put quite a bit of thought into this, on top of testing every legal TT layer's tooth composition for tightness, and I just don't see the merit to keeping these banned with the already massive burst resistance creep of drivers like Yard', Keep', and Zone'+HasZ that do many of the same things but with much less wear, and I want to see what the rest of you think about it.
Jan. 16, 2023  11:06 PM
 
I think generally even if the caps are smaller or not, the teeth on classic beys will wear when exposed to metal drivers. So they really only “mesh” for the first couple battles, and if that's not the case the results you posted show how rarely they “mesh”. I don't really see the point in keeping them banned either but that's up to discussion.
Jan. 16, 2023  11:36 PM
 
I think the discussion is very good to have now especially since we have had sometime for the metal drivers to be used see resistance and how they work with teeth sets.

The first set of data we have is very good and I want to thank you for checking, the next step would really just be either a test event or even just testing some battles then a test event.

I was under the impression that since they were like dash it might serve to be a threat to classic without looking into too much because I am not much of a classic player.

HOWEVER if we consider what teeth actually work with the drivers and consistency for dash stamina, then to me I don't see much of an issue.

Even if let's say MD, works really good on D2 or A2, what that is one event where they get used and never again? Single/Dual were never in the shape to work with dash so they will die very easily.

Why maybe was the reason for why they were removed? Just to avoid that damage to the layers????


I don't know to me for what is allowed they seem harmless, if we get data to just help prove in battle they also don't give that much value then they can be legalized IMO.
Jan. 17, 2023  12:12 AM
 
There was and still is very little reason for these to be banned - in fact, I am really unsure how it could be justified given they never saw a single WC entry that I can see. As it is, Accel' and Fusion' don't deserve to be banned so there's no game balance reason for the Metal versions of them to be. As for Metal Defense, the small amount of extra weight might be nice but I have tried it before and it didn't help in a noticeable way. Plus I'd rather use HD than D or MD tbh. IMO there really is no reason for these to be banned. If people want to tear up their teeth with them it is 100% their own choice.
Jan. 17, 2023  1:59 AM
 
(Jan. 16, 2023  11:36 PM)originalzankye Wrote: I think the discussion is very good to have now especially since we have had sometime for the metal drivers to be used see resistance and how they work with teeth sets.

The first set of data we have is very good and I want to thank you for checking, the next step would really just be either a test event or even just testing some battles then a test event.

I was under the impression that since they were like dash it might serve to be a threat to classic without looking into too much because I am not much of a classic player.

HOWEVER if we consider what teeth actually work with the drivers and consistency for dash stamina, then to me I don't see much of an issue.

Even if let's say MD, works really good on D2 or A2, what that is one event where they get used and never again? Single/Dual were never in the shape to work with dash so they will die very easily.

Why maybe was the reason for why they were removed? Just to avoid that damage to the layers????


I don't know to me for what is allowed they seem harmless, if we get data to just help prove in battle they also don't give that much value then they can be legalized IMO.

It took a while to check, but knowing what can and can't work with these is a good baseline for determining if they're even viable at all. In general, if the teeth aren't tall enough these drivers simply will not latch on or work with these older layers, and the same applies to God and Cho-Z layers too. Less so GT and later due to their interchangeable teeth though. It's also quite poor for basic layers in general, short Xcalibur. Valkyrie is probably the most viable layer for Metal Accel, but do we really want to worsen these tooth wear issues that much? Valkyrie already has a short life span. I don't think a small amount of extra weight is worth utterly destroying it in maybe a match or two just for this.

If these are simply banned just for the damage, then Metal Survive and Metal Xtreme should've been banned already due to their Mold 1 metal caps as well, but no ban there is apparently coming any time soon. It would make more sense than singling these three drivers out, especially when one of them might actually be useful for those daring enough to try. Heck, I don't even know why Metal Survive was never on this ban list if "more than ' strength Stamina" was ever a concern to begin with, which only makes the current state of these drivers more confounding and bewildering. It's not consistent between Metal Survive and Metal Defense's ruling, so even without any testing we can at least say "Hey, why are these not in the same bucket?"