>>57123611The modern pokemon tcg designers have been pathetically bad since HGSS when they fired people for making the game "too complex and giving it too much depth."
Now all pokemon only have up to 2 attacks or 1 ability and 1 attack, instead of 4 attacks or 1 ability 3 attacks. Attacks an abilities got less complex and are copy pasted on to other pokemon and so a lot of pokemon cards are extremely comparable to one another.
At this point it's safe to say there definitely isn't even an attempt to put some work into most cards. A pack will have a set number around 170-200 and maybe 3 pokemon in the set will be okay at best and 1 might be good (99% of the time those pokemon will be ex/v) meaning 99% of all pokemon cards printed these days are literal pack filler
It's still pretty soon to say because pocket started looks decently balanced with ex's not having hundreds more hp then their non ex counterparts and dame numbers not looking too high until you look at some obvious outliers like mewtwo, pikachu, starmie and misty. Now with this second pack we have mewtwo 2.0, 180 stage 1 ex and druddigon which like you said is basically a stage 2 but a basic and has effectively replaced everything across multiple types as the go to front liner. So I think theres a good chance as the ex's pile up the game will become very similar the modern tcg and suck.
Our only hope is golem becomes very popular and sets precedents, the game doesn't become ex focused and stage 2's get respectable stat lines
