Personally for me the best way to interact with the new battles system was playing ranked

At first I was sceptical of the new PvP mode for ZA because a free for all style seemed to chaotic. After giving it a chance however I got really into it and ended up with a team I felt was very well balanced for the mode. I essentially have around a 70-80% first place finish rate in ranked and have built up a decent understanding of how to handle most match ups.

With all this said the season 2 ruleset is going to take away so much enjoyment of the game for me. One of my main team members was a Gardevoir holding the expert belt with Moonblast, Thunderbolt, Focus Blast and Calm Mind. Xerneas has all round better stats (except for sp def but the almost double hp more than makes up for that) while also having access to all the same moves and one less weakness. With this one change alone the pool of viable Pokémon will drop drastically as it becomes the main threat every team will have to be able to deal with.

My main point is that I am just really disappointed that a mode I wasn't even interested in became something I actually enjoyed and then with one change has been ruined. The game had a diverse enough roster of strong Pokémon that you could expect to see a decent amount of variety in the teams people brought and sometimes be surprised with a niche pick. But with Xerneas and Yveltal looming even less people will want to play PvP for the fun of it and it will only be a mode for obtaining the mega stones.