LogFAQs > #908674406

Ah, I see what you mean - and yeah, to split this up...let's talk about both of these ideas separately.

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So with 'aggresive' defense abilities, I think the solution there is a combo of peacetime/on-declaration abilities, and 'true counter' abilities declared during the rosters phase but before the rosters are revealed, for situations where an ability really can't be used preemptively (for example, Agnes' Unacceptables). The former would probably only take Fatigue, the latter might also cost AP to balance out the fact you can use them reactively. This probably can take care of the trigger functionality and minimize the burden of knowledge a fair bit.

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Then there's the matter of fatigue. There's two ideas there - fatigue-as-ability-denial, where you can't use abilities but can still fight - and fatigue-as-merc-denial, where your whole merc is taken out of comission. For the sake of simplicity let's call the latter Exhaustion. The key reason why I think Exhaustion is a decent idea (and I'm not set on it, I just keep it in mind because it feels like a good way to emphasize strategic foresight instead of pure 'micro' tactical skill) is that it paints a target on you. Like you said, it's only a potential cost...but my thinking is that if you're a top player and you have amassed a beefy winstreak, people will be gunning for you, because defeating you means getting more money. This means you're always under threat, so if you weaken yourself by removing some of your best fighters to eke out a win, somebody WILL take advantage of it to cash in on your bounty. In turn, this increases the difficulty of staying undefeated over long periods of time, which means teams are less likely to just run away with the game unless everyone just rolls over and lets them get free wins. Does that make sense? Or do you feel like Fatigue by itself does the job of making people vulnerable well enough?

(My thinking about fatigue, BTW, is to use it as a balancing measure for notably powerful abilitie. If we run with a default where abilities mostly cost 1 AP out of a small handful of points, if a single target KO costs that much, fatigue provides a way to keep teambuilding from becoming a degenerate case of 'lol just buy KOs to win bruh'. By contrast, something like Pudge's Meat Hook can just cost 1 AP with no fatigue, because its balancing factor is already there in needing to roster Pudge to get any use out of it at all. Something like Sora's 'My Friends Are My Power!' can cost 2 AP because it's a huge game-tilter to invoke a high tier char in a lower tier, while Suika's drunkenness can inflict Fatigue but a fair chunk less than a KO - say, a single week of Fatigue vs two for KOing someone.)
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Shine on, you crazy diamond.