Key mechanics include legendary creature synergy, enchantments that enhance storytelling gameplay, and artifact support to amplify your strategies
That being said, there are still a variety of decks that can hold their ground pretty well against competitive decks
If your opponent is playing a fast deck, it makes sense to remove some of your expensive card advantage or slow top end cards for a mediocre two drop or cheap play that can help you stabilize
New cards tend to go down in value for a while as more copies are introduced to the market, and those that go up in value tend to be few and far between
While having to ban cards in Standard is bad, hyping up a new card type and having it fall flat and go unplayed is (perhaps) just as bad, so Wizards is incentivized to take more risks to make sure new card types see play
You'll get a ton more of this bad mana rock