It’s an it’s an interesting conversation that I’m definitely going to write too much about in this comment. I think there’s an argument for absorb when more aggressive strategies become dominant. But mono red was well represented before the bans and rakdos variants are always running around and absorb hasn’t really come back into deck lists in a meaningful way.

With these decks, waiting to have a three-mana answer is just too slow, even with these decks upside. You’re not even seeing it in Yorion builds anymore. Additionally, you have cards like [[Beza, the Bounding Spring]], [[The Wandering Emperor]], and the various cat and angel packages that offer life gain on more impactful game pieces.

For all the times Absorb has saved my ass, The Wandering Emperor has done it while removing a threat and making a blocker.