Anticipated Metagame Shift

After playing a few games with Empire of Evil and seeing how things went down at Gen Con, I am anticipating a need for a shift in the metagame.  More and more there are new cards that allow for penetration during attacks.  This is either by Stealth, Superleap, cannot be intercepted (e.g. Hegemeister or Scramble Suit), stop intercepting (e.g. Blue Meditation, Dust Storm), or healing (e.g. The Willow Bends...).  Relying on interceptors to stop attacks is becoming far less reliable.  I think this is going to necessitate a shift back towards more direct removal.  Zap denial had fallen out of favor somewhat because of the amount of counter denial with some of it even being punitive, Who's the Monkey Now and Brain Fire being the biggest.  I, however, think that without zap, it will become increasingly hard to mount effective defenses.  So either zap will need to come back or more creative (most likely site based) defenses will evolve.