Xyzs aren't that bad. Just shutdown your opponents ability to special summon. Negation and destruction are the way to go, at the end of the day they're pretty generic.
My experience with pends has been confusing me with throwing out seriously high level monsters in second or first turns and I'm left scratching my head at how the hell to counter. Pendulum seems to be the new meta that stomps anything, and forces to you to use a deck built around thay new summoning archetype (which is a bit boring imo).