Baton Pass - its role in the metagame and possible solutions to nerf full Baton Pass chains

Status
Not open for further replies.
While I do agree that BP needs a nerf, I think you're exaggerating how hard it is to beat a BP team just a little. Talonflame, Landorus-I, Thundurus-i, and Charizard-Y can handle BP before a sub is put down. However, they can't always beat BP, and once the chain is started its nearly impossible to stop even with these pokemon. Beyond that, its a stratagy that almost takes away the importance of strategy and decides the game based off of matchup. Its for those reasons I think it should be nerfed.
I do believe those pokemons are extremely good counters agianst some of their leads but talonflame or mega char-y get put to sleep to a focus sash smeargle leaving them useless, then a freeturn to get an speed boost or something like that, only extremely fast taunters can get a hold on this especially thundurus, and sableye (the secnd being on uu), also i would like to mention that being around 1500 elo i had seen like 8 or 9 tpeople using this strategie making it quite anoying
 
The quality has been pretty nice so far, I'm actually quite suprised.
I'm rather surprised that a blanket ban isn't supported by the Council. Perhaps a nice nerf would be a sort of "Chain Clause" if you will, where after X number of Baton Passes within X number of turns, it is prevented.
This is a interesting idea as it doesn't nerf baton pass too much but instead places much greater emphasis on play. To combat chains one has to predict and apply pressure forcing your opponent to use up his say 2 passes allotted for 4 turns. It would allow good play to break chains. Baton pass teams headed by good players would still prosper but players who are predictable and are just going through the baton pass motions get stomped as there passes are predicted. I would definitely support this as an option.
 
The quality has been pretty nice so far, I'm actually quite suprised.
I'm rather surprised that a blanket ban isn't supported by the Council. Perhaps a nice nerf would be a sort of "Chain Clause" if you will, where after X number of Baton Passes within X number of turns, it is prevented.
Thats actually messing with the mechanics of the game, and I'm pretty sure thats an absolute last resort, as with the sleep clause.
 
Would it be viable to turn Speed Boost on its head with Trick Room?

Granted, a lot of Trick Room users have trouble taking a Megahorn. But there is no better way to punish Speed boosting.

Maybe Manaphy's Heart Swap? It doesn't stop Scolipede from boosting further, but it goes through Substitute and Magic Bounce and Manaphy is very threatening by itself.
Trick Room is not viable in the Gen VI OU environment, and had it been, it still requires set up, and only lasts for 5 short turns. And even if Trick Room was viable in OU, that'd make only one countermeasure against Speed Boost. It wouldn't actually counter Speed Boost or especially Baton Pass chains.

Heart Swap is in the same boat as Haze - poor distribution with only Manaphy to run it, incredibly niche based, and suboptimal.
 
I have never seen Acid Armor on Scolipede. Are you sure? Double check your facts.
It always runs acid armor iron defense, or at least on good full BP teams. On full baton pass teams attack is the least useful stat to boost, as it provides absolutely nothing for Espeon and Slyveon, the late game cleaners for BP. It also always runs protect, as that provides valuable free turns to boost speed.

Edit: Sorry I meant Iron Defense where I put acid armor. I just mixed up the defense boosting moves since they do the same thing.
 
Last edited:
One thing that bothers me about a potential suspect test for Baton Pass teams is that nothing about it is inherently broken (like, say, Gengarite or Arceus) or uncompetitive (like Moody or Swagger).
Like jpw said it's a solved playstyle in the current metagame. It obviously requires skill to use, since such teams can lose catastrophically if they mis-predict early in the game (and even late-game if the opponent has specifically prepared for them).

Perhaps we should just accept that until the next major metagame shift (probably once the "Z" version or whatever it's going to be called comes out) baton pass is the best team archetype available to us and adapt to it, just like we accepted Snorlax being practically mandatory in every team in GSC.
Baton Pass is a solved playstyle with 1 or 2 obscure, dedicated counters.

Baton Pass by itself is not broken or uncompetitive. But due to the nature of Speed Boost and Magic Bounce Baton Passing, it creates an autonomous playstyle (countering most of its 'counters' and achieving boosts with trivial effort) and stifles the development of entire archetypes, like Stall, that must run niche checks like Quagsire.
No one is saying Baton Pass is invincible and unstoppable. We are pondering whether it harms the development of the metagame. Adapting does not include forcing players to run 1 of 2 counters just in case, or lose to any decent Pass team.
 
One way I found useful to beat it is with Encore Alakazam-Mega. I steal speed boost from scolipede and wait for the right time to encore my opponent (obviously when the espeon isn't sent in). It catches many people off guard and I can slowly chip down health with psychic and shadow ball.
 
Baton Pass is a solved playstyle with 1 or 2 obscure, dedicated counters.

Baton Pass by itself is not broken or uncompetitive. But due to the nature of Speed Boost and Magic Bounce Baton Passing, it creates an autonomous playstyle (countering most of its 'counters' and achieving boosts with trivial effort) and stifles the development of entire archetypes, like Stall, that must run niche checks like Quagsire.
No one is saying Baton Pass is invincible and unstoppable. We are pondering whether it harms the development of the metagame. Adapting does not include forcing players to run 1 of 2 counters just in case, or lose to any decent Pass team.
quagsire is not niche on stall. quagsire is the only thing preventing stall from losing to every set up sweeper in the game. "You clearly lack sufficient knowledge of the metagame"
 
quagsire is not niche on stall. quagsire is the only thing preventing stall from losing to every set up sweeper in the game. "You clearly lack sufficient knowledge of the metagame"
What part of "players should not be forced to run a single niche counter" do you not understand? Stall teams should also not be forced to run Quagsire on account of Baton Pass chains. And Quagsire is not a counter to Baton Pass chains. He is a type of countermeasure that can still die to even a boosted Espeon, nevermind a Passed hyper offensive threat.
I am a consistently top 500 OU ladder player because I do have sufficient knowledge of both Baton Pass archetype and the metagame as a whole. I have followed and played it since its beginning.
 
What part of "players should not be forced to run a single niche counter" do you not understand? Stall teams should also not be forced to run Quagsire on account of Baton Pass chains. And Quagsire is not a counter to Baton Pass chains. He is a type of countermeasure that can still die to even a boosted Espeon, nevermind a Passed hyper offensive threat.
I am a consistently top 500 OU ladder player because I do have sufficient knowledge of both Baton Pass archetype and the metagame as a whole. I have followed and played it since its beginning.
Quagsire isn't a counter to BP teams, more of a check. Unaware is a thing, however, it is still overcentralizing.

(69th post, tee-hee)
 
What part of "players should not be forced to run a single niche counter" do you not understand? Stall teams should also not be forced to run Quagsire on account of Baton Pass chains. And Quagsire is not a counter to Baton Pass chains. He is a type of countermeasure that can still die to even a boosted Espeon, nevermind a Passed hyper offensive threat.
I am a consistently top 500 OU ladder player because I do have sufficient knowledge of both Baton Pass archetype and the metagame as a whole. I have followed and played it since its beginning.
stall isn't forced to run shit.
stall uses quagsire because it is good on stall
beating an entire playstyle is just a nice bonus
the best stall team in the world uses quagsire

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/teh-fgts-dat-nevr-die-revamped.3500085/
 
stall isn't forced to run shit.
stall uses quagsire because it is good on stall
beating an entire playstyle is just a nice bonus
the best stall team in the world uses quagsire

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/teh-fgts-dat-nevr-die-revamped.3500085/
Except Quagsire doesn't beat BP. Haze Quagsire beats BP, and even then it doesn't beat it all that consistently. The problem is not that stall is forced to run Quagsire, it's that it is forced to run Haze Quagsire, which is otherwise a stupid and redundant set. Haze is entirely useless on Quagsire outside of countering BP.
 
Over Zealous

Dude, stop mentioning your elo rank on every post you make. If you need to state your ladder rank just to validate your argument, then your argument is bad. Nobody cares how well you do in the ladder, the only thing important here is the content of your posts. Also stop saying people shouldn't be allowed to post because they are worse players than you, it's up to the mods to decide who gets to post here, not you. Seriously, you're just embarassing yourself.

Anyway, back to the discussion, I'd like to argue against the smeargle spore argument. It's not a flawless stop to bp counters because sleep clause exists. The players has only one shot to make it work, and if they get outpredicted by their opponent, they risk putting the wrong pokemon to sleep and losing the match. Also, I can't stress enough how many pokemon can attack bp teams hard enough to beat them. A lot of physical and special attackers can put enough pressure to overwhelm them if they attack from the beginning, including thundurus, landorus, gardevoir, volcariona, aegislash, y-zard, keldeo, manaphy, talonflame, pinsir, and that's just the obvious ones, there are many viable uu pokemon who can also put pressure on bp teams. So it's not uncommon for a non-stall team to have multiple of them, and it's also recommended, since this kind of pokemon also tends to be good against stall. So spore is far from being a flawless anti-counter to all bp counters, it's just another useful tool that makes the strategy deeper.

Ps: please ignore the typing mistakes I'm making in this thread, I'm writing these posts on a tablet (or sometimes a very slow cell phone) and a bad wifi. Thank you.
 
You just send Quagsire out, and pray to god the Baton Pass player doesn't use its main component to its archetype?

Again, Quagsire isn't a counter. And so every player must run Quagsire now?
haze affects both sides of the field
magic bounce does not matter
Except Quagsire doesn't beat BP. Haze Quagsire beats BP, and even then it doesn't beat it all that consistently. The problem is not that stall is forced to run Quagsire, it's that it is forced to run Haze Quagsire, which is otherwise a stupid and redundant set. Haze is entirely useless on Quagsire outside of countering BP.
quagsire has the moveslot to spare
haze/toxic/scald/recover does just fine.
you won't be missing earthquake that much
 
BP is definitely a tough problem to solve, as the move on its own isn't broken and does have competitive use outside of BP chains (namely escaping Pursuit, which for mons like Espeon is a fairly big deal). Also, outright banning the move, the abilities Magic Bounce/Speed Boost, or a combination of the two isn't quite ideal either. You also can't get too complex with the nerf as it's very hard to keep track of in the middle of a match, but at the same time you need something more complex than just a ban.

So what do you do?

IMO, the best way to go about it would be to use a simple kind of restrictive clause where you limit the number of BP users on a team. BP chains are extremely effective because of how easy it is to adapt to your opponent's move choices; you have many types of boosts to use as well as Pokemon of all different types and abilities that can be passed boosts. By limiting the number of users on a team, you make it easier to play around because you limit the number of stats that can be boosted in a chain. It also becomes easier to predict who the opponent will pass to next and what moves will be used to boost up, which allows a player to find a way to deal with it. In my ideal world, I'd restrict the number of users to 2, as you still have a viable strategy, but it now has actual holes in it as you can't do everything that you want to in a chain. Kinda like 4MSS in a sense.

Implement a clause that restricts the number of BP users on a team to 2. Simple solution, implement it.
 
Honestly, IMO, taking advantage of dragon tail is a good option. In my case, if Smeargle tries spore, Goodra switch in then dragon tail.
 
As jpw said, this is a solved playstyle that takes notes of the current metagame trends and counters them with certain pokemon. Lots of skill has been put in, but it's at the person who first found out the ideal baton pass team and then every baton pass player copies it. It's like building a machine. At first it takes a lot of effort to make the team but after it has been built, it's unstoppable and takes just some effort to work it. Everytime a new counter appears, you just modify the machine to suit the counter so it doesn't work anymore. So it's not fair to say its a skill less kind of play as the person who first built the team put in skill. It's like every team that is copied. If the best HO team appears and it defeats all balance and stall types, will you ban it?


Hiphiphooray won't be happy if baton pass is banned
 
Last edited:
Stall can run:

Snatch
Ghost-Type Curse
Haze
Perish Song
Unaware Boosters (e.g CM Clefable / Curse Quagsire)

All are hard counters to BP. If you aren't prepared to "waste" a single moveslot to shut down an extremely prominent playstyle, then you aren't teambuilding correctly.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 0)

Top