Other Baton Pass After the Second Nerf

[Reverb]

As I'm sure you're all aware, Baton Pass was re-nerfed earlier this summer. While the nerf was certainly necessary, it hasn't stopped the cancerous effects of BP on the metagame. Much to his credit, dEnIsSsS has managed to innovate a new BP style. He deserves much credit for his ingenuity. At the same time, however, the team he created is absolutely broken. It devolves every battle into a team matchup crapshoot. Here is a recent example against FLCL: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ou-17008

As you can see, FLCL didn't make any mistakes (he even got a lot of hax), but the particular combination of screens, Taunt, Tailwind, and setup proved insurmountable. I'm sure we all have similar examples not just against dEnIsSsS, but against his imitators. Frankly, the team is so easy to use that it enables anyone to beat top players purely based on team matchup. At the same time, said top players stand no chance because they cannot handle the team's setup. This isn't a case where they simply need to change their team. In fact, the vast majority of viable teams stand no chance against this BP combo. The fact that enables low-leveled players (and I am not talking about dEnIsSsS) to easily defeat top battlers is a testament to how it takes all skill out of the game.

I've made this thread to raise awareness and to encourage the tiering council to take action. In order to ensure a competitive metagame, BP must be completely banned. (Also, hardly anyone dry-passes. Baton pass is virtually always used with setup moves.)

 

[doughboy]

Ok I could understand that with Speed Boost + Iron Defense Scolipede full / quick baton pass chains were ridiculous considering that there was very little you could do to prevent boosting from turn 1. This gave you almost no room to counteract the opponent's attempts to boost outside of a lucky lead guess and Haze.

But if you can't figure out how to counteract the opponent's strategy with 9+ turns of setting up, honestly you deserve to lose. So many viable things can put a stop to this strategy with smart play that fit within normal teambuilding to ban it would really leave a bad mark on the suspect process IMO.

Edit: clarity

 

[Ropeburn]

Frankly, we should just ban dEnisSsS; that seems like the core of the problem. Then we won't have to do anything. But on a more serious note: it seems that the only real problem here is Espeon, and that's a whole bag of worms on its own...Like, that strategy requires so much upkeep that it's hard to argue against it.

The only serious issue I have with that replay is dEnisSsS's nicknames. How old is he?

 

[StarkGod]

I really see no point of this. Baton Pass is manageable on its own and Taunt or Whirlwind shuts it down entirely. The opponent completely let him set up with no problem. If you really have that big of a Baton Pass team problem you can just run Skarmory with Whirlwind.
Sorry if I'm coming off rude, but really I think it's fine just the way it is.

What? You have no idea what you're talking about. You do realize that team has the fastest taunters in the game, Bar Aerodactyl and other prankster mons, right? ya'll do realize that playing this team means an auto lose unless matchup is in extreme favor to you or you get a crit before Espeon comes out; right? Skarmory with whirlwind or any phazer for that matter wouldn't be able to do anything against that team. Period. Talon will burn any physical attacker turn 1, or taunt or tailwind if need be vs anything else. Whim is halving the offenses of anything while azelf is halving all damage for 8 turns. All 3 have taunt. And Smeargle... is obvious. I agree with Reverb. Bp needs to go entirely.

 

[StarkGod]

I respect your opinion, but maybe it's just by personal experience. I myself have never had issues with Baton Pass, even before the nerf. I dunno, maybe I'm just tired of everything being banned. I'm just saying it's not really an issue for me personally. Maybe others disagree, but that's just me.

Here is something I wish more people would understand. Smogon doesn't ban anything. Understand what I mean by this statement. Smogon itself nor the council nor any fixed group of people ban anything. We; the players do. Or at least those who are skilled enough to earn the right to vote. Those who do know what they are talking about. All are seasoned players with a deep understanding of the games mechanics. They aren't voting for bans because 'x breaks stall' or some weird race to ban as much shit as possible. Things leave OU because they need to, and this case is no different. This particular setup is so obviously broken- that the best course of action would be to ban the move entirely. For the sole reason that it is unhealthy to the metagame; just as all other banned cases are.

 

[Always!]

Having faced that team many times, the only way I was able to beat it was by using Icy Wind Keldeo during the turns Smeargle boosted, so it couldn't Baton pass any speed boosts, allowing some of my faster Pokemon to do severe damage to Espeon. The thing is, that was really fucking lucky in terms of team matchup. Watching most other teams play, that team itself is simply broken in the sense it drops a massive amount of support onto Smeargle, who proceeds to boost with impunity, and finish with Espeon. Is this broken, yes, definitely. It's almost impossible to actually beat if you aren't carrying something that has an advantage over that, and that's what gothitelle is for. There are very few OU viable things that can beat it, and those that can aren't the most popular. This is similar to BP, when matches were won due to team matchup.

 

[Stathakis]

I think that baton pass is reliant enough on matchup that most top players (who believe they can outplay their opponents) will not risk bringing it to a matchup it loses and leave themselves with no way to win. that, combined with the stigma of using it, ensures that baton pass sees little to no tournament play. yes, it's still cancer but at this point it's like nipple cancer. don't we want to worry about the more common and more cancerous cancers (like mega mawile etc)?


the effort required to further discuss baton pass at this point is better used elsewhere. beat breast cancer before you worry about nipple cancer.

(unrelated: I know a nipple oncologist who makes 500k/year..... that fucker)

 

[WebBowser]

Has it ever occurred to anyone that it may not be the move BP, but that there are one or two individual abusers that may be broken? I am, of course, talking about smeargle and scolipede. The latter I have been fighting to get banned since before the first BP nerf, and I can write wall of text after wall of text about him, but the TL;DR is that being able to boost speed and defense at the same time is way too powerful for any BPer due to how well they synergize together (giving a mon the ability to shrug off all priority hits as well as outspeed the entire meta is really too much).

As for smeargle, BP smeargle has steadily been receiving buffs since his inception due to getting better and better boosting moves. Could it be possible that geomancy has sent him over the edge? Geomancy is a patently ridiculous move and has singlehandedly made Xeranes a top tier uber mon, perhaps geomancy is simply too much for OU?

I personally do not think that BP is an inherently broken move, in that every mon that receives BP is broken because of it. I think that there are a few broken abusers that deserve to be banned under the support clause. Discuss.

 

[Sergeant Spooky]

In order to ensure a competitive metagame, BP must be completely banned.

Or Geomancy. Just putting that out there. Smeargle would no be efficient enough without it (+1 140 BP Stored Power [Quiver Dance+Cotton Guard] is half as strong as +2 200 BP Stored Power [Geomancy+Cotton Guard,] and even with Screens+Memento+Def boosts Smeargle is not going to be able to take more than a couple hits esp. if it can only boost its SDef by +1 at a time) and a ban in OU wouldn't affect the only other thing that gets it. Scolipede and Smeargle are the most efficient baton passers in terms of boosts/turn (with Smeargle far exceeding Scoli) and dEnIsSsS' team isn't using Scolipede, so I wouldn't be so quick to judge banning Baton Pass is the *only* way to put a final end to dEnIsSsS' wild ride.

So yeah I don't think a BP ban is necessary, if a nerf *has* to be done (not saying it should) it should be a nerf to the most efficient quickpasser available, which is Smeargle. The problem isn't Baton Pass, but this passing of a very large number of boosts in a short amount of time.

Ok I could understand that with Speed Boost + Quick Pass Scolipede fulls baton pass chains / quick pass chains were ridiculous considering that there was very little you could do to prevent boosting from turn 1. This gave you almost no room to counteract the opponent's attempts to boost outside of a lucky lead guess and Haze.

But if you can't figure out how to counteract the opponent's strategy with 9+ turns of setting up, honestly you deserve to lose. So many viable things can put a stop to this strategy with smart play that fit within normal teambuilding to ban it would really leave a bad mark on the suspect process IMO.

Everything has Taunt. Talon/Azelf/Whim/Smeargle are all carrying it. You can't set-up on them, and you can't use your own Taunt (other than Prankster, but Whimisicott also has Prankster) or things like Haze or Perish Song, nor defog to get rid of screens.

You can't prevent Smeargle from passing. It can't be done. With Screens+Tailwind+Memento+Taunt+S/Def boosts, it has very little trouble getting two turns of set-up. It outspeeds your taunts and is really freaking bulky (relatively).

252+ Atk Pure Power Mega Medicham High Jump Kick vs. +3 88 HP / 168 Def Smeargle through Reflect: 247-292 (90.4 - 106.9%) -- 43.8% chance to OHKO
-2 252 Atk Choice Band Terrakion Close Combat vs. 88 HP / 168 Def Smeargle through Reflect: 232-274 (84.9 - 100.3%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO
-2 252 Atk Choice Band Terrakion Close Combat vs. +3 88 HP / 168 Def Smeargle through Reflect: 93-111 (34 - 40.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

And if you do happen to have the perfect counter in something like Clear Smog Amoonguss, Goth comes in and gets rid of it (Smeargle can use Baton Pass as a delayed switch, so you can't necessarily out-predict here.)

I was following dEnIsSsS around for a bit. The team is honestly quite solid, the guys deserves a medal tbh.

THINGS THE TEAM IS WEAK TO:
-Swift Swimmers
-Taunt Thundy
-Bisharp
-Aegislash
-Hax (for a teams that sacs half its members to try to set-up a pokemon with 55/35/45 defenses, crits are a bit more of an issue than for other teams. SpA drops from Moonblast are also really annoying)
-Shed Shell Clear Smog Amoonguss

That's pretty much it.

 

[Jobes]

I know it would perhaps be out of the question, but another option if this comes to be considered a big enough problem to require a nerf, we could always consider the old 'Option 3' from the original BP Suspect Test. This banned the combination of Speed Boost+BP, as well as Magic Bounce+BP. This gets to the core of the problem, Espeon and Scolipede while still allowing these pokémon to exist in the OU meta.

That being said, I'd say that BP is now fine the way it is. Smeargle can be Taunted to stop the BP, Knock Off also takes away its Herb so the setup is much slower. I've found it to be manageable, although perhaps it is solely that my teams tend to be able to handle this particular setup.

 

[StarkGod]

I think that baton pass is reliant enough on matchup that most top players (who believe they can outplay their opponents) will not risk bringing it to a matchup it loses and leave themselves with no way to win. that, combined with the stigma of using it, ensures that baton pass sees little to no tournament play. yes, it's still cancer but at this point it's like nipple cancer. don't we want to worry about the more common and more cancerous cancers (like mega mawile etc)?


the effort required to further discuss baton pass at this point is better used elsewhere. beat breast cancer before you worry about nipple cancer.

(unrelated: I know a nipple oncologist who makes 500k/year..... that fucker)

This would be a good point if the metagame existed solely for tours.

 

[Firebird101]

I think that baton pass is reliant enough on matchup that most top players (who believe they can outplay their opponents) will not risk bringing it to a matchup it loses and leave themselves with no way to win. that, combined with the stigma of using it, ensures that baton pass sees little to no tournament play. yes, it's still cancer but at this point it's like nipple cancer. don't we want to worry about the more common and more cancerous cancers (like mega mawile etc)?


the effort required to further discuss baton pass at this point is better used elsewhere. beat breast cancer before you worry about nipple cancer.

In case you didn't know Mega Mawile has been banned so I would like to know what other things are more cancerous in the tier right now. While I am still waiting for the Thundurus suspect test baton pass shenanigans has to be one of the most frustrating aspects of the game and I am amazed it can still fuck people over when only one pokemon can use it and I agree it has to be disposed off.

It's a shame cause baton pass is in itself not a bad move and can be used to escape pursuit trapping but since people on smogon keep finding broken playstyles to exploit we need to get rid of them to make the metagame more enjoyable.

 

[Sandoori]

I know it would perhaps be out of the question, but another option if this comes to be considered a big enough problem to require a nerf, we could always consider the old 'Option 3' from the original BP Suspect Test. This banned the combination of Speed Boost+BP, as well as Magic Bounce+BP. This gets to the core of the problem, Espeon and Scolipede while still allowing these pokémon to exist in the OU meta.

That being said, I'd say that BP is now fine the way it is. Smeargle can be Taunted to stop the BP, Knock Off also takes away its Herb so the setup is much slower. I've found it to be manageable, although perhaps it is solely that my teams tend to be able to handle this particular setup.

Tailwind Smeargle is going to outTaunt any Taunts that aren't priority, and considering it's coming in safely off a Memento + will Geomancy first turn I'm not sure how you plan to knock the herb off before it's used.

THINGS THE TEAM IS WEAK TO:

Dragon Tail, barring variants that also have Clefable as a potential secondary BP recipient.

Also you kind of autowin if you have a Red Card on something. Smeargle only has one herb and Azelf/Whimsicott can't stop being dead.

 

[rob.]

Ok I could understand that with Speed Boost + Iron Defense Scolipede full / quick baton pass chains were ridiculous considering that there was very little you could do to prevent boosting from turn 1. This gave you almost no room to counteract the opponent's attempts to boost outside of a lucky lead guess and Haze.

But if you can't figure out how to counteract the opponent's strategy with 9+ turns of setting up, honestly you deserve to lose. So many viable things can put a stop to this strategy with smart play that fit within normal teambuilding to ban it would really leave a bad mark on the suspect process IMO.

Edit: clarity

Doughboy hit it right on the head. Plus it's not hard to have one Pokemon with Taunt, Whirlwind, or Roar. Even considering banning Baton Pass is absurd and is a gross overreaction. Baton Pass teams are hard to create and for this player to manage to create incredible teams despite two nerfs is amazing. It really seems like Denisss is the problem.

 

[CopperCooper13]

I feel there is two options to control this.
1. Original Option 3, ban speed boost/magic bounce and baton pass. This fixes this problem with this team, however denis will probably find a way to get through this
2. Ban boosting moves and baton pass. I thought of this at the beginning of the suspect test, but it was a stupid idea. I feel this way you can still use stuff like sub baton pass medicham and baton pass celebi (so it does not get pursuit trapped by t-tar). Baton Pass i feel can only be healthy for the meta if it is used like u-turn or volt switch.

 

[Firebird101]

Doughboy hit it right on the head. Plus it's not hard to have one Pokemon with Taunt, Whirlwind, or Roar. Even considering banning Baton Pass is absurd and is a gross overreaction. Baton Pass teams are hard to create and for this player to manage to create incredible teams despite two nerfs is amazing. It really seems like Denisss is the problem.

I don't think any pro-ban bp denies the difficulty of creating baton pass teams and I agree dEnIsSs made a amazing team but it's not like you can blame the player for discovering new ways to exploit shit when we allow it, sure baton pass has a stigma around it already but as long as it is allowed there isn't anything that hinders you from using it.

And Sergeant Spooky already went over how good that team is and how little you can actually do against it. Like so many baton pass teams it's matchup reliant and the battle was over before it begun.

 

[AM]

I really don't understand the issue with this at this late point in the meta game. I can sympathize with striving for a competitive meta game but let's be realistic. You guys had months to handle this issue. You as a community chose an option that inherently made the situation even worse either due to ignorance of BP as a whole or out of desperation, and the council had to basically clean up the mess and implement a clause that for the most part killed the legitimacy of any sort of BP playstyle, regardless if you thought it was broken or not you practically made Baton Pass chains unviable. Only a handful of players can actually run BP to the extent of how Denis does. Let's not exaggerate Baton Pass to the point we have to make a discussion after the second nerf lol. The fact that a second nerf had to take place in the first place still leaves me scratching my head.

Your argument about team matchup frankly I think is irrelevant. Team matchup issues will always be a problem more or less. Mostly everyone here knows the philosophy of team match up and how it's not necessarily an auto-win for the favorable player, so not going to continue on that.

Also with all due respect, how are you going to just make a wild assumption and assume that nobody dry passes anymore simply cause it's not done in OU everyday? Last time I checked the clauses that are implemented into the OU tier take effect in the lower tiers. All you're really doing is setting a poor example of why stuff should actually be banned or removed from the tier as a whole. This argument made perfect sense when an entire team was dedicated to passing boosts and the checks and counters were so isolated it required you to resort to terrible options or subpar options for your team as a whole. It's screens, taunts, boosts, pass. It's not too hard of a concept to grasp and I understand that it's hard to accept that such a design has the capabilities to exploit the flaws of the tier itself. However we're bringing these flaws upon ourselves as a community simply cause we are not open to using Whirlwind, Taunt, and general phasing moves that are part of the game.

At some point you're going to have to draw the line and accept that there is only so much you can actually take out before you have nothing left. Food for thought.

 

[SmashBrosBrawl]

BP must be completely banned.

Lol i said pretty much this exact same thing when baton pass was being nerfed for the first time. Baton pass is an absolutely broken move, this has got beyond the classic concept of 6 mons chains and now we can finally see the fact that the problem was always the move itself. There are just way too many things that can support baton pass teams such as geomancy, dual screens, memento, taunt, prankster and magic bounce that you cannot realistic deal with it unless the matchup favors you so im definitely for a ban on this cancerous move once and for all. But in a way its good this happened so that people can see with their own eyes that complex bans are dumb so hopefully this will never happen again.

healthy for the meta if it is used like u-turn or volt switch.

lol...

 

[Shiruba]

Can we please discuss WebBowser's post a bit more? I'm pretty tired and rather emotionally drained rn but I feel that WebBowser's post is an underrated one and it's a shame that nobody's really discussed it. I honestly think that it's Smeargle's boundless possibilities for support that could very easily be to blame for it, or even Geomancy, which is a ridiculous move anyway. Geomancy lets you set up ridiculously quickly, to the point where Xerneas, while it's good without Geomancy, makes even Ubers its bitch with it. Smeargle also has a lot of other tricks up its sleeves, too, with access to both of the best sleep moves in the game, any utility move you can think of, and probably some more, really great ideas that haven't even been tapped into.

Can we also just possibly maybe consider the idea that if you let something set up while it's not only behind screens but also has Memento support, it's gonna destroy shit? Like, if you let something like, say, Mega Charizard X get up two D-dances? Good fucking luck, hope you've got a Quagsire. Nasty Plot Thundurus got up two Nasty Plots? Better hope you have a fucking Chansey. Did that Thundurus just happen to pack Focus Blast? lol byebye

Also, heck, maybe this is just the birth of a new playstyle that goes outside the traditional line of Full Stall to Hyper Offense? What if this is just something teams need to prepare for? What if we finally need to break the mold a little bit and accept that it's okay to have to pack something to beat a certain playstyle?

Again this post is probably all over the place and I apologise but I really do think you guys are being hasty and freaking the fuck out over this without critically analyzing it a lot. Just my thoughts of course, feel free to ignore this entirely.

 

[Karxrida]

Also, heck, maybe this is just the birth of a new playstyle that goes outside the traditional line of Full Stall to Hyper Offense? What if this is just something teams need to prepare for? What if we finally need to break the mold a little bit and accept that it's okay to have to pack something to beat a certain playstyle?

Because the only ways to deal with it are shut down by opposing Taunts and Espeon's Magic Bounce.

I honestly don't care what we do about BP at this point, but I'd need to see more "cancerous" replays before fully supporting another ban.

 

[Firebird101]

Doing another nerf on baton pass is just further beating around the bush. Sure we can make more complex bans like no baton pass+speed boost or magic bounce but baton pass teams can still function well without them, it may take more skill but if you know what you are doing it is unstoppable unless the opponent has the right tools necessary to shut down the baton pass but if not you may as well forfeit the match at the get go.

I wasn't cool with banning baton pass at first and wanted to nerf it like so many other people but Smogon has been trying to nerf baton pass for quite some time now and it still finds a way to be create match-up reliant games and I am sick of that shit.

 

[haunter]

This thread turned into complete garbage already in one page. Furthermore, this discussion was not approved by the OU Council. Therefore, I'm going to lock it.