[DONE] Uncompetitive Strategies [Baton Pass]

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In my eyes, the goal of this discussion is to eliminate what we deem to be uncompetitive and banworthy from various generations without compromising or ruining legitimate strategies.

For this to be done, I think a case by case approach (individual action for each generation that needs something done) is better than a blanket ban. A blanket ban is general, as various above posters stated, and will never be the best fit for every generation. For example, if we banned the move baton pass from every generation (which is an extreme that I'm not proposing, just using as an example), then all of these issues would be solved, but a plethora of viable strategies would be ruined at the same time. On the other side of the spectrum, if we implemented a ban akin to the generation six ban to each gen, dealing with multiple BP users per team, it would only cover some of the issues (the various forms of quick-pass you see in current ORAS OU and SmashPass in BW/ORAS would still remain unaffected). Given the above, I'll talk about what I believe to be the best specific solutions for each generation's baton pass problem, or lack thereof, but I'll stay within areas which I have sufficient knowledge (BW and ORAS).

I'll start with BW. As the OP states, BW has two forms of BP for the most part - Smash Pass and Full BP. Both of these are as effective as they are primarily because of Espeon gaining access to Magic Bounce, which gets in the way of most counterplay to BP that was present in previous generations. With this taken into consideration, I'll first give my input as to if I think they're banworthy or not and then state the best solution, in my opinion.

Smash Pass is potent and only needs a safe turn or two, which isn't hard to get given the fact that screens will usually be up, and then you've got a mixrach or a mixmence with +2/+2/+2 in while your opponent is likely lacking a way to stop this pokemon from sweeping. I am not for just picking an example up and saying "look how good it did, it must be broken", but if a strategy is consistently successful and the opponent doesn't stand much of a chance so often, then you have to draw a line at some point - going onto some examples of smash pass that I feel speak volumes about its success: Shake won a BW OU live tour using Smash Pass every round (I even got two crits vs him in finals, but still managed to lose to his mence in the long run although I could have played a bit differently had I known all of the sets while another competent BW player, Leftiez, wasn't able to do much vs SmashPass either, despite having a solid team and playing around the first Shell Smasher) and the game linked in the OP of Omfuga vs Shake for BW Cup, where Omfuga used a standard Moltres rain team I gave him (he even slapped Haze onto Scarf Politoed, but you'll see more about this later in my post), shows Smash Pass dominating a semi-standard team archetype. There are infinite examples thanks to various people using Smash Pass to great success in Smogon Tour, Classic, etc. and I think that a strategy that leaves so little room for counterplay and minimal room for error whatsoever when playing against is not a competitive strategy, nor one that is healthy for the metagame. Furthermore, I think that Smash Pass needs to be addressed in BW.

How should it be addressed? The most direct solution is a ban of Baton Pass + Shell Smash in the same moveset (which was stated as an option in the OP). Going back to the purpose of this thread that I listed at the start of my post, this ban would put an end to the strategy that is banworthy while not having any effects on other strategies. This sort of specific complex ban has provoked a lot of fuss over the years because it's unprecedented in some areas and the justification behind it is shaky, but if we can limit the number of users with baton pass on a given team (which we did in generation six), then I see no reason why we can't go further and restrict movesets that we deem broken (such as BP + SS) as it would be sort of an arbitrary stoppage point to limit potential bans to number of users on a team when moveset bans would provide a direct solution to this problem.

Full BP is a whole other can of worms. I'm going to jump right into showing how hard it is to deal with it by referring back to the Omfuga vs Shake series for BW Cup, except using a different game, where Shake uses full BP instead of Smash Pass while Omfuga uses the same team, but this time Haze Politoed gets a use, but Omfuga still stands no chance bar a few extra opportunities to land a well-timed crit. To beat full BP, odds are you're going to need to continuously apply offensive pressure to your opponent and either crit at the right time or out-sweep them early and quickly, before it's too late and Espeon is sweeping you with Stored Power as you say "fuck pokemon" and eventually rage quit on your opponent haha. Going back to the main topic, full BP with no limits on the amount of BP users has the ability to adapt to normal counterplay and win a devastatingly high proportion of tour games it's used in (Espeon, a staple on these teams, has a win percentage of 65% in BW2 OU Smogon tour games this season and I bet it's even higher than that when being used on full BP because the rare occurance of seeing Espeon on a sun team and Espeon is also on SmashPass, which has a less reliable/consistent win rate). Before you ask 'why not just get rid of Espeon', I was just using it as an example as it's on every full BP team and it's pretty symbolic of the full BP archetype; there are better bans that wouldn't compromise a pokemon that has (albeit minimal) other uses. Anyway, the point of this is that full Baton Pass is nearly unbeatable using a lot of bulkier/slower paced teams and even when you're using something with a win condition or two and lots of offensive pressure, you have to execute perfectly in a short period of time just to have a shot to break through BP (you may still need to catch a lucky break to beat it depending on circumstances). Allowing a strategy with this capability isn't something anyone should want, so I'd think that bp deserves to be addressed in BW.

How should it be addressed? The solution that eliminates the current state of BP while not compromising any current outstanding strategies would be limiting the amount of BP users, similar to what is done in generation six and what is proposed in the OP, but I'm not sure if it should be to one or two users or what - that's trivial at this point, what matters is that the amount of users should be limited and once that's established, then the specific amount can be discussed if it's up for question.

Now onto ORAS. I know that Smash Pass is a thing in ORAS (that team with Whimsicott, Mega Diancie, Azelf, Gorebyss, Lucario, and Lando (before it was banned, idk what replaces it now)) and I've seen it in use before, but I honestly haven't played against it once (thankfully) and haven't seen it too many times to feel comfortable commenting, although the replays in the OP seem to be pretty indicative of how it is as a strategy. Regardless, to be fair and not risk misrepresenting ORAS SmashPass, I'll refrain from commenting on it for now. However, I will leave my thoughts on this GeoPass that was created, popularized, and abused to death after the baton pass limit was implemented. Essentially, it sets up screens, gets a memento off, usually gets a tailwind off, and then passed a Geomancy to an Espeon which is essentially invincible unless you have one of a very select few things or you manage to sweep the GeoPass team before it gets these conditions and the Geomancy up. The systematic and consistent success of this style just attests to the overall problematic nature of Baton Pass variants dating back to BW and still lasting today. It's actually a bit harder to argue for this GeoPass to be considered broken, when looking at it in perspective, as it does require a lot of support in the screens, memento, and tailwind, but they all are set up in order and the pokemon are essentually suicide mons to lead up to the sweep, so it's not really physical support, more like any other team member that synergizes well with a win condition, I suppose. Regardless, this archetype, like BW smash pass, will get the job done against passive teams that cannot get in the way of the supporters and eventual GeoPass to Espeon while still doing well against offense as memento and screens interfere with their immediate attempts to sweep and if the game gets prolonged, offense will eventually lose to espeon with a geomancy unless there is one of the few ways to prevent Smeargle from setting up despite having sash, screens, memento momentum, etc. I'd also like to point out the Smogon Tour usage stats again - Smeargle has a 71% win rate and Espeon has a 60% win rate (probably higher on GeoPass as Smeargle's restricted to this archetype as far as I know and it sits 11% higher, but can't say for sure). Smeargle's rate is absurdly high for a 'gimmick' pokemon that only has viability on one archetype, so it's fair to say that this variant of BP should go given this piece of evidence and the systematic nature of it that I mentioned before (Screens+TWind+Memento leads to Geo+Pass leads to death).

How should it be addressed? Banning the move Geomancy is the best way to go as nothing in OU uses Geomancy, it's the root of the problem given that it is being passed, and there was another move ban this generation, there's at least a slight precedent for it (although Geomancy and Swagger aren't really comparable, there's at least some justification and this is another solution that eliminates the problem without compromising any viable strategies, which I'm trying to emphasize here).

Overall, I generally agree with the OP's proposals for dealing with these issues and given my analysis of the various styles I discussed, I'm leaning to the side that these specific variants of BP are banworthy.
 
Apparently there hasn't been enough public agreement as to how the (mainly ORAS) BP issue should be fixed. Can we have some more people chip in on that so WCoP isn't ruined by it?

I would support something like what koko wanted, restricting the amount of boosts a Pokemon can have before using BP. That seems to cover legitimately every single problem across the gens.
 
Hey everyone, some of you may or may not know me, but I'm a frequent ladder player who has peaked every ladder ORAS has provided. I bring this up, as I believe the community that is most effected by this uncompetitive play style is the laddering community, as it is a well know and more commonly seen method of easily achieve reqs for suspect tests and reaching high position on the ladder. Not to say this doesn't effect the Tournament community as badly, it's just not seen as commonly, due to more players having integrity and respect towards the competitive principles we as a whole try to uphold and showboat. Introductions aside, I am here to make a point and show an aspect for the laddering community that has not properly represented itself in this thread yet.

As a whole, I can bark for the majority of frequent ladder players that also believe this play style is a disgusting and skill less cancer that has plague this game for too long, even with the different methods we have gone about to try and reduce the effectiveness and viability of it. However, just saying this and not providing a supporting argument to why this is, would be nothing more than a pointless task that would be merely mimicking the thoughts and words of others. That is why I wanted to present some information that no one else has shed light on or at least has not gone into detail about.

The main factor of why baton pass is uncompetitive in my eyes, is the lack of actually viable and realistic answer that there are to it, which can be effectively implemented into a successful team. Now if we look at the actually methods of dealing with this will be able to see this much more clearly:

  • Mega Sableye - Calm Mind Sableye is one of the best ways to stop and pretty much instantly win against this play style. As you can't be statused, taunted, phased out or effected in any other way that would be a stop to you setting up against this type of team. You are also not effected by stored power, which effectively shuts down Unaware users from being effective against this play style. You also have access to two super effective stabs against Espeon. In saying all this, most baton pass teams tend to carry a back up sweeper in the form of Unaware Clefable, which can completely shut down Mega Sableye.

  • Mega Heracross - With Skill Link and great coverage it is able to break the opposing teams potential Focus Sashes and with SD it can avoid the drops from memento. This is another great way of dealing with it however, it can be disable by a smart player who taunts on the SD when your predicting a memento. It also isn't a fan of Gothitel, which can trap it and hit it with a super effective Psychic STAB.

  • Haze - This effectively removes the opponents stat boosts, crippling there strategy. This is more shaky then what most would like to believe, with only three Pokemon in OU that can learn it (Dragonite, Gengar and Altarria) which when using this move they all lose lots of their potential and presence when faced with other actual competitive teams and it's also shut down by taunt, which being as whimsicot out speeds all three of these mons, it isn't that difficult.

  • Roar/Whirlwind - Phases the opponent out, therefor losing there boosts. Another shaky answer, as seen in OLT finals, where Blunder was pressured with a constant huge decisions, while wq was losing very little and was able to score a chance to set up and win. User's are also effected by taunt, crippled by Goth and once there in with Espeon you can't phase them out due to Magic Bounce.

  • Excadrill - With Mold breaker Excadrill is able to land a Toxic on Espeon, which will eventually lead to it fainting. This is a cool option, but is incredible flawed, as you opponent could be carrying Substitute (although not as useful) and the fact that they will be able to kill multiply pokemon before fainting, which can usually lead to holes being opened up for there second sweeper to set up and finish the game off.

  • Taunt - Stops the opponent from using boosting moves and baton pass. This would be a great method, if Whimsicot didn't out speed every viable taunter in the tier along with the fact that once Scolipede has hit plus one it can out speed you and freely pass its boosts to Espeon which can not be taunted.

Just by looking at these short few selection of shaky answers, we can see that not only are most of them not reliable, but there also not very beneficial and compatible to fit in with the different competitive play styles that ORAS has to offer. Having to limit the capabilities of our team and rely on uncertainty to be able to handle an already uncompetitive play style is just absurd in my books. This is part of the reason that its effective as well, as players usually only consider competitive play when creating teams and most likely over look this play style for the ability to compete with other competitive teams.

What do I think should be done about this? I honestly believe that Dr. Zeni$ suggestion was the best, as a lot of these problems stem from the combination of speed+boosts, as it prevents us from using faster mons to our advantage and getting off crucial damage, status or other options of controlling the matter.

In conclusion, this strategy has far to little reliable answers to handle it, increasing the effectiveness and success of this uncompetitive strategy. I feel the best way to reduce the effectiveness of this would be to disallow passing stats when the speed has been boosted.
Hope this was readable, as I wrote this in a pretty tired state in my free time at uni today and if I missed any effective measure for this play style feel free to let me know and ill include them in that list.
 
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Soul Fly

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Apparently there hasn't been enough public agreement as to how the (mainly ORAS) BP issue should be fixed. Can we have some more people chip in on that so WCoP isn't ruined by it?

I would support something like what koko wanted, restricting the amount of boosts a Pokemon can have before using BP. That seems to cover legitimately every single problem across the gens.
Small note, but that would be a la Sleep Clause, except worse because sleep clause has precedent in at least ONE (even if obscure and obsolete) game mode.

The idea of interfering with in-game mechanics is a completely unpleasant one because if there's one thing we do aim for is keeping the game playable on cartridge with the same ruleset. At least sleep-clause is black and white (not more than one pokemon put to sleep) and is easily followed with a gentleman's agreement. This on the other hand opens up an ungodly hornet's nest because "How much is too much" plus the plethora of boosting moves/effects that actually make this work is too subjective and an intricate web of power that make this strategy usable.

It'd be much cleaner to be bold and take a definitive call.
 

Zarel

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Small note, but that would be a la Sleep Clause, except worse because sleep clause has precedent in at least ONE (even if obscure and obsolete) game mode.
No, it wouldn't.

Sleep Clause Mod explicitly can't be emulated on-cartridge.

My proposal, which is also koko's and Dennis's proposal, can easily be done on-cartridge: if you press "Baton Pass" while your Pokémon has Speed boosts and you have other choices (either you're not trapped or you're not locked into Baton Pass), you're disqualified and automatically lose. It's not a mod.

(Neither is Mega Rayquaza Clause, incidentally)
 

Soul Fly

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^I was talking about Pokemon Stadium, (plus also note my point on people easily adhering to it on-cart) and also.


Regarding the second point - is just speed enough? Plus again, is even a standard 1.5/2x speed boost on it's own game breaking, considering Options like Rock Polish do exist? Isn't it in combination with an attack boost that it becomes threatening? Or are we going for "no one'll probably use BP if they can't speedpass with other boosts so fuck it let's ban" angle. Because despite the cheesing, there is some merit to setting up an offensive pass imo.


edit: fuck it. Seems good enough, for the need of urgent implementation. ^That argument is philosphical fine-tuning. For the record I believe it's dangerous precedent to replicate sleep-clause mechanics without thorough discussion.
 

Zarel

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(plus also note my point on people easily adhering to it on-cart)
The idea of interfering with in-game mechanics is a completely unpleasant one because if there's one thing we do aim for is keeping the game playable on cartridge with the same ruleset. At least sleep-clause is black and white (not more than one pokemon put to sleep) and is easily followed with a gentleman's agreement. This on the other hand opens up an ungodly hornet's nest because "How much is too much" plus the plethora of boosting moves/effects that actually make this work is too subjective and an intricate web of power that make this strategy usable.
I still don't know what's so hard about:

> if you press "Baton Pass" while your Pokémon has Speed boosts and you have other choices (either you're not trapped or you're not locked into Baton Pass), you're disqualified and automatically lose. It's not a mod.

Alternatively, if we don't want to rely on a midgame DQ, this may be a simpler formulation: if a Pokémon has Baton Pass as a move, it is not allowed to have abilities/items/moves that reliably raise Speed: this includes the ability Speed Boost, the item Salac Berry, or any move that has a 100% chance of raising your own Speed stages (Flame Charge, Agility, Dragon Dance, etc).

I'm intentionally excluding Weak Armor, AncientPower et al, but we can include those, too, if they're a problem.

edit: Wait, are you the same guy I called out on the Challenge Cup thread? I swear I'm not trying to single you out; I'm sure you're a cool guy in general.
 
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Soul Fly

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It's cool bro. I'm sure you're too. :)

That's a fair enough solution. I actually like the second one because it leaves legitimate uses like BP escape to soft-counter volt-turn, escape Pursuit-trap, CM Pass etc viable.

While the DQ is simple if prefer people actually have a greater depth of discussion regarding the introduction of DQ mechanics in sim.
 

Texas Cloverleaf

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I still don't know what's so hard about:

> if you press "Baton Pass" while your Pokémon has Speed boosts and you have other choices (either you're not trapped or you're not locked into Baton Pass), you're disqualified and automatically lose. It's not a mod.

Alternatively, if we don't want to rely on a midgame DQ, this may be a simpler formulation: if a Pokémon has Baton Pass as a move, it is not allowed to have abilities/items/moves that reliably raise Speed: this includes the ability Speed Boost, the item Salac Berry, or any move that has a 100% chance of raising your own Speed stages (Flame Charge, Agility, Dragon Dance, etc).

I'm intentionally excluding Weak Armor, AncientPower et al, but we can include those, too, if they're a problem.

edit: Wait, are you the same guy I called out on the Challenge Cup thread? I swear I'm not trying to single you out; I'm sure you're a cool guy in general.
The second option is likely better as it prevents situations that could potentially force a DQ. Say in BW a Shadow Tag Sub CM Chandelure traps a Pokemon with Agility, Baton Pass, Swords Dance, and a Fighting attack. The Pokemon has the option of SD or attacking into the Chandelure instead of Baton Passing, so they would lose if they switched, but not switching gives a free +6/+6 Subbed Chandelure which is essentially the same thing. Banning the combinations entirely prevents that possibility and other theoretical scenarios like it.
 

atomicllamas

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I mean I still think the best option is to just address the things in the OP and then address other problems that arise at a future time. My second choice would be the speed boosting ban (ie can't baton pass with speed boosts). Aldaron was talking about a way to do this w/o breaking game mechanics, which would simply be to disallow you to click baton pass when your Pokemon has a speed boost, just like how it works on showdown with taunt + none attacking moves or encore + any other move. I still think that trying to make an all encompassing "clause" is an inferior option to a simple list of banned moves (or abilities) alongside BP (Shell Smash, Geomancy (just ban the move Geomancy), and possibly speed boost if deemed necessary), which is easier to understand for a newer player and less restrictive on crap that isn't broken (ie agility pass).
 
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Zarel

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I still think that trying to make an all encompassing "clause" is an inferior option to a simple list of banned moves (or abilities) alongside BP (Shell Smash, Geomancy (just ban the move Geomancy), and possibly speed boost if deemed necessary), which is easier to understand for a newer player and less restrictive on crap that isn't broken (ie agility pass).
There are two main reasons why some people prefer the all-encompassing clause:

- Clauses should be simple and straightforward to understand. A relatively simple rule is better than memorizing a 10-item banlist or whatever.

- A simple list of bans has been tried again and again, and new Baton Pass strategies keep on being overpowered. That's why people want to ban it "once and for all" instead of keeping on playing Baton Pass Overpowered Strategies Whack-A-Mole.
 
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atomicllamas

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- A simple list of bans has been tried again and again, and new Baton Pass strategies keep on being overpowered. That's why people want to ban it "once and for all" instead of keeping on playing Baton Pass Overpowered Strategies Whack-A-Mole.
Aside from the fact this isn't true (there have only been 2 bans attempted for BP this gen, all addressing full BP, neither addressing anything else). Even if it were true, broken strategies not being banned in the past doesn't justify the rash decision to ban non-broken things (unless someone is arguing agility pass is broken and I missed it). I understand people are upset about BP, but we shouldn't be making emotional decisions when it comes to tiering, we should surgically remove the broken shit without removing none broken shit. If we ban the things in the OP and then find quiver pass is broken, ban that too, if we had just done that a month ago we probably would already figured out if that was the case. Instead we've spent that month arguing about what kind of clause we should implement, all of them being flawed in some way.

As for confusing, a list of banned combos is 100% more simple. If I build a smash pass team and try to find a battle, the search for a battle button will stop me and say the combo of SS and BP is illegal on gorebyss, and I'll know to change it. If there is a clause, I bring my team, set up screens, SS with gorebyss, and, oh wait, the sim won't let me baton pass ?_? I've won games like that due to the sleep clause where my opponent doesn't understand how it works so they Spore me twice before I tell them what the sleep clause is, and then they forfeit. List of bans has a much lower entrance barrier than a clause does, as it only requires the ability to read, where as clauses require a background knowledge on the clause itself. You don't have to memorize bans, the sim does that for you, you have to memorize clauses (thus reason 1 people prefer clauses is actually why list of bans is preferable).

The natural cure thing with sleep clause is a good point, never thought of that.
 

Lavos

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Point of clarification. This ties into the concurrent discussion in thread "Transitivity of Bans". Is the Dr. Zeni$ BP+Speed boost ban proposal being considered for all gens or just ORAS?
 
Point of clarification. This ties into the concurrent discussion in thread "Transitivity of Bans". Is the Dr. Zeni$ BP+Speed boost ban proposal being considered for all gens or just ORAS?
The DR. Zenis suggestion was directly related to the ORAS meta game, However I can imagine that it can also directly effect and theoretically close down some of the older generations Baton Pass issues, so I would believe it to be a matter of interpretation, as to whether or not it would be effective in that generation and if we should consider it. In other words, from what I've gathered it's open to be discussed and considered in all generation, as long as it would be considered the most effective and reliable measure to stop this issue.
 

Lavos

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Okay, thanks Snowy. I assume it's a good policy to implement in ORAS, considering the overwhelming support it's received. As BKC asked, I'm going to offer some brief opinions on BP+Speed boosting in other generations.

In BW it's a clearly uncompetitive strategy and should be banned. Look to any of user Tsunami's SmashPass adventures for proof of this. That's only the tip of the iceberg. Teams fully dedicated to BP, something like a Ninjask/Vaporeon/Espeon/Mr.Mime/Mew/Scizor, are downright toxic to the metagame. The main issue is that you either have answers or you don't. There exists little to no consistent counterplay. Your best bet is to lead with something that can force Ninjask to BP, predict the BP, and switch to an extremely heavy hitter such as CB Terrakion or Specs Latios. Setup sweepers don't work after the first few turns because of Mr. Mime's Encore. Roar doesn't work on Mr. Mime due to Soundproof, and no phazing works on Espeon due to Magic Bounce. Hazards actually aren't a huge deal for BP teams as long as Ninjask can get 3 or more Speed Boost turns off, but Espeon counters them as well. Taunt gets Magic Bounced or outsped and blocked by Substitute. The only way to secure a guaranteed win against BP is to use Sableye, or something really fringe like Roar Ttar or Haze...Crobat? Unaware Quagsire doesn't even work. Alternatively, break subs and pray for crits. If you can't do any of this, the BP team will continue to accrue boosts until it maxes out, then pass to Espeon and Stored Power everything in the game from 100 to 0. Except Darks, which you have Scizor/Vaporeon for (they both generally run an attack, Bullet Punch/Scald respectively). Point is, if you don't stop it from boosting up within the first ~5 turns, you lost. And few things can do that.

I don't know enough about DPP to offer a worthwhile opinion. However, I can infer that it's like BP in BW, but less broken due to no Magic Bounce/Stored Power. Maybe it ends the pass chain with a Machamp or something.

In ADV it's similar to BW except there's less abuse on the BP side (Magic Bounce, Stored Power) but also less counterplay on the non BP side (Sableye, Choice Specs). Also Soundproof Mr. Mime still wrecks Roar users which probably make up the majority of phazers, so your options are still just having Whirlwind or Haze. Which are both slightly more common in ADV, to be fair. I'd lean towards ban here.

In GSC it isn't broken or even uncompetitive. JoltWak hasn't seen success for a while so I won't discuss it. Relative to full BP, I think there's a lot of counterplay. Note that full BP in GSC doesn't actually mean 6 BP users, it's generally 3/4 boost passers to 2/3 physically offense threats like Snorlax, Machamp, Marowak, and Quagsire. Almost every good team runs a phazer. There's no Taunt, Magic Bounce, or Soundproof, so this always kills the boost chain. The only way to stop being phazed as a BP user is to Spore/LK the phazer, which is really hard to do against an experienced player because they know exactly what you want to do and can play around it. Additionally, almost every good team runs a Sleep Talker. This makes the effect of Sleep quite minimal, which Smeargle in particular relies heavily on. Speaking of Smeargle, it's the universal lead for full BP teams in GSC, and it matches up very poorly against the most common leads. The leads you see most in GSC, in order, are Sleep Talk Zapdos, Sleep Talk OR Roar Raikou, and LK Nidoking, with the occasional Snorlax, Cloyster, or Tyranitar. If it's a Zapdos lead, Smeargle is in a very bad situation. It is forced to Agility turn 1 while it eats a Thunder for a max of 90% damage, putting it out of Substitute range (some run Belly Drum over this). Then it has to guess whether Zapdos will stay in and Thunder/Hidden Power, or if it will Sleep Talk on a predicted Spore, giving it around a 55% chance to KO Smeargle immediately if you factor in Thunder accuracy. The issue here is that nothing on the standard BP squad wants to eat a Thunder, but if your +2 Smeargle dies it's essentially over. So the BP player starts at a strategical disadvantage. The Raikou matchup is even worse, because some lead Raikous are Sleep Talk variants while others are Roar variants, meaning not only is Turn 1 a guess on Spore for Roar variants vs Agility for ST variants, but Turn 2 is also a guess. Even if they attacked T1 and you used Agility, Spore isn't safe. And if you used Spore on their attack, or even their Roar, Agility isn't safe because they could go directly to their phazer. Raikou is the hardest lead matchup. Nidoking is the best of the 3 because Smeargle runs MiracleBerry (equivalent of Lum) so LK won't do anything. Agility is always a safe turn 1 play against Nidoking. The only threat is Thief taking the MiracleBerry, followed by a LK, but even then you can predict and Sub on the LK, then BP/Spore safely. However, it's still not perfect, because if Nido uses LK turn 1 and you Agility, you're faced with another predict on his follow up LK or EQ, although this one favors the Smeargle player. Hard counters to GSC BP include having two phazers so they can't both be asleep (not uncommon especially on stall teams e.g. Skarm + Kou/Cune) and using Haze Dragonite.

In summary: ban in BW, idk DPP, probably ban in ADV, don't ban in GSC.
 

Aldaron

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Most of the currently good ADV players I talked to said the limitation we already implemented is fine.

Is this wrong?

BP also doesn't need to be touched in DPP or GSC.

I've pretty much been focusing on ORAS in this thread with a mind towards BW.
 
bp definitely needs to be fixed in dpp due to the surge in gliscor pass, full chains have also been popping up with alarming success. I'm fine with adv but drumpass is pretty stupid at times, it'd be nice if we got rid of it and thus removed a stupid matchup aspect only used to take skill out of the equation and cheese the opponent.
 
Not to pressure or rush anything, but I really think we need to enforce some of these bans very soon, with WCOP starting up and other major events being around the corner that could also be potentially effected. With the majority all ready agreeing that this style of play is nothing more than a cancer in each respected meta (baring some doubts about RBY), it seems to me that delaying these bans would be delaying the inevitable, especially in ORAS we're a general agreement of the Dr. Zenis solution has been widely accepted and has been seen as the most productive measure so far to handle this. I'd also like to bring up what Aldaron has said, in the fact that we can always tweak these implementations if necessary to better handle this problem, meaning that we really do not lose much by having this in place. It would be great if we could see some action taken relatively soon, for the reasoning presented here.
 

Zarel

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I think we've had the most support for this formulation:

If a Pokémon has Baton Pass as a move, it is not allowed to have abilities/items/moves that reliably raise Speed: this includes the abilities Weak Armor and Speed Boost, the item Salac Berry, or any move that has a 100% chance of raising your own Speed stages (Flame Charge, Agility, Dragon Dance, etc).​

I'm intentionally excluding AncientPower et al, but we can include those, too, if they're a problem.​

It's roughly the same thing, but it prevents certain dumb situations, it's easier to implement, and it's also nice for casual ladderers in that they learn that BPing Speed boosts is banned during team validation, rather than in the middle of game.
 
i don't understand how that has the most support, as it's a complex ban that prevents a non-broken strategy? since when has passing pure speed boosts without anything else been an actual issue? the proposal to prevent baton passing other boosts when your speed is higher than +0 is the one that hit the nail on the head, as it prevents speed boost + iron defense, smashpass, geopass and the dpp gliscor sd+agility baton pass.
 

jpw234

Catastrophic Event Specialist
I think we've had the most support for this formulation:

If a Pokémon has Baton Pass as a move, it is not allowed to have abilities/items/moves that reliably raise Speed: this includes the abilities Weak Armor and Speed Boost, the item Salac Berry, or any move that has a 100% chance of raising your own Speed stages (Flame Charge, Agility, Dragon Dance, etc).​

I'm intentionally excluding AncientPower et al, but we can include those, too, if they're a problem.​

It's roughly the same thing, but it prevents certain dumb situations, it's easier to implement, and it's also nice for casual ladderers in that they learn that BPing Speed boosts is banned during team validation, rather than in the middle of game.
Speaking about ORAS specifically: speed boosting with Baton Pass is clearly NOT the issue and quick-implementing this ban is a very bad idea. Several non-broken uses of BP include: NastyPass Celebi, AgilityPass Mew (into e.g. Mega-Ampharos), AgilityPass Scizor. The common feature of these non-broken strategies is that they pass either speed or attack/defense boosts. This type of passing has been fine throughout ORAS because they each have natural counters - passing attack boosts (e.g. NastyPass Celebi to Keld) can be defeated by outspeeding the recipient; meanwhile, passing speed boosts (e.g. Agility to Mega-Amphy) can be defeated by the same set of defensive Pokemon that typically tank the recipient's hits. The only broken places are where a single BP mon is able to pass both speed boosts AND offensive/defensive boosts, since neither strategy becomes an effective way to stop the recipient (and since the recipient is typically Espeon you also lose phazing/status methods of dealing with the problem). I would submit that, as is directly evidenced by our common experiences with ORAS, the only two Pokemon capable of doing this effectively in OU are Scolipede (with the combo of Speed Boost + Iron Defense/Swords Dance) and Smeargle (with access to Geomancy and Cotton Guard). As such, we should ban these two broken Pokemon under the support characteristic. This position is additionally supported because the very few other Pokemon capable of quickly passing both speed + defense/offense boosts (e.g. SD Ninjask, QD Venomoth) are non-factors in OU.

The additional benefit of this proposal is that it doesn't get into the complex ban quagmire.
 

Aldaron

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If most people here are fine with the greying out button, I guess we have to now come to what the situations are in which we will grey out.

I've been thinking about it for a while, and while I was initially on the side of "just ban bp + speed boost", I've been convinced by others that agilityPass is worth it enough to not ban (though a lot still argue that AgilityPass was broken in DP).

So I guess my support is currently falling into "you cannot hit BP if you have boosts in more than 1 stat", which only makes us lose the BP chain use case. We keep the agilityPass use case and lose some of those "pass 1 agility / nasty plot from togekiss" (or whatever example) use cases but I see that SO INFREQUENTLY I'm not particularly inclined to care....
 
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atomicllamas

but then what's left of me?
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I feel like it's worth specifying speed + one or more other stat. Calm Mind pass w/ Musharna (and a Kee berry if real) was pretty legit at certain points. Weakness policy pass was a strat commonly used in UU when celebi was a part of the tier, and wasn't really broken. Every example of broken we've seen so far has been speed + another stat, not just any two stats.

The thing could read "you cannot hit BP if speed and any other stat is boosted".
 

jpw234

Catastrophic Event Specialist
I feel like it's worth specifying speed + one or more other stat. Calm Mind pass w/ Musharna (and a Kee berry if real) was pretty legit at certain points. Weakness policy pass was a strat commonly used in UU when celebi was a part of the tier, and wasn't really broken. Every example of broken we've seen so far has been speed + another stat, not just any two stats.

The thing could read "you cannot hit BP if speed and any other stat is boosted".
Not trying to be snarky, but could you give an example of a potentially broken strategy that is speed + another stat but does not use Scolipede or Smeargle? Specifically, a high-level replay or two? I honestly don't know of any Pokemon that can pull this off at a broken level other than those two.
 

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