[DONE] Implementing BP Clause addition on the team building side.

Aldaron

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Initial battling side implementation concerns said:
So as is the case with any new clause, there will inevitably be some edge-cases / contrived cases that either cause mechanics issues or break the spirit of the clause.

For the new clause, there are a few considerations to make.

First, the scenario where a Pokemon like Venemoth has quiver dance / baton pass / third move and it is pp stalled out of qd and third move. The options here are: 1.) force an auto lose 2.) force a switch 3.) break mechanics and have bp un greyed out and allowed to be selected

The second scenario is if in the first scenario, that venemoth is mean looked, so forcing a switch isn't possible. The options here are 1.) force an auto lose 2.) break mechanics 3.) in this very specifically contrived scenario, un grey baton pass and allow it to be selected.

Those are the two main scenarios blarajan brought up to me, so before we even decide to talk about what to do about them, I'd like to collect a list of the potential edge cases.

So far we have Pokemon pp stalled and has boosts but can switch and Pokemon pp stalled and has boosts but can't switch.

Any others?

On these two specifically, I'm not an absolutist so I won't say I'm 100% against breaking mechanics in specifically contrived situations, but I'd rather not if there is an alternative.

I'm also not a fan of forcing losses, so my preference is currently strongly for forcing a switch for the first scenario and ungreying baton pass for the second scenario.

I guess it's important to ask BP specialists like dEnIsSsS if that last thing can be abused by BPers at all as well.
This additional work will be implemented via the team builder. Posts 1-11 represent the previous iteration on the battle side; post 12 and on represent the desire to switch it to the team builder.
 
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jpw234

Catastrophic Event Specialist
Some questions to consider:
Negative boosts (e.g. Curse giving -speed) - can negative boosts be passed? What about a mon that uses Curse + speed-boosting move to get back to no speed changes and then passes (e.g. Curse twice, Rock Polish, BP)?
AncientPower/Ominous Wind + Baton Pass - if a mon hits a boost of all stats are they locked out of passing?
I'll edit more if I think of any
Edit: similar to Curse + RP, if I DD and then get intimidated so that my attack is at +0 can I BP?
There aren't any ways for an opponent to give you stat boosts, are there? Edit: ah Flatter - if an opponent Flatters you after you speed boosted
 
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Bughouse

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The last case when it comes to Venomoth that I can remotely think of would be a last mon scenario where Venomoth has boosted to +1/+1/+1 in order to kill something etc and has slept the opponent's second to last Pokemon because otherwise it may have been KOed.

Now let's say it's the standard set: something like Quiver Dance, Baton Pass, Bug Buzz, Sleep Powder (with Wonder Skin) against the opponent's other surviving mon - an attackless Skarmory (let's say it has Roost/Spikes/Whirlwind/Counter).

Even a +6 Bug Buzz will fail to 2HKO (heck it can fail to 3hko) fully physically defensive Skarm, not to mention failing against SpDef. Venomoth has already put Skarmory's partner to Sleep, so basically as long as Skarm dodges SpDef drops, it can easily outstall all of Venomoth's attacks.

Ordinarily, this should be no concern. As long as Venomoth is able to click baton pass, it will have access to 136 PP (64 of which comes from Baton Pass) and can easily preserve Bug Buzz PP to finally hit Skarmory's sleeping partner after Skarmory eventually dies. Without the ability to click Baton Pass in this scenario, Vernomoth is reduced to only 72 effective PP, which is considerably less than Skarmory's PP on non-attacking sets.

tl;dr Pokemon should be able to still click Baton Pass to preserve PP in lastmon scenarios, as there is no Pokemon to Baton Pass to.
 

dEnIsSsS

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Firstly, I'd want to reiterate that I still defend what I commented to atomicllamas in the previous thread: the ban should be applied in the teambuilder. Doing so would prevent a lot of problems, not only the ones mentioned in this thread's OP, but also a very important issue I've already mentioned but I will say it here once again: there are many kids, newbies (that don't know even the game basics, such as set up moves, boosts, etc), as well as people who can't even read english, and all of those would be confused by this clause! Imagine the following scenario: a player like that randomly saw a Baton Pass team in a YouTube video or in an RMT of mine, then decided to try it. And then, in the middle of the game, they would be just prevented from clicking the button. I know the clause sounds clear to us, but not for the kind of played I've mentioned several times. If the restriction is applied in the teambuilder, all of this could be avoid. My question is: why did you decide that the ban would occur in the middle of the game instead of the teambuilder?

I guess it's important to ask BP specialists like dEnIsSsS if that last thing can be abused by BPers at all as well.
Wouldn't that be a VERY situational scenario? It's not like I can pick any broken bp user, and expect my opponent to bring a Shadow Tag or a Mean Look/ Spider Web user so the strategy can actually work. I'm not sure if I really understood what is the real issue here.
 
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Marty

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What happens if a Pokemon calls Baton Pass through some other move, such as Assist, Copycat, or Metronome?

The Immortal brought this scenario up: a Pokemon boosted in anything but Speed, holding a Salac Berry, chooses to use Baton Pass but gets hit that turn and Salac activates. Now what?

Same situation, except it's boosted in Speed and holding any of the other pinch Berries.

Also echoing everything dEnIsSsS said above.
 

atomicllamas

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Firstly, I'd want to reiterate that I still defend what I commented to atomicllamas in the previous thread: the ban should be applied in the teambuilder.
For what it's worth, literally every one of my post stated or implied it should be implemented in the team building stage (even before you started comment in in the thread), so idk why your bringing my name up like I was resistant to this point.
 

Aldaron

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The impression I got from nearly everyone was that we wanted to maintain specific sets (after all, we were going with surgical steps to for the third time nerf a thing), but if that isn't actually the case and a miscommunication occurred, I have no issue with making this a team builder ban if we don't care about those specific sets (I myself do not and support a team builder ban myself lol).

So do we want the implementation of this to be a team builder one?
 
Having the implementation as a team builder one is definitely optimal in this situation. As others have said, an in-game gray out would be very confusing for a lot of players and just seems unnecessary. If this were to be a teambuilder ban, then players could simply acknowledge this new clause and edit their team. This also avoids the aforementioned dilemmas of pp stalling and all that. It also does not seem like a significant detriment to the ORAS and BW metagames if we get rid of something like SD + Agility Gliscor, a pokemon that can boost speed + other and pass it but does not have to, as it can instead pass one of the boosts at a time during the game. Overall, the pros of a teambuilder implementation seem to greatly outweigh the cons.
 

Bughouse

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Teambuilder bans should always be preferable to in-battle clausing, imo. It's so much clearer. Your team just gets rejected when you try to use it and it explains why. I'm pretty sure most everyone outside of the voting council was a little baffled to see a non-teambuilder approach be taken, and so if it's still on the table to modify the ban, I'm all in favor of that.

This type of in-battle modification should only be done when it's necessary to achieve the desired goal in-battle (i.e. Sleep clause, and I think that's it?).

So, is it preferred to keep Gorebyss that can Shell Smash, Venomoth that can Quiver Dance, etc and attack and can still dry pass out of a bad situation? If the answer is "no, this situation really isn't worth preserving," then the ban should have just been in the teambuilder.
 

Pocket

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A clause working at the teambuilding level is more conventional and clear cut to me.

Think of the GSC Sleep Perish Trap ban. That can easily been an in-battle clause to allow Misdreavus/Jynx/Gengar to Perish Trap foes while also having the ability to put another opponent to sleep (as long as it's not in conjunction with Mean Look & Perish Song). However, this becomes a bit too convoluted and almost trying too hard to save the functionality of a "broken" aspect, kinda like the Blaze Blaziken clause imo.
 
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MikeDawg

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A clause working at the teambuilding level is more conventional and clear cut to me.

Think of the GSC Sleep Perish Trap ban. That can easily been an in-battle clause to allow Misdreavus/Jynx/Gengar to Perish Trap foes while also having the ability to put other opponents to sleep (as long as it's not in conjunction with Mean Look & Perish Song). However, this becomes a bit too convoluted and almost trying too hard to save the functionality of a "broken" aspect, kinda like the Blaze Blaziken clause imo.
That's actually nothing like the Blaze Blaziken Clause. Weird opp to push the no-complex-ban agenda, tho.

In any case, the miniscule collateral damage of a team builder ban is much preferred to the incredibly convoluted scenarios and edge cases that come from an in-battle ban. If an in-battle ban was preferred, it is much cleaner to just not pass the extra boost that isn't speed (ie. Disable the mechanic of transferring boosts). Keeping the one change as speed pass isnt arbitrary; I just think it is most reasonable given what we are going for (to maintain speed passing while banning speed+stat passing. Scolipede is by far the most common example, and this could let it run perhaps swords dance alongside bp. Pass the speed because that is inherent to scolipede and will always be boosted regardless of other boosting moves. If only attack or defense should be passed, there are better mons anyway).

Thanks teambuilder, as mentioned, is preferred though. How are we about to use the argument that "pokemon + ability" can be too complicated but allow "speed+stat means all of the sudden greyed out baton pass"?)
 
teambuilder ban + baton pass "failing" when called by any other means (when the scenario that it is banned under should result) definitely sounds like the way to go. this circumvents the whole issue brought about in the OP while bringing other benefits mentioned by denissss etc. already.

Also unrelated but jpw234 i assumed that the ban was speed BOOST + other boost + BP? Curse reduces speed, and w/ something like torchic it'd keep the speed same, so the clause already covers that well enough.
 

jas61292

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baton pass "failing" when called by any other means (when the scenario that it is banned under should result)
I don't think this is really necessary, and it is definitely not in line with past bans. The goal here should be to root out whatever is seen as broken/uncompetitive/whatever, and not simply to try and eliminate anything that might just so happen to resemble it. In pretty much every case like this, the problem is not simply the move/combo itself, but the reliability thereof. In other words, the goal here should not be to make it impossible to Baton Pass Speed + another boost, but rather to make it impossible for such a combo to be a real strategy.

For comparison, we have Double Team and Minimize banned under the Evasion clause, but we don't have Accupressure. That is because Accupressure is a completely random move that cannot be used as a reliable part of an evasion strategy in any sense. Banning fringe cases here would be equally unnecessary, and really kinda missing the point. I mean, I doubt anyone would disagree that trying to pass multiple boosts via calling BP through Metronome is a strategy worth anything more than a good laugh. So long as the reliable cases are gone, anything else is really irrelevant.

Now, as for what constitutes a reliable case, that is something more debatable. Personally, I see no harm in allowing something like Ancientpower + Baton Pass, since again, this is not any more of a reliable strategy than Accupressure. You can't plan to boost and pass, but rather can just pass if you happen to boost. In my personal opinion, on the boosting side of things, I would say a move needs to have a 50% or higher chance to boost to really be considered something we should worry about with BP. On the other side, I don't think we need to worry about anything other than the move Baton Pass itself. If they are calling it some other way, it is just sheer luck, and sheer luck can do far, far more gamebreaking things than passing some boosts (likely in a situation you did not plan to pass on).

Also, doing it this way rather than trying to make the move fail in fringe cases is more consistent with cartridge play, which is always a plus. I know not everyone cares as much, but making a move fail when it should work is outright changing game mechanics, and should be avoided unless there is no way to have a desirable alternative (Sleep Clause).
 
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