First off, Shoutouts to Zelfie for giving me the chicken pass team to run through seasonals with.
Baton Pass as a move garners a lot of hate for being "uncompetitive", "cancer", or "braindead" that can singlehandedly win games once it gets set up. However, it isn't broken and is far from braindead. Setting up the optimal situation to start the pass can actually be a challenge.
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ru-468282114
^ Here is a game where I get set up, everything's going smoothly, then I start losing despite being able to get off multiple passes. While I did end up winning mostly due to Malamar having a favourable matchup against the remainder of my opponent's team, the fact remains that once set up Baton Pass does not win everything. It has reasonable countermeasures and is just as capable of suddenly losing as it is suddenly winning.
First off, the Passer does not have infinite health and wonder guard plus levitate on the electric typing, it is possible to hit the passer as it's trying to set up. Focus/SD/NP/Other non-Chicken pass are often going to be boosting in your face and people often switch out instead of attacking the passer. (And the only passer that doesn't need a move to boost is usually whittling its own HP with sub). For example, Combusken. If it's going to be using Sub + Protect, just keep killing its subs and it'll have to make more, reducing its longevity in the process. Additionally, by preventing it from getting a sub up, you are removing its ability to safely switch out into its usual target (Xatu for example.)
Secondly, the strategy has issues with, while relatively uncommon right now, moves that a lot of Pokémon learn. A single Taunt, Roar, Haze or Dragon Tail, (Or even Psych Up or Topsy Turvy for the hipsters) shuts down the entire strategy, and these are
not uncommon moves. Rare on said Pokémon? Maybe. But they have use beyond Chicken Pass as almost all balance teams contain a boosting of some kind such as Drapion, Virizion, Torterra, Delphox, or Meloetta. If you really don't want to lose to BP or BP gets popular enough, it's not extroardinarily difficult to add one of these moves to your team if a mon on it learns it, or make necessary adjustments, and they aren't dead outside of just hitting BP. We're not pulling some mystical, otherwise useless mon from the depths of PU just to deal with it, we're just required to make edits if we really want to.
Also, a lot of people aren't looking at this the correct way. Well yes, we've had two tiers now ban Baton Pass (Or Speed + BP) and our thought process is "They're doing it so it must be broken, let's ban it". Take for example, NU's ban of Speed + BP in relation to PU.
NU Banned Speed + Baton Pass because the tier had Pokémon that were often held in check by their inability to be fast barring a scarf, such as Xatu and Malamar, along with a Pokémon capable of passing that to them with relative ease in Combusken. This paved way for its ban. If it's broken in NU, it must be broken in PU, right? No. PU, outside of having no decent Speed Passers (Subject to change with the introduction of Combusken), had no real use for the ban due to the strategy not being prevalent there, while ultimately NU made the complex ban to keep the non-broken parts of something (In this case, Combusken, Xatu, and Malamar most prominently) intact without changing the core parts of the various things affected too much.
UU, on the other hand, Banned Baton Pass almost entirely for flawed reasoning (More on that later) and because of Celebi. Celebi's ability to either pass boosts itself or just look at its check and say "Nah, I'll Pass" were a few of the reasons Celebi would have been put up for suspect. Essentially, once again, UU made a diffferent ban to keep the non-broken parts of something (Celebi becomes more manageable though still really busted without access to BP to get out of ugly situations) intact while not changing the core parts of Celebi too much. RU does not have Celebi, the main (and only non-flawed) catalyst for the BP ban in UU, so it made the decision to not ban BP.
Now what do you notice here? In both instances, a ban was made to restrict something broken while keeping the core elements of the thing intact.
The exact same thing we've been doing with Baton Pass itself.
The only reasons people are constantly crying for a BP ban are:
1) "We've restricted it before and it's still good"
2) "It's "uncompetitive"/"Braindead"/"Cancerous"/"Insertnegativeadjectivehere""
The first reasoning is ultimately flawed because it's simply lazy on the parts of the people who are saying it. While I won't deny Baton Pass' versatility or survivability, as those have been shown by results and varying teams, the fact that we've tried and failed lies on us and not baton pass, ultimately. Our ability to attempt to cull a move to our liking and subsequent, repeated failure doesn't show the move is broken, but rather that we haven't tried hard enough.
The second reason, which
Aberforth has demonstrated for us in this thread, is that people have a dislike for Baton Pass. Why is this? Well, we on smogon have created what we call "the norm" - you've got your average Balance teams, a mix of offence and defence, and your Offence teams, which result in fast-paced exciting gameplay that everyone just loves. Then you've got other teams. The Stall Teams, BP, whatever you want to use here. These teams break from "the norm" in that they use different strategies, such as pure defence or a long, risky period of setting up for big reward. These teams are the ones people ostracize and cuss out - because they defy "the norm" that we've created in our heads: that you should set up hazards and attempt to win the game by primarily attacking. As such, strategies such as outlasting your opponent or using a high-risk, high-reward style are frowned upon and looked at as less legitimate.
Let's do an experiment. Let's say I was tier leader of a tier and people were complaining about Stall. We had had numerous restrictions and bans to attempt to reduce the impact of stall to no effect. Now, let's say I as tier leader said this:
"As a new rule, you will automatically lose the game if you do not use a move that deals direct damage once every 3 turns."
That's stupid, right? I only did it because people didn't like the playstyle, and in an effort to remove something people didn't like I put an absurd restriction on the game. While this is obviously extreme, the general point still lies within. I was attempting to remove something the game allowed for naturally. There's no in-game rule saying you have to attack, but it was decided by the community that all-out-offensive or mostly offensive teams were "more competitive" than other teams that from their view they felt offered "easy wins" or were "autopilot".
Attempting to remove something because people don't like the style is ludicrous. Baton Pass as a move is ultimately not broken in its current form. Maybe The Glorious Pass was broken, that I won't deny, but Baton Pass in its current form is a high-risk, high-reward playstyle that has its strengths and weaknesses, just like any other playstyle, and should not be treated as some unholy monster that wins matchups from T1 with no counters. As with any other team style, it has checks and counters, including prepared people and can be beaten with just one dedication of a moveslot. This isn't a case of AV Shell Armour Lapras being needed to only counter something, these single moves have their uses.
And honestly, if we just banned everything the general playerbase didn't like, why is RegiMola still in the tier? Why haven't we added a restriction that Registeel and Alomomola can't be in the same team just to please the playerbase that doesn't like defensive-based play? Baton Pass is no different, and we should not treat it differently because we dislike it or feel it's cheap.
If something were to come up that would make Baton Pass as a playstyle broken by definition, For example, something like Tyrantrum or Honchkrow, something so common and overbearing that has an undeniable negative effect on the tier that also garners enough use and attention to be considered truly broken, then I suggest examining all aspects of that thing instead of attempting to ban Baton Pass instantly.
tl;dr - BP
in its current form isn't broken, but rather our own failings combined with the general nature of the style has caused a decent and vocal amount of players to call for it to be banned due to their dislike of it.
Final note: This post was not meant to call out or insult anyone, especially the UU Tiering council. I'm sure they had their discussions behind the scenes and I respect them for their decision, however what I saw in the thread from members of the UU tiering council indicates that at least some of them fell into the traps of wanting to ban something due to personal distaste. I'd just like us all to be aware of the pitfalls of human nature so we can better work around them.
Wow, this is the longest post I've ever made.