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I really just wanna say at least one thing regarding accuracy-lowering moves... no more, no less:
Can we please consider implementing Accuracy Moves Clause (like in 1v1) by any chance instead of making/proposing a complex ban regarding such 'dishonest' moves?
Would perhaps love to hear y'alls thoughts btw, can't really talk much about accuracy-lowering moves in the SpeedPass thread in spite of having at least a total of 25 posts within the forums...
EDIT: I'm quite surprised that Starf Berry wasn't brought up so far (although it does fall into the category of items that could raise speed), even though it's not always guaranteed to get the +2 Speed boost in a pinch.
I really just wanna say at least one thing regarding accuracy-lowering moves... no more, no less:
Can we please consider implementing Accuracy Moves Clause (like in 1v1) by any chance instead of making/proposing a complex ban regarding such 'dishonest' moves?
Would perhaps love to hear y'alls thoughts btw, can't really talk much about accuracy-lowering moves in the SpeedPass thread in spite of having at least a total of 25 posts within the forums...
I wanted to write a short post here echoing some of the thoughts already expressed about Speed-Pass and the Ladder given I cannot post in the main forum. In particular Padeli's post.
My Background/experience:
I pretty much only ladder ADV and have probably played 5000-10000 games in the last year or so. I mostly just team-build and test teams, sometimes trying for strict optimality, sometimes trying to just try something fun/more "out-there" and see if it holds water. In any case, I would say I have a decent amount of experience to give my "ladder main" opinion on the matter.
Main Take:
I think that speed pass strategies, as allowed by the current rules/bans are essentially impossible to cover in the builder with 1 team that also has a good MU spread into the rest of the general metagame. I think this is fairly uncontroversial given the plethora of different full Pass, Jask and DD-Pass Smeargle teams that seem to get spammed a lot on the ladder at the moment (maybe people have a 6 in mind that does so but, in any case, I think we should all be able to agree that covering these teams plus the more standard metagame is unrealistically restrictive).
Is this a problem?
I think this is where I find myself agreeing/disagreeing with a lot of the prior posts. Ultimately, fishy strategies will always exist in the game. Things like triple-trap have been mentioned, but I think there are a lot of teams that do achieve the huge MU swings/upsides that these Speed-Pass teams often get. The example I think of here is something like special/mixed offence team without any counterplay to Blissey - I am sure one could produce a team that, ignoring Bliss as restriction in the builder, could get extremely strong MUs into the a large portion of the remaining metagame.
The same goes with teams which just ignore Skarmory. I am sure that many people who play ladder regularly will have been frustrated by getting rolled by a 1400 player using a fishy team like the examples above.
Is there any difference between these fishes and the Speed-Pass strategies?
Perhaps the Speed-Pass strategies are slightly stronger. However, as I think has been pointed out, many cases in which someone loses to Full-Pass, were as a result of some misplay (trying to Roar into opposing Roar/Taunt, not breaking subs when needed etc...). I know this has certainly been the case for me. I think part of these teams relative success on the ladder is the unfamiliarity that players have playing against them, combined with their ability to create a winning situation from a free turns created by misplays, favourable RNG or favourable matchups.
However, I think the difference really lies in terms of how uninteractive, uncompetative and just generally "non-fun" these strategies are to play against. To me, a team shouldn't be able to win off of 1 misplay, or from winning a Taunt vs BP mind game with DD-Smeargle. More subjectively, as frustrating as being beaten by something like triple trap or Water-spam can be, I find it no where near as frustrating as losing to a speed-pass team in a game where I had literally no agency at all in the battle. The last month or so has definitely been one of the worst times to play ladder I can remember with these teams being spammed everywhere.
What to do?
I am sympathetic to many of the arguments around needing Speed-Pass, and there are "honest" uses of it. However, I cannot emphasise enough how little we see these honest uses on the ladder compared to people just fishing for free wins. Even people who are using Agil-Pass Zapdos on non Full-Pass teams are often just trying to get a free win with Marowak in most situations, as opposed to specifically using Agil-Pass to give flexible counterplay revenge killers (Aero/Dug) against fat teams.
I think, all things considered, I would be in favour banning Speed-Pass. My feeling is that this might be the only viable option given the nature of tiering policy surrounding complex bans (as far as I understand it) but also as I think it will be very difficult to make a complex ban that won't allow this rubbish to keep cropping up again and again with different intermediate receivers on Full Pass teams.
In Summary
Whilst there are lots of fishy/uncompetative strategies, Speed-Pass feels unique in its ability to be abused in a way that is uninteractive and leaves one devoid of all agency in the game. It has legitimate uses but, at least on ladder, is predominantly used to just try to either get wins via MU fishing, Taunt vs Roar mind games or just punishing the opponent excessively for one misplay over the course of many turns. It is not good for the health or enjoyment of the game. I think banning Speed Pass would be best for the game as a whole, and is worth the loss of certain legitimate use cases.
This is just one persons opinion, particularly that of a ladder player - see SpeedPass in ADV OU if you want opinions of more tour plays.
I wanted to write a short post here echoing some of the thoughts already expressed about Speed-Pass and the Ladder given I cannot post in the main forum. In particular Padeli's post.
My Background/experience:
I pretty much only ladder ADV and have probably played 5000-10000 games in the last year or so. I mostly just team-build and test teams, sometimes trying for strict optimality, sometimes trying to just try something fun/more "out-there" and see if it holds water. In any case, I would say I have a decent amount of experience to give my "ladder main" opinion on the matter.
Main Take:
I think that speed pass strategies, as allowed by the current rules/bans are essentially impossible to cover in the builder with 1 team that also has a good MU spread into the rest of the general metagame. I think this is fairly uncontroversial given the plethora of different full Pass, Jask and DD-Pass Smeargle teams that seem to get spammed a lot on the ladder at the moment (maybe people have a 6 in mind that does so but, in any case, I think we should all be able to agree that covering these teams plus the more standard metagame is unrealistically restrictive).
Is this a problem?
I think this is where I find myself agreeing/disagreeing with a lot of the prior posts. Ultimately, fishy strategies will always exist in the game. Things like triple-trap have been mentioned, but I think there are a lot of teams that do achieve the huge MU swings/upsides that these Speed-Pass teams often get. The example I think of here is something like special/mixed offence team without any counterplay to Blissey - I am sure one could produce a team that, ignoring Bliss as restriction in the builder, could get extremely strong MUs into the a large portion of the remaining metagame.
The same goes with teams which just ignore Skarmory. I am sure that many people who play ladder regularly will have been frustrated by getting rolled by a 1400 player using a fishy team like the examples above.
Is there any difference between these fishes and the Speed-Pass strategies?
Perhaps the Speed-Pass strategies are slightly stronger. However, as I think has been pointed out, many cases in which someone loses to Full-Pass, were as a result of some misplay (trying to Roar into opposing Roar/Taunt, not breaking subs when needed etc...). I know this has certainly been the case for me. I think part of these teams relative success on the ladder is the unfamiliarity that players have playing against them, combined with their ability to create a winning situation from a free turns created by misplays, favourable RNG or favourable matchups.
However, I think the difference really lies in terms of how uninteractive, uncompetative and just generally "non-fun" these strategies are to play against. To me, a team shouldn't be able to win off of 1 misplay, or from winning a Taunt vs BP mind game with DD-Smeargle. More subjectively, as frustrating as being beaten by something like triple trap or Water-spam can be, I find it no where near as frustrating as losing to a speed-pass team in a game where I had literally no agency at all in the battle. The last month or so has definitely been one of the worst times to play ladder I can remember with these teams being spammed everywhere.
What to do?
I am sympathetic to many of the arguments around needing Speed-Pass, and there are "honest" uses of it. However, I cannot emphasise enough how little we see these honest uses on the ladder compared to people just fishing for free wins. Even people who are using Agil-Pass Zapdos on non Full-Pass teams are often just trying to get a free win with Marowak in most situations, as opposed to specifically using Agil-Pass to give flexible counterplay revenge killers (Aero/Dug) against fat teams.
I think, all things considered, I would be in favour banning Speed-Pass. My feeling is that this might be the only viable option given the nature of tiering policy surrounding complex bans (as far as I understand it) but also as I think it will be very difficult to make a complex ban that won't allow this rubbish to keep cropping up again and again with different intermediate receivers on Full Pass teams.
In Summary
Whilst there are lots of fishy/uncompetative strategies, Speed-Pass feels unique in its ability to be abused in a way that is uninteractive and leaves one devoid of all agency in the game. It has legitimate uses but, at least on ladder, is predominantly used to just try to either get wins via MU fishing, Taunt vs Roar mind games or just punishing the opponent excessively for one misplay over the course of many turns. It is not good for the health or enjoyment of the game. I think banning Speed Pass would be best for the game as a whole, and is worth the loss of certain legitimate use cases.
This is just one persons opinion, particularly that of a ladder player - see SpeedPass in ADV OU if you want opinions of more tour plays.
The lack of honest uses is merely out of lack of creativity. AgiZap has a lot of diversity and can slot into multiple archetypes, it also has finally becoming more explored and its more of a recent development. Thats why it hasnt seen much usage. It feels dumb that we arent getting much time to actually feel it out and make the most optimal honest speedpass strats when the meta has finally aligned with it being a great option for Spikeless teams. Not only that but I have gone time and time again about how the diversity is key for a lot of Spikeless teams.
In fact, this could have been the way to revitalize dead styles such as Special Spam and CM Spam, while keeping both trade-based Sand Offenses and CuneDol styles versatile and not overly reliant on DDMence as a method to deal w Dug or Aero. It also would probably help Mag Off a lot and could potentially create more new stuff too. Genuinely dont believe these naked Zap->Wak stuff is difficult to handle. Jask is somewhat of a problem, more because its annoying and frankly no one enjoys it, so in that front I guess I agree. Just saying that the reason "honest uses" havent been done oftej is because only now the meta has come in such a way that makes Spikeless Zap at its most optimal state being AgiPass due to the hyperoptimization of Dug Fat and Aero Spikes and the fact Offense naturally struggles w those (meaning DDMence is oftentimes necessary). I would say if you gave it time, more ppl would be using said "honest uses" on ladder.
Also something completely unrelated, I was making a post on JG2's post and while I was working on it midpost, the thread was unfortunately locked and I didnt finish in time. Sad. I also dont really like the fact that this suspect doesnt support Smeargle+BP ban when literally everyone is on the same page abt this, matter of fact its probably just a quickban. Those are my thoughts on the matter, please enjoy.
Why is speed pass being considered and not the cheesy elements used WITH speed pass which make it problematic being considered? Namely accuracy lowering moves and multiple bp users on a team? Haven't seen any example of a complaint regarding speed pass that does not include either of these two items.
Just going to add my largely useless 2 cents as a washed up has-been who's recently come back from a decade long hiatus.
I do not like playing against BP. BP is easily the most fundamentally broken move in the game. When I played last, there were very few restrictions on BP compared to now. I didn't like it then and I still don't like it now even with like 5 extra clauses added on top. It's better,
I'm also a prolific user of BP and some form of it ends up on almost all of my teams. I try and keep it "honest" with CM pass or Sub pass etc, but at the end of the day it's still BP.
It strikes me that, in the decade since I've gone, the multiple rule changes that have occurred have done nothing to change the fact that people are still unhappy with BP's role in the tier. The fundamentals of the argument are entirely the same, it's only the presentation of the problem that's different. And it would probably be foolish to assume that after this test, the problem will be put to bed and everyone will be happy this time and no other powerful BP strat will ever be found.
We can ban Speed Pass and that might be a good thing for a while. But we're sitting on a whole stack of restrictions just to keep the idea of an "honest" BP alive, that almost certainly are going to come into question again in a few years time when someone finds another reasonably powerful way to abuse it and take the game out of players hands. And people will be upset again.
Many people have pointed out no other tier has had this treatment when it comes to complex bans. I personally don't see complex bans as a huge issue unless a) there's a large amount of them or b) you're applying a complex ban to the same thing repeatedly in order to constrain it. ADV BP is currently both of those things. In a hypothetical world where Wobbuffet was historically legal in OU, had been since the start, and we then got sick of Wobbuffet cheesing half the games, would it be reasonable if after 5 or 6 different restrictions (what if he had no lefties, ok what if he had no encore, ok what if he could only carry one of counter/MC, ok what if he can only use dbond, and so on) and people still kept making ladder topping teams with him, to add yet another restriction, in the hope that it would keep the meta in some pristine, honourable image of what old grognards (like myself) imagined it to be? When do you admit that Wobb is just an obviously silly mon and doesn't belong in the tier unless you make a rule that says Wobb can have no moves and must use struggle only?
Idk that seems like a reasonable analogy to me. I think complex bans are fine and honestly smogon could probably afford to be a bit more liberal about them. But at this point, I don't really see the sense of continuing down this path with BP. Maybe this time it'll truly be nixed and everyone will be happy and it'll never be touched again. But if I'm still around next time this comes up, I'll just be plainly advocating for a ban on all BP bar dry passing.
My thoughts are the same as they were four years ago. The fundamentals of this issue are never going to change.
So I support a SpeedPass ban, because while there will absolutely be collateral that will banish some "legitimate" or healthy uses of BP, that is inevitable with any action against it. There's no silver bullet with tiering BP that perfectly preserves acceptable uses of the move while banishing cheese, so any action is going to be a compromise on some level. And frankly, I think the folks trying to preserve the move have long since lost the benefit of the doubt that they're capable of tiering BP in a way that adequately restricts cheese -- otherwise I wouldn't be able to cut and paste a four-year-old post into this thread. To me, removing SpeedPass represents a more serious attempt at finally slaying the hydra of BP cheese than the countless impotent actions against individual abusers have been, and as a result is the most serious attempt to preserve BP in ADV OU in some form.
Curious what others think about limiting one BP user per team drypass or not? The Broken BP teams (current one, meads, ...) rely on multiple BP users. Having to choose between e.g. Vape's 101HP sub and Smeargle's nonsense is a big blow to the BP statmax/BP wackoff teams. Granted Smeargle by itself might still be a big enough problem with BP, yet this restriction of one BP user per team does cripple the broken BP teams we have been seeing.
Banning Taunt + BP being run on any single pokemon is also intriguing; I haven't thought about it enough to properly speak on it. Seems like the taunt+BP could be a good ban as now smeargle spore counterplay is to get 1 mon spore'd and switch to a roar user which most teams will have (skarm, swampert, zapdos, ... other roar user).
Hi!
I’d like to share my opinion on the ongoing suspect test from the perspective of a more casual ADV player like me.
I’m personally not a big fan of Baton Pass + boosting moves in ADV, and I only rarely use them when building teams. So on one hand, I don't have a problem banning BP + Speed.
However, I also think one of the reasons ADV is such a popular tier is because it does allow BP + stat boosts compared to other gens and It would be a real shame to lose cool strategies like Salac BP Vaporeon or Medicham.
And honestly, I wouldn’t even say that Agility + BP is that big issue.
The real problem is DD Smeargle and also when teams run multiple BP users and start chaining.
From my perspective, the best approach would be:
Allow only two Pokémon with BP per team, and only one of them can pass a stat boost.
Ban Smeargle + BP.
Ban Ninjask + BP.
I believe it’s important to limit the number of Baton Pass users per team, because if we agree just on a banning Speed pass, it’s only a matter of time someone creates a team with SD pass supported by chain of Taunt/Roar/Sub passers and suddenly you’re passing SD + Sub to something like Metagross, who then sets up Agility behind the Sub and sweeps.
Smeargle wouldn’t really be hurt by losing BP. He’s still a fantastic lead with Spore and Spikes.
As for Ninjask, I honestly don’t understand why this garbage is still allowed on the ladder when it’s banned from pretty much every ADV tournament.. And why is he banned on tournaments? Because he's cheap, so why we tolerate him in ladder.
so I don't support Speed pass ban as such, but some change definitely needs to be made.
After reading quite a bit of the posts in the various threads, I see that the option of banning Sand Attack is completely ruled out (I don't know why, after all, it violates the evasion clause).
I think banning this attack would be the main way to combat randomness, which is why these teams get the turns they need to sweep. Otherwise, they're inconsistent teams and completely dependent on the entire play going well.
Here's a fight I found in the 2023 thread posted by McMeghan.
This battle sums up a very specific point I had raised in a previous post: what happens when everything goes wrong?
And there's the answer: the last resort, pure luck.
The opponent got complacent and played very poorly in the end, using Zapdos with Roar could have disrupted everything.
But the point is that thanks to Sand Attack, he got what he needed to win. That's why I think banning him is the best way to achieve balance.
Now, since they insist Sand Attack has nothing to do with the core problem... I would propose a new complex ban that would make everyone happy:
Speed + Baton Pass + Belly Drum in the team banned.
EDIT: In order to save Speed pass. In case it is misinterpreted that I want to ban speed pass.
Only two Pokémon can properly abuse this, and they are Marowak and Hariyama.
Poliwhrat's attack isn't enough for him, he needs a lot of Magneton support, and Snorlax is very slow. They'd be collateral damage, but all these Pokémon have an alternative in Bulk Up and Swords Dance, it's not like they're left with nothing.
I hope they don't ban Speed Pass because it would kill the style and leave many Pokémon in the dust.
"I'm going to vote dnb on speedpass. It's not speedpass, we want (specific speedpass) banned" is what people said during the last speedpass suspect FYI. If you think they aren't gonna just retest speedpass again in 2 years you have 0 pattern recognition and I wonder how you did well in Pokémon. This doesn't apply to people who think all speedpass is balanced.
"I'm going to vote dnb on speedpass. It's not speedpass, we want (specific speedpass) banned" is what people said during the last speedpass suspect FYI. If you think they aren't gonna just retest speedpass again in 2 years you have 0 pattern recognition and I wonder how you did well in Pokémon. This doesn't apply to people who think all speedpass is balanced.
The problem is multiple bp users on a team not a specific stat being passed. Regardless of if this passes or not we will be back here again for other stat passes to be banned so long as you can link a 101hp sub, a taunt mon, and a stat pass.
The problem is multiple bp users on a team not a specific stat being passed. Regardless of if this passes or not we will be back here again for other stat passes to be banned so long as you can link a 101hp sub, a taunt mon, and a stat pass.
Most BP users are crap. We'd see them more often, like Lunatone or Hypno (who learns Belly Drum and Taunt).
It's quite difficult to play the style correctly with so many restrictions, and as I said before, everything has to be perfect. They're not posting replays where everything goes horribly. They only post where everything goes well. Each turn is about getting the right option right.
Speed Pass alone doesn't guarantee anything; it depends on the receiver and the turns they have available to get the boost.
The only move that can guarantee a perfect sweep is Belly Drum.
All the others require more turns to boost, so there's a greater risk of it going wrong or not being enough to defeat the entire opposing team.
In order to preserve Speed Pass, I think it's better to ban Belly Drum in combination with Speed Pass.
Am I insane for thinking that according to both common sense and smogon tiering policy...BP should just be banned? Why are we doing this dance of a thousand restrictions? The entire intended point of the move is to pass boosts between mons, which is clearly unbalanced in 6v6 singles.
Sure, it's cool to turn BP into a kind of proto-U-turn, but since when has it been ok to nerf a broken element until it's balanced in the metagame instead of just banning it? idgi
Am I insane for thinking that according to both common sense and smogon tiering policy...BP should just be banned? Why are we doing this dance of a thousand restrictions? The entire intended point of the move is to pass boosts between mons, which is clearly unbalanced in 6v6 singles.
Sure, it's cool to turn BP into a kind of proto-U-turn, but since when has it been ok to nerf a broken element until it's balanced in the metagame instead of just banning it? idgi
BP has been in this tier for decades. Incidentally, it's also a "proto meta." A tier that barely has any physical moves, without the division of Special and Physical moves into type moves, among many other things.
There isn't much move variety; to give you an idea, Salamence, Dragonite, and Gyarados all use Flying as STAB, and Grass-type moves in general do too. I see BP in ADV as the last remaining stronghold; it's been banned from all sides.
In fact, the same suspect test was conducted last year, and it was decided not to ban it. It's not abuse, in my opinion.
People say stuff like this all the time but the last vote had 55% to ban and needed a 60% supermajority. It would be silly of the council not to revisit, especially as there is still a lot of complaining about bp from the community. If there's a more decisive conclusion I don't expect the test to be repeated. Likewise, if the vote passes with less than 65%, I hope that we could see a retest in the future.
I don't follow ADV super closely, but would using baton pass exclusively as a switching move aka no stat passing be balanced in the tier? It seems like a reasonable option to both preserve BP's existence in the tier as well as be healthier for the metagame.
If there is ever tiering action to loosen restrictions on BP, I will eat a hat on stream. That being said I've wanted jask banned for years, and since this is essentially a jask ban, i will take what I can get
I achieved speed pass suspect requirements last week, and I will be voting Do Not Ban. I encourage others to do the same. As much as possible, I am going to try to lay out my anti-ban argument objectively and be clear when I'm giving my subjective opinion.
1. Speed Pass Use Cases in ADV
I think there are four main team styles being targeted in this blanket speed pass ban. I'm going to dub these
Ninjask pass
Smeargle dd pass
Zapdos full-pass, and
Zapdos semi-pass.
Ninjask pass is probably the most famous BP style so I don't think I need to describe it much here. Basically, it almost always uses magneton because jask is otherwise helpless against skarmory. Then it uses disruptive elements like sand attack, twave, leech seed, maybe sleep etc to try and get a checkmate sweeper like suicune or marowak into a good position. The style is seriously inhibited by sand limiting the amount of opportunities ninjask gets (there's pretty much no way to have a defensively usable team if you're using all three of dugtrio, magneton, and ninjask). The style has seen limited use in tournament play to moderate success, and a few players have reached high elo peaks with it. I personally wouldn't mind banning this style entirely, but because it's held back so hard by sand and the existing BP clauses, I don't think you can argue it's broken or places an undue burden on teambuilding in the metagame.
The best (known) Smeargle dd pass is described well here in Nal's post. Basically, Nal's team uses vaporeon to try and pass taunt smeargle an unbroken sub, which can end a lot of games on the spot. If this doesn't work out, though, it ends up playing like other smeargle dd pass mixed offenses which utilize spore and smeargle's good speed tier to guarantee pass +1/+1 to something once. I've tested Nal's team myself, and although I didn't reach the same ladder peak I thought that there were way too many free matchups. I would ban this style in a heartbeat.
Zapdos full-pass is a recreation of Mead pass but with worse tools. Spreek's post gives some replays that show how it works. Instead of creating free subs through defensive boosts, the subs are created with tools like leech seed, intimidate cycling, sand attack, and sleep. If you pass an unbroken sub to belly drum yama, and the opposing team doesn't have intimidate, the game is basically over. I've used the style myself and found it to be moderately effective. The style so far doesn't have a lot of success either on high ladder or tour, and it's quite weak to both sand and tyranitar, so I don't think we can call it broken yet. That said, I would ban this if I could because, like its predecessor in Mead pass, it's completely un-interactive and non-competitive.
Zapdos semi-pass teams are more "normal" in that they don't dedicate a lot of resources to guaranteeing successful speed passes to checkmate-style-sweepers. Typically all six slots are not reliant on a speed pass to function; speed pass just enables interactions that would otherwise be impossible. This style sees fringe use in tournament play and on ladder. Vapicuno's video gives an overview of one implementation of this style. This is the style Fruhdazi, Giraffe and I campaigned for in the policy review thread. Objectively, this style:
isn't all-in on speed pass
makes no attempt to create repeatable flow-chart type lines that guarantee wins
adds depth and breadth to mixed offense, which indirectly nerfs balance and stall a bit
does not (yet) have meta-warping tournament or ladder usage, and
has not (yet) been shown to have extremely favorable matchups against any common team styles.
I will expand on these points in more detail later on in this post, but for now, suffice it to say that these are the reasons I am voting DNB. I don't really care whether jask pass or zapdos full-pass get banned because I don't think they're very strong. I think DD pass should be banned, but I value preserving zapdos semi-pass more than banning DD pass, so I'm firmly DNB. Before I get into the zap semi-pass discussion, though, I want to bring up three pertinent points.
2. The Three Pertinent Points that I Want to Bring Up
2.1. I want to correct what I said here and acknowledge that zapdos semi-pass does have the potential to be broken. I'd be open to banning it in the future if it was found to strain the tier in a way I didn't like. I can see a world where it's impossible to guess whether the speed pass recipient on your opponent's team is marowak, ursaring, suicune, breloom, heracross, etc and account for each of these possibilities in a late game scenario. For now, though, I don't buy that zap semi-pass is overbearing. Agility pass zap is honestly in its infancy. Not many players have developed it yet. Not to say it's never been used - Astamatitos was finding amazing applications for zap speed pass all the way back in 2016. But it's by and large been ignored, and I think it's because it's just not that powerful of a tool on its own. It's a setup that takes two turns and is reliant on not being phased, and even if you actually get the pass off you aren't always rewarded. It's pretty disingenuous to leave speed pass in the tier all these years when it isn't being played and then decide to potentially ban it literally weeks after the conclusion of the first high-level tournament in recent memory where somebody used it to repeated success. I don't think anybody thinks Fruhdazi's teams were broken and need nerfing. I think we need time for zapdos speed pass to marinate and develop before we decide to ban it.
2.2. I want to express my confusion and frustration with Smogon's tiering framework and this suspect test as a whole. First of all, the words "complex ban" aren't even in the tiering framework. There is no definition of a complex ban and no guidance about when complex bans are or are not acceptable. Second of all, if Pokemon are the primary target for tiering action, why has marowak never been suspected before, and why isn't it up for discussion now? It's not the only speed pass abuser, but it's clearly the strongest one, both because of its offensive and defensive capabilities. Third, who decided we're allowed to suspect speed pass? According to this framework, a non-pokemon element needs to be shown to have an Inherently Broken Nature (speed pass doesn't - it barely gets any usage at all), Universal Applicability Across Eligible Users (speed pass doesn't - after Marowak and Hariyama, the strength of speed pass recipients falls off quite a bit imo), and No Plausible Scenario for Balance, whatever that means. The wording there confused me. Are we bound by this policy framework at all? If we are, I don't see how a speed pass ban is even up for discussion. I'd really appreciate if someone on the ADV council clarified this for me.
2.3. I want to discuss the cat-and-mouse of ADV BP tiering as a whole. Left unchecked, baton pass is extremely powerful and has a nearly infinite number of potential applications. If you don't outright ban baton pass, like most tiers do, then you introduce a lot of potentially disastrous combinations. If you want baton pass playable in your tier, you have to include a lot of complex bans as well in order to keep the tier playable. There's no way around it. ADV has done this, getting stricter and stricter with each ban, but baton pass has endured. I will argue here that this will always be the case until we ban baton pass as a whole. Put differently, if we want to keep any form of stat pass in the tier, then we will always have to deal with some amount of un-interactive cheese. It's asymptotic. The cheese strat might not be consistent, but it will win some ladder games some amount of the time. A speed pass ban isn't the nail in the coffin we want it to be.
Baton pass is really broken under the following formula:
Acquire [stat boost 1] without dying or getting phased
Acquire an intact substitute without getting phased
Pass [stat boost 1] and the substitute to [broken abuser] without losing the substitute or getting phased
Set up [stat boost 2] with [broken abuser] without dying or getting phased
win game, ideally accounting for potential loose ends like intimidate
You don't necessarily need each one of these steps every single time. Marowak, for example, has a bit of a "built-in substitute" with its thunder wave/thunderbolt immunity and cb rock slide resistance, so it doesn't always need an intact sub passed to it. The marowak on Nal's DD pass doesn't even run [stat boost 2] because it is designed to receive +2/+2 and even +1/+1 is often enough for it to do its job. For the most part, though, the above is the BP formula. Speed pass is just one piece of the puzzle here. Taunt and roar are extremely useful for preventing phasing. The move substitute obviously plays a big role here. [Broken abuser] has to actually be strong enough to win the game after getting [stat boost 1] and [stat boost 2], and not many mons make the cut. There are lots of ways to achieve the "don't lose the sub" portion of steps 2 and 3. Mead pass achieved this through defense boosts, which was probably the most effective method, but there are plenty of others. Sleep, leech seed, paralysis, confusion, accuracy-lowering moves, intimidate, charm, screens, threatening KO's and subbing on the switch turn, and subbing on timely cb-locks are all ways to achieve this condition. For the most part, you cannot ban any of the individual elements of this BP formula without some sort of undesirable collateral. We begin to see a problem here. This is where I introduce VolCelebi.
Take a look at VolCelebi's public replays. They're absolutely insane. The strategy is basicallythis: cause a bunch of disruption with rng moves until you pass an intact sub to smeargle, then belly drum pass to aerodactyl and sweep. Now, this was a meme player using meme mons on mid-to-low ladder. It's not overpowered, at least not yet. But it has all the anticompetitive qualities of BP we as a community hate and then some. It makes our game a complete joke. Put these tools in the hands of a good player and builder, and suddenly it becomes a lot less funny.
Before today, I'd been mulling over possible ways to abuse belly drum pass in this style. I finally put together a 6 and tested it out today. I don't think the team I came up with was particularly strong, but it did gain elo over the ~15 low-to-mid ladder games I used it in. The team basically follows the same principles as VolCelebi's team, so I don't need to further analyze it here, but I thought I'd post about my experience anyway. The team, the replays from the games I played, and my thoughts on the replays are included in the spoiler below.
Team Description: The central line this team is built around is passing an intact sub to Smeargle against something it outspeeds. If this condition is met, smeargle can get a near-guaranteed drum pass off by drumming the first turn it's in, clicking spore the next turn, and passing the third turn. This can only be stopped by a switch to a fast taunt or boom user on the drum turn, but not only are those rare; I can also read this and spore that switch. Confuse ray on smeargle might not be optimal here compared to taunt, but that's kinda my point. Confuse ray is just as good as taunt if you get the rng. Anyway, Metagross and Dnite have great bulk and type synergy, so no matter what comes in after the spore turn, one of them should be able to set up a speed boost. I chose dnite because +6 focus punch OHKO's skarm and bold roar cune, but mence and aero are feasible alternatives. I wanted a dragon dancer over aero, though, so that I had some counterplay to intimidate. Metagross is really nice for blocking intimidate. If you want to go all in on the drum pass, you can use hp steel over mash on meta as it secures the same kills. The post-pass is definitely further developed than the pre-pass portion of this team.
The main pass setup mon is mud slap zapdos. Zapdos gets a lot of free turns to click sub, and most of its counters are slower than both itself and smeargle. Thunderbolt blocks/limits phasing attempts from suicune, moltres and skarm and draws in said slower counters. Mud slap a few times, especially out of sand, and passing the intact sub to smeargle is a real possibility. If they hit and break sub, no worries because you can just pass and try again later or just play your odds with confuse ray. I borrow vaporeon from Nal's setup as another method of sub passing to smeargle, and registeel's all-around defensive utility coupled with twave for even more fishing lets me position my sub passers.
The crazy part about this team is that it won a few games naturally without getting the drum pass off. 5 of the 6 members deal solid damage, so it's not even 100% reliant on the pass to work.
My replays are all from 14-1500s which is not high ladder or impressive. Many of my games were won due to luck or misplays from my opponents. But that's not the point. This is literally just one attempt at bp cheese from an upper-middle player and builder, and it gained elo over ~15 games on lower-mid ladder. That's enough to be considered problematic in my book - it should at least be in the same discussion as jask and zap speed pass.
Replays: here's every game I played and saved today - not just the wins Game 1 I literally just forgot to click spore otherwise this was a win Game 2 Game 3 I get lazy and hail mary a belly drum, but since my opponent expected spore they ended up going to their sleep sac, p2. This basically wins me the game because smeargle is faster. Notably, though, a different gar could have boomed meta and dug/something fast could have revenged, preventing the pass. But you can see how this forces uncomfortable, costly decisions while the opponent tries to guess the smeargle set. Game 4 I get outplayed here, but the game could have gone differently, and if that was the more standard toxic milo, dnite could have potentially broken it enough so that agility meta could sweep. Game 5 loss to the rare roar mence here. Had I known the mence was roar, turn 6 would have been a coin toss deciding the entire game (assuming there's nothing that outspeeds and OHKO's meta in the back, which was unlikely with the revealed mons) Game 6 the luck elements intended to facilitate BP actually just end up winning me the game without BP at all Game 7 Game 8 Game 9 Again, a frail team loses even though it prevented the BD pass. Granted, my opponent misplayed the heck out of that endgame Game 10 Game 11 Game 12 I win against a good player because I get lucky, but we see another case like game 3 of smeargle abusing the fact that it encourages sleep sacking. If crocune didn't get that exact roll, the game was over on the spot. Game 13 More luck Game 14 I misplay around lead medicham, but the game still could have gone my way Game 15 Game 16 My opponent misplayed by not booming claydol, but there are some rolls where smeargle eats standard claydol psychic behind a sub, so I could have fished if I was more patient. Besides, roar vaporeon and flash zapdos are two easy alternative techs that would help facilitate the pass in this matchup. The main takeaway here is the potential of dragonite as a drum pass abuser.
The elephant in the room is that this is all done without speed pass at all. The speed pass ban is being sold as an end-all-be-all solution to BP, but VolCelebi strats still exist and are usable enough on ladder. Why is speed pass being targeted but smeargle + BP isn't? Why aren't we talking about a sand attack and/or confuse ray ban? Or a bp + sleep ban? Or sub + bp?
ABR proposed a ban of smeargle + BP. I don't think anybody is opposed to that, so getting both speed pass and smeargle + BP banned seems to be a real possibility. You might say that this ban combo would kill VolCelebi strats as well as the four strats I outlined earlier and we'll never have to deal with tiering BP again. But even this would not slay the beast. It would erase any ideas of winning tournaments with BP, yes, but it would not stop someone on ladder from loading memento muk + trick cb volbeat + sand attack umbreon + SD pass flash celebi + agility metagross. Throw in a taunt + BP and phasing + BP ban if you want! It doesn't matter because the enterprising Mead-In-The-Making will just use sand attack, or confuse ray, or thunder wave, or sing, etc as a pseudo taunt and get away with it sometimes. They won't get far on ladder, but they'll ruin somebody's playing experience that day. If you want to completely kill BP, you either ban the move or you instate 20+ complex bans.
There are two main takeaways here. The first is that since we want to keep stat passing in the tier, we have to live with some cheese. How much cheese is acceptable is subjective. We all need to weigh the pros of the non-cheese bp strats against the cons of the cheese ones and decide which side wins. Many would argue we're already at an acceptable level with the current ruleset. I think it's pretty hard to argue right now that any of VolCelebi pass, Jask Pass, and Zap Pass are broken in any way. At the end of the day, though, if you don't think zapdos semi-pass holds value in the metagame, I can't convince you to vote DNB. The second takeaway is that, since we can't fully kill degen BP, we're probably going to be in this cycle for a while longer until we iron out which complex bans nerf BP hard enough that no one will possibly ever bring it to high ladder or tour. Along the way we will surely end up cutting out some legitimate strategies from the tier as well. The harder we nerf BP, the more legitimate strategies we kill for diminishing returns. So, in the last section, I'll try to show that zapdos semi-pass is both healthy for the tier and not broken.
3. The Case for Zapdos Semi-Pass
The most obvious use case for speed pass on otherwise-normal teams is to provide counterplay to aero and dug on mixed offense. The reason for these two mons in particular is not only their power and speed tier which limits the frail mons on such offenses. It's also that they are often forced to click moves which give zapdos free set up opportunities in the late game. Other fast offensive mons don't have this restriction, but because they can't hold choice band, their potential reach for revenge killing isn't as high. They are also all not as fast so they can be outsped by dd tar and adamant dd gyara. Fruhdazi discussed at length how much these two limit mixed offense, so I don't feel the need to elaborate here. I'll admit I haven't watched too many tournament replays of agility zapdos mixed offense being used, but I can talk about my experiences with it.
This is a team I built and topped ladder with in late 2024. This 6 absolutely would not work, at least not with these offensive sets, without the speed pass option available to it. I don't think it can be realistically called broken or banworthy. I can't think of a single matchup this auto-wins. I think the aero matchup would be okay with a more defensive setup featuring pursuit tar and wish tect jirachi, but it would still be unacceptably bad versus dugtrio, and it would be a lot harder to progress to end games against bulkier teams in general.
Of course, agility pass zapdos can be used on spikes and dugtrio special offense as well, and there are maybe even applications on bulky teams/stall. As of right now, as far as I can tell, it's only really been seen on spikeless mixed offense, though, so that's what I'm going to discuss.
On a typical spikeless mixed offense, the options for the (usually required) ground-immune/fighting resist slot mainly boil down to salamence, zapdos, charizard, aerodactyl, gengar, and gyarados. Aero doesn't resist fighting, so it's usually going to be paired with another bird anyway. Gyarados is good but niche. Gengar is an interesting and underexplored option, but its traits are more suited towards spikes teams. This really leaves just zapdos, salamence, and charizard as the splashable options. While zapdos provides a lot to these teams on both the offensive and defensive ends, it cannot be relied upon as a self-sufficient breaker or win condition because it can't break blissey on its own without using spikes or seriously compromising its set to run cb. It can use sub pass, dry pass, dugtrio or matchup division to circumvent this issue, but none of these end up helping all that much against dugtio or aero. Charizard tends to threaten common aero setups with ttar/pert/spikers quite nicely, but it doesn't do much versus the most common dug teams as they have great checks like milotic and decent partial checks like claydol and blissey. Therefore, if you want your bird to help you in the aero and dug matchups, which are two of the hardest for mixed offense to handle, your two real options are dd mence and agility pass zapdos. Banning agility on zapdos completely removes one of these.
In short, agility pass zapdos increases the number of viable mixed offense setups. ADV is historically dominated by bulky teams and spikes balance, so I think any development that shakes that power balance is worth a fair investigation before banning. A two week suspect right after the first modern tour where somebody was using it often isn't enough time. Again, I'm open to a ban if it's warranted, but I do not think we've broken zap semi-pass yet.
Agility zapdos isn't free in the builder or in the game. Using zapdos in the flyer slot on mixed offense makes it harder to fit stronger early breakers like charizard or better late game options like dd mence, and dropping sub pass means its less useful early game. In the actual game, needing to preserve zapdos health for the late game pass means you can't use its defensive profile as much as you'd like to. The setup turn often isn't free either, except against cb locked dugtrio and aero, which isn't an auto win because these revenge killers match up naturally well into your offense. Further, the most dangerous speed pass recipients are also worse than their alternatives if they don't get speed passed to them. Marowak provides decent defensive value, but it doesn't get to hold leftovers or even lum berry. Same principle applies to hariyama, breloom, heracross, ursaring, and rhydon. More well-rounded recipients like mix tar, suicune, and jirachi cannot sweep as easily.
The other obvious point in favor of DNB is the low usage. During my 40 suspect ladder games, I faced a grand total of zero speed pass teams. It's not used much in tour, and it's not used much on ladder. There has been no explosion of usage comparable to Mead pass because it simply is not as good, at least not yet.
4. TLDR
I think we cannot escape baton pass cheese without banning the move entirely. If we're going to agree to preserve BP, then we consent to having a certain level of cheese in our tier. Therefore, the argument boils down to a subjective discussion of how much we value non-problematic aspects of BP versus how much we dislike problematic aspects of BP, and how much cheese we find acceptable.
Since a subjective discussion is necessary, I offer my opinion. I don't support a blanket speed pass ban. I think it nerfs certain legitimate use cases too hard while failing to nerf other problematic use cases sufficiently. I also think most of the strategies the blanket ban targets aren't strong enough to warrant a ban anyway. I've provided evidence to back these opinions up.
Excellent post. I would just add a few thoughts of my own:
Cheese has two main forks (sometimes/often blended together but still distinct): heavy abuse of RNG elements and taking advantage of the element of surprise / opponent propensity to make mistakes vs aggression (even unsound aggression). The latter exists in all competitive games to some extent, the former is slightly more unique to mons.
In general, I don't think many players favor a route targeted at eliminating all cheese, as you right point out, this is an exercise in futility. Moreover, the second type of cheese tends to add a decent amount of variety and flavor to the game, even if it is frustrating to lose to at times.
It's also the case that we will never fully eradicate the first kind of cheese, even if many players may want to. Mons is inherently RNG based and you likewise don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole of removing/modding all these many elements. So I totally agree that it is primarily a question of where to draw the line.
I think a useful typology for RNG based cheese is the following:
A) so good that it is meta warping, seen at high frequency, most teams have to seriously consider how they will handle it
B) decent. you can reasonably see it topping the ladder and occasionally being used in serious tour games. most players can probably pick it up and at least maintain their elo.
C) very bad. it is unlikely to top the ladder (except possibly if piloted by a player far far above the competition), most players will lose significant Elo playing it.
Scenario A demands serious consideration of action. Scenario B can sometimes justify some collateral damage. Scenario C generally does not require action.
In this case, I think most of us can agree we are not in scenario A. Most of the strategies people are discussing (Jask pass, allinzap pass, ddpass) pretty firmly fall into case B in my view. Belly drum pass smeargle is very borderline - I would say it generally straddles the line between B and C while falling closer to C, but I'm open to changing my mind on that. But I do strongly believe that all other all in degenpass strategies fall firmly into C. Sure, you can run Flash on SD pass celebi and lose 300 elo if you want -- but that is quite likely to resolve itself.
So I don't really buy the argument that a speed pass ban wouldn't vastly improve the problems people have. I definitely don't buy that doing both a speed pass ban and a smearbp ban wouldn't solve the problems. No doubt it comes with collateral damage, for some far too much collateral damage, for others an opportunity to ban an element that they dislike but that most of the playerbase is fine with. But it will fix the issues imo.
I do think there are less extreme measures that would help, though perhaps not quite as much. Unfortunately I am quite skeptical that we will get these ever and even if I got my full wishlist of changes (sand attack, smearbp, ninjask), I'm quite sure that some variety of degen speed pass in category B) would live on and continue to terrorize the ladder. So for me I am very willing to accept a modest amount of collateral damage to nuke these things from orbit, especially given the political realities that in the DNB world we are far more likely to get nothing than everything.
Lowest of key, and I think I will be pushing for this if DNB wins, I think Substitute should really count as a "stat" for the purposes of the no "multi-stat pass" clause. It's more central to problematic stat pass builds than speed in and of itself and nuking it would have less (but not nonzero!) collateral.
