I sympathize with your feelings about full Baton Pass teams and if Baton Pass had no use outside of these completely unoriginal and nauseatingly predictable full BP teams, I would probably agree with you. However, Baton Pass is a pretty nifty move that has a lot of potential outside of full BP chains, even if most people don't take advantage of it. For this reason, surely banning it should be viewed as a last resort and not an ideal solution. Let's first address the elements that make Baton Pass chains broken, i.e. Scolipede's ability to get free boosts and Espeon and Smeargle's ability to prevent phazing.
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Baton Pass - its role in the metagame and possible solutions to nerf full Baton Pass chains
- Thread starter haunter
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Believe it or not, I did, quite some time ago. Here's the post for your convenience.
Srn9130 You have some good points mixed in with a lot of misunderstanding of my argument. I will attempt to clarify the points I believe you misunderstood while attempting to address the points you made.
So about your scenario, here's the thing. It's not necessary for the swap in to avoid the 2hko from megamaw. Remember, I am advocating that iron defense scolipede is broken on any team, I'm not arguing that scolipede is broken only on BP. Anyway, in the scenario you posted, play rough does very little damage to scolipede, meaning to attempt to use it is rather risky. Let us say you have paired scolipede with a fire mon such as a bulky charizard. The resulting calc looks like this...
+6 252+ Atk Huge Power Mega Mawile Iron Head vs. +6 252 HP / 0 Def Charizard: 152-179 (42.2 - 49.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
This is what happens to megamaw if charizard survives the next turn to attack
-1 252+ Atk Tough Claws Mega Charizard X Flare Blitz vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Mega Mawile: 318-374 (104.6 - 123%) -- guaranteed OHKO
But will megazard survive the sucker punch?
+6 252+ Atk Huge Power Mega Mawile Sucker Punch vs. +6 252 HP / 0 Def Mega Charizard X: 151-178 (41.9 - 49.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
Why yes, yes it will.
And all of this is assuming that the opponent led scolipede into mega mawile, which is not a great scenario.
If you want to talk specifically about BP teams, the answer is quite obvious. BP into smeargle, take the hit and live, spore the mawile, and BP over to espeon or mime to start calm minding in prep for a sweep (or just stored power the sucker, it's sp defense is pretty bad).
"free" was probably bad term for it. However, given mega-maw's prominence as a setup sweeper, any good team should have something that can swap into a +0 mega-maw and threaten a KO. If you can do that, the opponent either has to lose his megamaw in exchange for some, but not all of the hp of the swap in in order to have a chance at revenging it, or swap to another mon, who in all likelyhoode is going to be unable to dent it if the replacement is physical, and most special attackers are going to have to take a hit or two due to being outsped courtisy of scoli's speed boosts. As long as your team has a relatively safe swap in for the mon that decided to setup in front of scoli, it's a no win scenario for the opponent. Also note that if megamaw is setting up, that means that scoli has been taking 0 damage from megamaw, meaning that after you revenge this mon, scolipede can come back out and set right back up again. You no longer have your megamaw and chances are your revenge killer is unable to stop scolipede from setting up because reasons we have both agreed upon. What do you do now?
I am not saying that at all. What I am saying is that if I tried to argue for two bans in the same post, it would be confusing. I never said that the two bans I am advocating for should'nt be implemented at the same time. I apologize for the confusion, I thought I was clear.
Well, you are not going to find a single thing that breaks BP versus both defense and offense. Defense and offense use different tools to win games, their win-cons are completely different. Things that can counter deoxys-s or DD-Dnite do not usually counter amoonguss or chansey. I do not see why one should expect it to work otherwise for BP teams. Also, you metaphor of bringing 2 ubers of your choice is really bad, as it would literally warp the OU metagame around which two ubers you choose. As I said before, I believe a big part of the reason BP is broken is that it is a team built around screwing over stall that relies on a broken mon to not have a bad matchup versus offense. If we weaken BP versus offense, BP will have to find more space to have offensive checks and counters, weakening itself versus stall. Furthermore, as stated before, I am also advocating a ban on ingrain-smeargle, which will ease the matchup of BP vs Stall anyway for reasons I will elaborate on later in the post.
You didn't. I did and am.
Stop assuming that scolipede is useful ONLY on BP. My argument is that scolipede is broken on many teams, especially offensive teams. In the case of BP, focus sash - spore smeargle says "hi".
I wonder how much damage mega-mawile will do to scolipede with 3 swords dances?
Mega Mawile Swords Dance vs. Scolipede: 0-0 (0 - 0%) -- nice move
If you attack, scoli gets to boost. If you boost, scoli gets to boost. If you switch, scoli gets to boost. In this and most other matchups, all scolipede has to do is boost, and it will work no matter what you do. This is bad. In the cases he can't, he can make like a ninjask, protect once, and swap. The only real problem here is NPers and calm minders, the former are usually pretty obvious and the latter are usually walled by sylveon and mime.
Once again, my position is broken on other teams too, so it was worth a mention.
No, I am not. What I am saying is that you cannot make an offensive team that does not contain at least one mon on it that isn't setup bait for scolipede. On most offensive teams, more then half of their mons are setup bait due to the physical bias of the current meta. Scolipede can choose it's matchups, and it has a lot of favorable ones.
Simple, it doesn't. What distinguishes ingrain from magic bounce is that espeon has to be out to use it each and every time there is even the possibility of a phaser, spore, taunt, leech seed, and all those other tools that stall uses, which makes it very vulnerable. Watch the replay I posted. Espeon very nearly died in that replay. Espeon would have died if ingrain had not been in play the entire game. I can bet you my account that had espeon died and chansey lived, sandstorm would've won the match "easily".
Awagarb About your previous post asking Over Zealous to stop switching between boosting just speed and boosting speed and defense, I must ask "why?" Given scolipede's BP set, he can choose, on any turn he is out, whether he wants to try to boost both speed and defense or just boost speed. He does not need to make any adjustments to his build, item, EV spread, or moves to accomplish this. This is a decision that scolipede can make and change every battle, or even every turn if he so chooses. Ninjask can only boost speed, ever. Ninjask does not have this freedom. For comparison, consider the semi-popular double dance build back in gen 5, which is any set that runs both a speed boosting move and an attack boosting move. In any match, if the double dancer gets a free turn to boost, that player must make a decision on whether to boost offense or speed. This decision is normally based on the opponent's team comp and likely swap in. If the player believes that the swap in will be a slower mon, he will boost offense to break through. Otherwise, he will boost his speed and kill the faster mon next turn. This versatility made double dancers very powerful in gen 5. Scolipede is similar.. The rest of your points are valid ones.
Absolutely nothing is broken about baton pass. Nothing. It's stopped by SD Pinsir/Talonflame/SD+Sacred Sword/Prankster taunt/Haze/Perish Song/Red Card/Ditto/Prankster Encore. If you can't be bothered to run ANY of those things that isn't BPs fault, it's yours. This is obviously one of those "I don't use it so I want it banned in order to have one less threat" mentalities. Facing Baton Pass=free win.
It's not just you, because there's a lot of people like you, but, READ THE DAMN THREAD before you make stupid posts.
Now, reading it all would be impractical, but the first 10 pages, including the OP:
I'm sorry I couldn't go through the whole thread before posting and that probably this has been said before...could it be that the meta just needs to get used to playing against new BP cores? from what I saw on replay at around page 84, most people made clear mistakes when facing the BP teams (like losing control of the field by trying to face a Scolipede with Azumarril) while banning the whole strategy would mean that it actually has no counters. Perhaps it would be wise to let the meta evolve around BP and not narrowing the gameplay to a "Who hit the hardest and fastest" thing only...and I actually hate facing stall...
I really haven't had problems facing BP chains and I feel like I have a solid check and counter on my team with Bulky Volcarona (QD, Fiery Dance, Bug Buzz, Giga Drain) and Thundurus-I (Knock Off, Taunt, thunderbolt, HP Ice). When facing a BP team I usually lead with Thundurus as the natural and only move for a BP chain is to BP to Espeon who takes a hard hit from LO knock off and most likely dies from the next tbolt. If everything else fails, Volcarona can save the day by QD along whatever is on the field and either roasting what's left or bypassing substitutes with bug buzz (except for a CM sylveon).
Finally, not preparing your team to face BP with some of the many options that has being posted means that you are going to lose the match, just as not carrying a way to handle Dual-Birds or a mega-mawile/Bisharp counter would do.
PD: Has someone tried how does volt-turn teams handle against BP? I would thing that hard pressing the BP team and having switch initiative would slowly but safely wear it down as BP feel much like stall teams in that they are forced to predict the incoming hit to sponge the damage while keeping momentum.
I really haven't had problems facing BP chains and I feel like I have a solid check and counter on my team with Bulky Volcarona (QD, Fiery Dance, Bug Buzz, Giga Drain) and Thundurus-I (Knock Off, Taunt, thunderbolt, HP Ice). When facing a BP team I usually lead with Thundurus as the natural and only move for a BP chain is to BP to Espeon who takes a hard hit from LO knock off and most likely dies from the next tbolt. If everything else fails, Volcarona can save the day by QD along whatever is on the field and either roasting what's left or bypassing substitutes with bug buzz (except for a CM sylveon).
Finally, not preparing your team to face BP with some of the many options that has being posted means that you are going to lose the match, just as not carrying a way to handle Dual-Birds or a mega-mawile/Bisharp counter would do.
PD: Has someone tried how does volt-turn teams handle against BP? I would thing that hard pressing the BP team and having switch initiative would slowly but safely wear it down as BP feel much like stall teams in that they are forced to predict the incoming hit to sponge the damage while keeping momentum.
Stupid why? Baton Pass is easy to beat, if you can't beat baton pass then you aren't a high level player therefor you can't post here. An entire playstyle that can be beat by 1 Pokemon/move/or item is in no way broken. It's like saying you need to run certain moves/pokemon to beat stall so that means it's broken.
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Galladium
Banned deucer.
If you read the rest of the thread, you'd see why Baton Pass is not easy to beat without running obscure counters. I'm not even going to bother to respond to the second half of your post.
Can you explain how it's easy to beat? Even high level players can lose to BP, due to them not preparing for such a gimmick.
This might be mini - modding but can the moderators move this to the Victory Road thread so that we can get educated posts and not one - liners such as "If you can't beat Baton Pass, then you are a bad player". As I understand it, the people there are the supposed "top" players who know what they're talking about.
I listed many ways.
If you read ANY of the thread, it'd be obvious, so try that. I doubt there's a single page here where there isn't at least some noob who asks something similar and gets shot down. Seriously, don't post if you don't have a clue what you're talking about
And yes, I don't quite see why this wasn't in VR from the get go. Sure more people have posted, but maybe half of them had a clue, and the rest just wasted our time (see Sweetshare)
Everything between Prankster Taunt and Prankster Encore are rarely if ever seen, and set up priority alone doesn't count as a way to take BP on. Sure, Mega Pinsir and Talonflame are good at taking on Scolipede, but the opponent won't always mindlessly send him out, as they have other teammates to cripple them, such as Smeargle with Spore, or the Pokemon they intend to sweep with, like Tyranitar after a speed boost. Sacred Sword is only ever seen on Aegislash, so that won't help much against any of the main 4 set up BPers except Smeargle. In fact, does anyone even use Haze or Perish Song these days?
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Haze Quagsire, Perish Song Politoed, Haze Milotic, Haze Crobat are pretty much only used to take the boosts away from BP teams. They are dead weight otherwise though, which may explain why they are not seen much. (Not to mention they aren't even that good at their job)
Galladium
Banned deucer.
I agree, except that there are people like me who can't access Victory Road, but have still made some sensible posts in this thread. Not everyone that doesn't have access to Victory Road is an idiot.
Those are really good analytic-al questions. I've glossed over the last couple pages, so I'll answer these questions the best I can. To get my bias out of the way, I prefer simply banning Scolipede over everything and then prefer a limit of four after that as of now.
1. From a team building perspective, banning Scolipede and reintroducing the complex ban of Ingrain + Baton Pass (this never should have gone away) should fix most of the problems people are having now. It's absolutely stupid how Scolipede can simultaneously accumulate both Speed and Defensive boosts for very little opportunity cost due to his bulk. By banning Scolipede players have more opportunity to apply pressure at the beginning of the match, and Ninjask will never be a suitable replacement; he is killed way too easily. Also, without Ingrain Smeargle, players have more opportunities to phase.
2. I do not think limiting it to either four or three will really help the way most people want it to. Scolipede will still be a pressing problem. As Webowser has shown using Jukian's replays, all six members are often not very necessary during a match; they're just insurance. Scolipede's quick passes when played right are very dangerous, and BP teams will evolve to work with that and work with varied and potentially dangerous receivers. Also, someone might just "figure out" how BP works best with three or four mons, in which case we will be back where we are now. Either way, Scolipede will still be problematic, and we might have to deal with him sooner or later. Might as well be sooner before we do anything too intrusive from a team-building perspective, imo. Do we have any other pressing issues at the moment? If not, banning Scolipede before introducing a limit to see if that changes anything might even be preferable.
3. I think I partially answered that in Promot #2, but this is a very big maybe.
4. What strategies BP checks? Or what checks BP? The passive wording confuses me.
People already have trouble phazing due to Mr.Mime and Espeon.
Those have always been though; Scolipede (and Sylveon) is what really changed this generation (and Ingrain Smeargle). But phasing isn't the real issue anyway; it's getting past those ridiculous defensive boosts.
Maybe we could do a +2 defense/special defense buff move clause, like Iron Defense or Amnesia can't be used on Baton Pass teams. It's very unlikely that that'll fix much, or even be considered in the first place, but it's an idea.
My team can beat any batonpass team, even if they know the gimmick.
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-115986443
Stop trying to restrict people who play this game further -- banning BP is just going to make this game overall less fun. Just get good. Adapt. Stop forcing the metagame with such arbitrary rules like this - this kind of stuff is only going to be toxic to pokemon. How can we expect people to play with two dozen clauses in effect.
Baton Pass is easy to react to. Even if you fuck up, you always get a turn to switch in your counter, because they always have to stat boost and then baton pass. They will always BP into whatever you have ready. Clear Smog. Haze. Perish Song. Entrain. There's no easy defense against this stuff as a BP team.
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-115986443
Stop trying to restrict people who play this game further -- banning BP is just going to make this game overall less fun. Just get good. Adapt. Stop forcing the metagame with such arbitrary rules like this - this kind of stuff is only going to be toxic to pokemon. How can we expect people to play with two dozen clauses in effect.
Baton Pass is easy to react to. Even if you fuck up, you always get a turn to switch in your counter, because they always have to stat boost and then baton pass. They will always BP into whatever you have ready. Clear Smog. Haze. Perish Song. Entrain. There's no easy defense against this stuff as a BP team.
You misunderstood my poorly constructed sentence, particularly the meaning of "job".
I didnt meant he should choose one type of boosting and always go with it, just have some consistency with his arguments.
Whenever Scolipede can set up ID, the argument of trivially attained def and speed pops up, as any poke that can surely pass +2 def/speed makes an overwhelming support for BP. This is usually accompanied by saying Ninjask cannot perform the same job and is therefore 100% useless for the team in all scenarios.
When Scolipede cannot boost anything besides speed, the argument morphs into "nothing can stop him from getting max speed" and claims of max speed being an overwhelming support to BP, even if he is functioning essentially as a harder-to-kill-with-priority Ninjask.
When Scolipede is under so much pressure that he cant even boost up to +2 speed safely, that +1 speed is considered an overwhelming support to his team.
When Scolipede cannot do absolutely anything, he can be sacked for a free switch, providing overwhelming support to his team. ( I am sure this would be the next one )
Your entire replay is based around Perish Song and your opponents BP Team didn't have Mr. Mime. If it did, you'd have lost. Also, nice team btw, Water Absorb Politoed and Durant have been making a comeback recently.
First, why are you using water absorb Politoed?
Second, the opponent wasn't using an all out Baton Pass team; it was a team with only 3 BP users. That is not what the thread is about.
Seriously, it's cool that you beat a 3 mon baton pass team with a bad team. But this thread is for either a) Viable ways to beat 6 mon baton pass teams, or b) ways to nerf baton pass teams.
Lastly, Mr. Mime shuts down Perish Song. If you encounter him, on a 6 mon BP team, you'll need to rethink your strategy.
It's because of those clauses that Pokemon isn't such a miserable experience. Do you really want to see Moody everywhere? Without clauses, OU would be rather close to being Ubers.
I personally think he wants to fight a Minimize / Double Team team who all have Subs and OHKO moves (Bonus Points: they have Quick Claw which almost always activates)
Those moves you mentioned are either downgrades to other moves or just too terrible to use. Clear Smog is basically a poor man's Haze (unless you're scared to death of Taunt), which is basically a poor man's Roar. Perish Song is rarely seen ever since Mega Gengar's banishment, the only somewhat viable users of it being Politoed and Celebi, who both prefer other moves, and Mr. Mime takes care of it anyways. Finally, Entrainment is too gimicky to pass off as good, since the opponent can just switch out and get their ability back, and Scarf sets will have to switch out either way after using the move. Those moves are too situational and way too gimmicky to work against anything but Baton Pass teams.
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