Gen 3 ADV Baton Pass Suspect (again)

[Ortheore]

Can I ask why option 5 is still to implement a ban on everything except drypass? I thought the whole point of implementing a complex ban was to preserve non-toxic uses of bp, and this ban fails abysmally at that. If you're axing SD/CM/whatever Pass from a format that frequently sees those options utilised outside of full chains, why not go all the way and just ban Baton Pass? Either way there's heaps of "collateral" for people who care about that stuff, and you're not implementing some conditional rule that introduces inconsistency and confusion. I really get the sense that ADV OU players wouldn't want either option anyway

I want to stress that even as an outsider I can see that this option would never be selected and I don't want to come across as pushing that position, because I really am not invested in this. I just think making a rule to preserve DryPass while banning every other use of BP seems so staggeringly illogical in this situation that the fact that it was initially included and survived a review unmodified is astonishing, to the point where it bothered me into posting about it

 

[oldcvcv]

Baton pass can act like a pseudo-uturn/volt switch, and it is not broken at all so it is an option.

 

[Siglut]

lost game 2 on this account, vapi's right resetting is a meme

Now that I've got reqs I'll give a brief summary of my thoughts.
Option 1 is a meme, pretty obvious to most people I think that baton pass needs something done to it. If you think everyone else in the community is dogshit and can't come up with a good solution so this is your vote, then I guess that makes some sense.
If we do option 2 it seems completely inevitable that advbp3 has to happen. Plus, it kills meanpass umbreon, and while that may not be an extremely desirable part of the tier I think it's a fair enough matchup fish against someone who brings slow passive stuff all the time.
Option 3 keeps the "reasonable cheese" elements of the tier (sdpass and meanpass) and I think totally eliminates the full-chain element of baton pass. Only thing here I could see happening is if mead comes up with a good setup for zap passing to drum yama or wak, but I think counterplay to that is pretty reasonable.
Option 4 fully solves the issue and (imo) doesn't cause meaningful collateral. Some people like agilipass zap as a dug punish and/or want to preserve vappass, and out of respect to them this isn't my first choice.
Option 5 would be just fine despite undeniably causing pretty severe repercussions on the metagame. ADV would still be fun though, we'd still be playing the same game. Maybe it might get people to stop using cmpass bi on every team, which would be nice, but it might make them harder to beat.

Hope you're all having a good day so far.

 

[armongoose]

Hey everyone, as a very active member of the ADV community i want to post my thoughts on BP and on what i think is the best solution to the problem.
I will be looking at each ban option separetely and arguing the pros and cons of each:

1 Keep Baton Pass as is (Limited to 3 users on a team)
AKA not adressing the problem.
This option imo is for 3 categories of people:
-Boomers who haven't played much in the last year and haven't quite uderstood the brokenness of Mead Pass.
-People who are extremely new to ADV and haven't quite figured out what's broken and what isn't.
-People who are unsatisfied whit the other options and would rather do nothing than pick an option that they don't like(i don't quite get this position personally cause i think the other 4 option pretty much cover the entire spectrum of different approaches to the ban)
TLDR: I think this option is bad cause we need to address the problem.

2 Limit to 2 Baton Pass users on a team and Ban the combination of Baton Pass + Taunt
AKA trying to contain the problem.
People that are in favor of this option want incremental bans that don't really impact the tier too much and want to tackle the problem bit by bit by weakening the power of bp teams overtime. I think this process is quite flawed and here's my reasoning: the previous bp bans have already had a big impact on the tier and by keep adding on "minor" bans we reach a point where all the "minor" bans put together have a bigger impact than 1 "big" ban. For example these people want to preserve Salac pass Vaporeon or Speed pass Scizor or Agility Bp Zapdos+Marowak, but they didn't care for banning Mr.Mime or nuking a lot of Smeargle sets or wanting to eliminate the few uses of Hypno, Mawile, and nuking entirely Mean Look pass Umbreon(which is far from broken). So at the end of the day it comes down to preference for these people, they like certain mons more than others so they are fine nuking the ones they don't like as long as they get to keep their favourite toys to play with. Also to note that this option doesn't completely get rid of the problem of Mead Pass.
TLDR: Imo this option is inconclusive and might create more damage in the long term than the other options.

3 Limit to 1 form of stat-boosting alongside Baton Pass across the whole team
AKA addressing the consequence of the problem.
I think this ABR ban is quite smart and is the 2nd best option in my opinion but personally i don't like it as much as option 4 cause it doesn't address the problem directly(speed pass) but addresses the consequences of the problem(long chains with multiple boosts). This in practice eliminates BP chains just as well as option 4 and has similar collateral but is slightly more complex to understand in the builder and feels more "artificial".
TLDR: Good ban but i prefer option 4.

4 Ban the combination of Baton Pass + Speed Boosts
AKA addressing the source of the problem.
Imo this is the best option because it addresses the source of the problem which is speedpass. Without speedpass nothing that involves BP is remotely broken, because is the ability to outspeed everything is what makes BP teams "uninteractive" and so difficult to deal with unless your team has specific measures that are targeted to break the chain. Without speedpass BP team are very vulnerable to fast revenge killers like Zapdos, Aero, Starmie or setup sweepers like DD Tar and DD Mence. Without speedpass we can unban Mr.Mime, free Bp on Smeargle, unlimit BP to 6 members on a team, and basically instead of having 4 different bans for 1 problem just having 1 ban that directly addresses the problem. The speedpass ban has some collateral, mainly Salac Pass Vaporeon, Speedpass Scizor and Agility BP Zap. I don't think these collateral are a big deal:
- first Salac Vaporeon can be used in the lead slot even with Leftovers, it has still a favourable matchup against lead Ttar, Meta and Mence, but loses the "favourable" matchup against Zapdos, although i think this is true only for low ladder farming because good Zapdos players when they see a lead Vaporeon they click HP Grass turn 1 and Tbolt turn 2 or if they are spdef Zap they can simply Tbolt Turn 1 and Vaporeon will be left just out of Salac range. Overall i think the collateral on Vaporeon is very minor and not a big deal.
- second Speedpass Scizor is cool and not broken so it's unfortunate that it gets nerfed a bit here, but let's remind ourselves that Scizor can run many other sets like double dance sets or endure Salac Reversal sets, so even by eliminating the Speedpassing Scizor sets there is still left plenty to mess around with the steel bug.
- Lastly Agility BP Zapdos gets nuked with this ban which i think overall is a good thing, i always found Zap+Wak to be cheesy and same thing for Zap+belly drummers like Hariyama, Poliwrath & Co. Let's remind ourselves that Agility Zapdos without BP is still legal and a very good Pokemon, you can run Agility+3atks with Drill peck as a great sweeper especially terryfing vs Aero/Celebi teams.
And lastly i want to say that i personally would like to see how good a fullpass team can be without speed pass, maybe it's gonna be good enough to get to 1400 or even 1500 on ladder and i kinda look forward to beating it in an interactive way(with explosions and fast revenge killers insted of trying to get the Roar/Taunt turns right and hoping for the best) .
TLDR: This is my favourite solution because it adresses directly the problem, has very few collaterals and it is also the most straightforward and simple to understand for new people getting into ADV.

5 Ban the combination of Baton Pass + Any Stat Boosts (Drypass only)
AKA overreacting to the problem.
This option is clearly an overreaction cause CM pass, SD pass or Acid armor pass without Speedpass are far from broken. I think this option is mainly for newer gen players that have PTSD and just want to nuke BP from existence.
TLDR: in an ADV context this ban doesn't make any sense.

Thanks for reading it all if you did, i hope my english wasn't too bad

"Mean Look pass Umbreon(which is far from broken)"

Have you played a team where Umbreon uses mean look and sand attack? If you miss one or two turns it's GG

It often happens like this (though there are many ways):
They throw vaporeon out, maybe even with bright powder. You decide to switch to your roar mon to stay ahead of the game. Zapdos
is a better choice here among OU- though salac berry vaporeon beats zapdos.

OK you predicted correct, this vaporeon will BP!
...but, it used sand attack as it's first attack so your roar accuracy is .75x, with bright powder .9*.75x =.675

Your roar missed.
The vap BPs to umb.

Umb uses taunt, cancelling your roar.

You attack (for around 30% dmg - 6% for leftovers, we'll say you don't miss)
It sand attacks again.

--Game Over--
You don't switch mon? you get mean looked and miss more and more. T wave? umb has sync ability so now you're paralyzed and inaccurate.
You switch mon? Some sequence of subs, sand attack, taunt, meanlook
Finally BP. Could be scizor,ttar, zap-> marowak, salamence, whatever.

It didn't even need to be sand attack. T wave, sleep (hypno variant), swagger, confuse ray, charm.. there's countless ways

Ban speed pass AND taunt w/ pass. Need new option

 

[Ajjc]

"Mean Look pass Umbreon(which is far from broken)"

Have you played a team where Umbreon uses mean look and sand attack? If you miss one or two turns it's GG

It often happens like this (though there are many ways):
They throw vaporeon out, maybe even with bright powder. You decide to switch to your roar mon to stay ahead of the game. Zapdos
is a better choice here among OU- though salac berry vaporeon beats zapdos.

OK you predicted correct, this vaporeon will BP!
...but, it used sand attack as it's first attack so your roar accuracy is .75x, with bright powder .9*.75x =.675

Your roar missed.
The vap BPs to umb.

Umb uses taunt, cancelling your roar.

You attack (for around 30% dmg - 6% for leftovers, we'll say you don't miss)
It sand attacks again.

--Game Over--
You don't switch mon? you get mean looked and miss more and more. T wave? umb has sync ability so now you're paralyzed and inaccurate.
You switch mon? Some sequence of subs, sand attack, taunt, meanlook
Finally BP. Could be scizor,ttar, zap-> marowak, salamence, whatever.

It didn't even need to be sand attack. T wave, sleep (hypno variant), swagger, confuse ray.. there's countless ways

Ban speed pass AND taunt w/ pass. Need new option

Mean Look Umbreon is not broken at all lol, the situation you just described is extremely easy to get out of. Let's walk through it:

If Vaporeon's first attack is Sand Attack and you Roar on the BP to Umbreon and miss (which BTW won't have BrightPowder presumably...), you still have plenty of options in terms of counterplay.

A. You can just switch to something that threatens un-boosted Umbreon (read: like 75% of the metagame). If you get mean looked on the switch it's a moot point because you can just attack the Umbreon and overwhelm it before it can pull off its bullshit. If you get Taunted on that turn it's great because then *you* get a free turn. If you get sand-attacked on the switch then just switch back to your phaser until you get the turn right. Even better if you have something with Taunt that out-speeds Umbreon it renders it completely useless.
B. Just... click Roar again. Obviously you can still possibly miss, but it is statistically very unlikely and then you are in the clear unless the opponent clicked Taunt that turn. In which case you haven't been Mean Looked which means you can just... switch out to something that threatens Umbreon that turn instead.

There's really no way for the Umbreon user trap you where you can't just beat it 1 on 1. The option really should always be to switch since I guess theoretically your phaser could miss a 75% acc move twice with the accuracy drop.

Umbreon is simply waaay too passive to pull off anything that can be considered broken by the standards of the ADV meta. In most situations a good player will abuse the shit out of someone trying to pull off Mean Look passes without considerable support.

I will say though that I don't think Sand Attack has any competitive merit and will literally only be used in situations where someone is trying to cheese out a win, but I guess I understand the rationale for why it isn't banned.

 

[armongoose]

Mean Look Umbreon is not broken at all lol, the situation you just described is extremely easy to get out of. Let's walk through it:

If Vaporeon's first attack is Sand Attack and you Roar on the BP to Umbreon and miss (which BTW won't have BrightPowder presumably...), you still have plenty of options in terms of counterplay.

A. You can just switch to something that threatens un-boosted Umbreon (read: like 75% of the metagame). If you get mean looked on the switch it's a moot point because you can just attack the Umbreon and overwhelm it before it can pull off its bullshit. If you get Taunted on that turn it's great because then *you* get a free turn. If you get sand-attacked on the switch then just switch back to your phaser until you get the turn right. Even better if you have something with Taunt that out-speeds Umbreon it renders it completely useless.
B. Just... click Roar again. Obviously you can still possibly miss, but it is statistically very unlikely and then you are in the clear unless the opponent clicked Taunt that turn. In which case you haven't been Mean Looked which means you can just... switch out to something that threatens Umbreon that turn instead.

There's really no way for the Umbreon user trap you where you can't just beat it 1 on 1. The option really should always be to switch since I guess theoretically your phaser could miss a 75% acc move twice with the accuracy drop.

Umbreon is simply waaay too passive to pull off anything that can be considered broken by the standards of the ADV meta. In most situations a good player will abuse the shit out of someone trying to pull off Mean Look passes without considerable support.

I will say though that I don't think Sand Attack has any competitive merit and will literally only be used in situations where someone is trying to cheese out a win, but I guess I understand the rationale for why it isn't banned.

I don't think 75% of the meta really threatens BP umbreon, I'd guess 10% hardcounters (Fighting moves), and 40% soft counters (other strong Atk mon). The fighting types are UUBL for a reason, then ttar rock slide is 90% accurate, metagross meteor mash is 85% accurate. The pokemon that can roar or haze aren't fighting types and aren't generally threatening to umbreon (who can get acid armor anyways from vap- bp back and forth).

Again, If both umb and vap have bright powder (which I have seen) we're talking a 32.5% * 32.5% => about 10% chance of a GG.. that's assuming 2 consecutive misses, they realistically have more turns than that to achieve 2 misses for it to be a losing odds for the other team. I mentioned sand attack isn't necessary either (2 much work for me to calc the odds).

BP itself isn't "broken" in the sense it's unbeatable. What you said *can* totally overcome the scenario I brought up, but the fact that even the perfect pokemon for the job still have a sizable chance to lose is pretty absurd. The best I've personally found with hardcounter BP teams is something like 75% success, but then these teams are less effective against the main meta of ttar and suicune. I've also never seen a player over 1400 with a team designed to hardcounter BP, see vapicuno

And for consistency, here's two taunt scenarios from main thread
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen3ou-577063
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen3ou-586617

Maybe "noncompetitive" is a better word than "broken". It's really not about umbreon or other taunt BP beating everyone on ladder or even winning a tournie (it hasn't and probably won't). It's about taunt BP (and speed BP) randomly sucking rating out of people on ladder or eliminating people in tournies because of pure RNG and flowcharting.. At a rate that's something like 2-4x higher than winning with a lucky crit.

 

[Deleted User 108547]

As most of you know I seldom play and I'm not a skilled player so take my words with a grain of salt but I'd like to know... Why isn't limit to 1 BP per team even an option?

 

[Siglut]

Because we'll still have to play against ninjask every other game on ladder. Probably limits the chains that don't have good counterplay enough, but it also prevents having multiple drypass users or other common strategies like cmpass bi with bp zapper.

In my opinion I think limiting to 1 bp per team is a strictly worse option than abr clause, because they limit chains in basically the same way but 1bp has more collateral than 1stat. 1stat also lets bp smear get unbanned which could be nice.

 

[vapicuno]

I previously wrote about speedpass here, but perhaps the best way to convince you guys to preserve speedpass is to show, not tell.

In the last week, I have built a new team featuring Agility + Baton Pass littered with ideas, gathered replays, and compiled them into a video. I hope voters can take the optimistic view to consider the angle of the rich possibilities that speed pass adds to the metagame, instead of supporting the most restrictive clauses to exhaustively cut out the unhealthy elements.

If you care about the continued development of innovative strategies in the metagame, I urge you to watch this video and see what you may be missing out on with an overly controlled metagame.

You can watch my narration of the replays by clicking on the timestamps. The team paste can be found here so that you don't get lost while watching the video.

If it's any incentive, it also features Choice Band Gengar!

P.S. It's kinda disappointing that I won't be qualifying for the suspect test, missing out on 0.1% GXE, but such is mons!

 

[Voyager]

call me jester 2

 

[Dizno]

Call me Jester 3

 

[Star]

Option 3 was chosen.