Rejected ADV Baton Pass v184

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I was a heavy full Baton Pass user back in the day, with probably over 90% winrate on ladder with it. I see that 10 years later the Baton Pass debate is somehow still raging on? My opinion is that by itself should be more than enough evidence that Baton Pass needs to go. Complex bans are very unfriendly as a barrier to entry for any new players and any tier always needs fresh blood. I would support a full ban.
 
We are now commencing with a suspect test on SpeedPass. Anybody who met the any of the below thresholds is automatically qualified to vote via tour placements.

1) 6+ games or 3+ wins in SPL
2) ADV Cup VII top 8
3) Finals of Seasonals/Globals/Majors this year
4) Overall 2023 ADV Circuit top 16

The unique list of voters (27) already qualified via the above is:
McMeghan, BKC, ArcticBreeze, Triangles, BIHI, mikmer, robjr, Golden Sun, Altina, Hclat, Star, stunner047, Garay oak, Mako, Genesis7, Shitrock enjoyer, johnnyg2, Kristyl, luisin, Pak, w_r, CyberOdin, THE918th, ojr, TyCarter, Cdijk16, Liz Angeles

For those of you not on this list, you are welcome to achieve the voting requirements via ladder. You need to create a new alt with the prefix ADVSP and achieve both a rating of 1650+ and a GXE of 82+ simultaneously. Please do not continue to ladder on your account after you achieve the reqs, as we may not be able to verify that you achieved them if your rating/GXE ends up going lower.

The deadline for posting your ladder reqs is December 31st 10PM -5. A voting thread will go up shortly after that. Please post your reqs in this thread in the ADV subforum: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/speedpass-suspect-voter-identification.3732966/
 
hi, going to make a post as tiering admin.

while its true that it is not explicitly written that we need to make as few changes as possible, the issue of BP in ADV has been something that has consistently gone against how we tier in other tiers, and at this point continuing to make exceptions to tiering policy in order to keep trying to whittle at the problem is clearly not working. every other tier at this point has always looked at the root cause of the issue with BP, which is the move itself and not specific abusers.

time has long passed where we can just keep saying to ban smaller and smaller elements and keep trying to find the ideal outcome for how to keep baton pass in the metagame while taking the smallest possible approach at each step of the process. this does not have to be written anywhere within tiering policy in order for it to be something that we follow. at a certain point where every other tier has either banned the move or banned stat passing in total, ADV cannot keep going down this path where BP is needed to be looked at every 6 months when a new strategy is found. it is clear at this point the issue lies with the move, and even the idea of just suspecting speedpass (as is being done) is pushing what should be acceptable at this point.

the tiering policy is a bit outdated at this point in numerous ways, and the goal is to have an update to it within the next few months. cases like this will be included, but as of now how the ADV council has gone about this is in line with Smogons tiering, and what I had advised them to do.
 
Respectfully, there is zero reason for CI players to have no automatic reqs in this vote given that they have had reqs granted for past votes and are generally recognized to be the best of the best ADV's playerbase has to offer. Previously top 16 were granted voting reqs which seems fair to me. I'm aware this is due to a tiering policy update that was made crystal clear by being mentioned zero times in this thread. However, CI was widely recognized as the most important ADV tour of the year, with it being massively difficult to even qualify for main let alone make a good run (top 16). Yes CI is an offsite tour that has nothing to do with smogon, however the fact is the council wants to gauge playerbase opinion with a suspect and is ignoring a massive part of that same playerbase by excluding CI players. I urge the council to reconsider and let top 16 from CI vote, as they did in previous suspects, for the sake of getting an accurate result from this test.

Sadlysius
Fakes (4th)
SEA (2nd)
Mana (3rd)
Rick/badummy (1st)
Caloom
Watermess
Soulwind
Realjester
Kerts

Are you really going to let Liz Angeles (no disrespect but c'mon) get free reqs but deny the literal entire top 4 of Callous Invitational? Get a fucking grip it's the same tier who cares if it's on discord or smogon.
 
Just adding on to what Colteor said, I am curious how the voting list was decided, since it's different than the last list (as in, the sources are different). For reference, here was the last one:

(2021 Baton Pass vote reqs):
"The tournament-based qualifications are as follows. For SPL, voters must have played at least six ADV games OR won at least three games. For ADV Cup, we will take the top twelve. For Callous Invitational V, the top 16 finishers qualify. For ADV Circuit Championship 2021, we will take the top five. "

Current list for this suspect 2023:
"1) 6+ games or 3+ wins in SPL
2) ADV Cup VII top 8
3) Finals of Seasonals/Globals/Majors this year
4) Overall 2023 ADV Circuit top 16 "

In addition to the actual top finishers of Callous Invitational not being included, someone like MrSoup who was literally Top 4 of ADV Circuit Championships this year (and would have therefore been included in the 2021 reqs since it was Top 5) somehow doesn't get a vote either. This, of course, is a Smogon tournament so it isn't part of the new policy with votes. CI was deemed important enough to be included in 2021 to the point where the Top 16 were included in voting, and a simple new policy is not enough in my opinion to exclude it - I think there needs to be some further compelling reason why a tour with such a high level of play that is probably one of the most important tours to gauge current ADV players, and that had 16 players included in a previous vote, now has 0 players in a vote. (Also free the MrSoup vote)
 
No better way to start the year than to post about baton pass.

I've talked with a bunch of ADVers on Discord about this, and a lot of you think only Ninjask should go. We exchanged arguments and at the end of the day, most of you were claiming that, in an ideal world, we only hit Ninjask now and tackle SpeedPass as a whole if it proves to still be a problem afterwards.

I won't delve into the tiering debacle that was/is the current path chosen by Tier Leaders and the ADV Council, because there isn't anything I can do about this, and frankly it doesn't interest me either.

So the the goal of this post is to show why, imo, SpeedPass is still an issue even if Ninjask isn't involved.

I decided to take the matter into my own hands and build a full BP around SpeedPass and test it on the ladder. I managed to hit 1700 on the ladder at some point and basically have been going up and down in the 1600s when I was laddering with it.

I will provide some replays to show how it works:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen3ou-2016397566
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen3ou-2017206800
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen3ou-2017792322
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen3ou-2022903093?p2
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen3ou-2022911830
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen3ou-2023370744?p2
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen3ou-2024265563?p2
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen3ou-2024269399?p2
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen3ou-2024277302?p2

The key components are:
  • Zapdos: thanks to its bulk and natural threat factor, it is able to Agility on pretty much the whole tier. It's also threatening enough to force a switch against a lot of Pokemons, which gives the BP team a lot more leeway (every free turn snowballs super hard with BP as you already know).
  • Baton Pass chain members that allow you to bypass typical phazing counterplay:
    • Zapdos/Smeargle/Umbreon all have Roar or Taunt for opposite phazers.
    • Smeargle also has Spore to boot.
    • Umbreon can generate free turn thanks to its bulk and its access to Sand Attack/Confuse Ray.
  • Marowak which just wins every game at +2 speed +6 attack (only exception is if they have Intimidate + Skarmory in the back, and I will come back to this later).
Now I will say, this was a 6 I quickly stumbled upon, and I think there are a lot of ways to approach the concept, to make it better/worse depending on the matchup.

You may argue that this team only works because of Sand Attack/Confuse Ray Umbreon and would rather tackle that. First, this means we will have to ban more moves for the sake of preserving SpeedPass (at which point do we realize that the common link in all these bans is the speed passing?). Second, I will add that new variants of BP can just be built and abuse other moves. And while every ban will weaken the playstyle as a whole, it will still exist as long as SpeedPassing exists.

But another thing I would like to mention here is that this was one attempt at a consistent SpeedPass team. In tournament play, it's entirely fair to build a SpeedPass team that you can adapt to your opponent. For example, I'm using BD Marowak because it's the one Pokemon that sweeps the entire tier at +2, but realistically I could just make it SD instead of BD, and you'd still sweep a vast majority of Offenses, and this now removes some counterplay from your opponent because Marowak doesnt even need to be behind a Sub anymore to guarantee the win. You can also just replace Magneton with another chain member to fish for specific matchups. You can forgo the lead and just start the game with Zapdos, etc.

Banning only Ninjask (or Sand Attack/Confuse Ray) won't solve the situation and I'm already giving you proof of that.

Oh and by the way, keep in mind that this playstyle requires perfect play from your opponent to even stand a chance in the game and have it come down to hits/misses under Sand Attack/Confuse Ray in the best case scenarios. If they didn't assume the right set vs Zapdos, they can sometimes autolose on the slot. If they sent Blissey/Celebi on Zapdos (commons switches at that) and you BP to Smeargle on a non-status/LeechSeed, it's also pretty much over for them. If they ever use a status move on a Sub turn, it's often over, etc. And this is all with one variant of Speedpass.

Vote whatever you want at the end of the day, but don't delude yourself into thinking SpeedPass cheese won't be a thing by only removing Ninjask from the tier. That's all I wanted to say before you vote on the upcoming suspect.
 
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