Gen 3 ADV Baton Pass v184

[JackmanJones]

The problem is the move Baton Pass. Not Ninjask. Not Mr Mime. Not Smeargle. Baton Pass. Baton pass has always been the problem, and always will be the problem, until the move is banned. If we take any decision short of banning Baton Pass, we'll be back for Baton Pass v185 soon enough.

Ban Swagger too. I don't think that's ever been used in a healthy way.

 

[Shinto7654]

Honestly, I just find it funny seeing ADV mains seeing tiering leaders finally be tired of giving them so much leeway, favourtism, and slack and pulling back on that a bit, and they all start launching into conspiracy theory bullshit. Just absolutely massive levels of entitlement thats embarassing to watch

 

[Blizihguh]

Hi! I don't post that much in the competitive/policy side of the site, because I only seriously play a few formats, and I'm generally not that fussed about Pokemon tiering even when I disagree with the outcomes. But this whole debacle is actively bothering me, so I figure I should post my thoughts. I'm not the greatest ADV player in the world, but I'm at least competent enough to get to upper-mid ladder consistently, so the outcome here affects me directly. I don't have a problem with the Smogon tiering/suspect system, and I'm not saying that I should be entitled to a vote just because I write a wall of text about it. But I feel like the way this suspect is being handled is, at best, extremely disingenuous.

People involved with tiering in an official capacity, most notably the ADV council, have been vocal about how very tiring it is to deal with Baton Pass. And I can sympathize: it's annoying having to deal with something you don't like repeatedly. But nobody held a gun to your head and forced you to take a leadership position in ADV. If you don't like making PR posts and running suspect tests, it sounds like you don't enjoy the main thing that councils do, so... why bother in the first place? Having a PR thread every 6-18 months to address some new gimmick tech is pretty typical for oldgens, right? Frankly I'm not sure why else we have a council -- is the ADV council doing a ton of other stuff in an official capacity? I mean that sincerely: if I'm missing a ton of behind-the-scenes work, let me know.

I want to be very careful here not to imply that the ADV council, tiering staff, or whoever else is somehow plotting against the ADV community. I don't think anybody is trying to do anything nefarious. But it's clear that the council has presupposed what the "right" answer to the suspect test is, and the normal process for holding a suspect test is being seen as a formality.

To be frank, I can see the anti-BP point of view. Why make incremental changes when we can just rip the bandaid off? But in this case, incremental change is absolutely the better option. ADV is a stable and very popular meta. Making large changes carries a big risk of messing with something that's working well. On the other hand, making small changes every 6 months and seeing how they go carries basically no downside. Even assuming that BP ultimately gets the boot, what's the rush? People are going to have to play ADV with AgiliZap for another 6 months? Boo hoo. The format has been going strong for over a decade now, heaven forbid we have another tournament with basically the same ruleset. ADV is the most popular oldgen by far, with double the ladder activity of the next highest (SM) and an order of magnitude more than anything after that. If it was in the kind of dire state that demands immediate action, it would not be the most popular and broadly well-regarded oldgen format.

But I guess it is seen as a Big Urgent Problem, because the whole process for this vote has been super rushed. The PR thread about the issue opened with a unilateral decision that the only option is axing SpeedPass. A week later we have a suspect, despite a complete lack of consensus in the thread, with unusually strict requirements for reqs. And the suspect period is only 10 days long, overlapping Christmas Eve through New Year's. So if you happen to have any preexisting plans for that period -- I can't imagine why anyone would! -- you've really only got a few days to grind out 40+ games.

If the suspect matched the previous test -- two weeks, not during any major holidays, 1500+ elo -- would things turn out different? I dunno, maybe. I sure would like to participate, but unfortunately it's just too important that this 20-year-old game have all its meta issues solved right now, holidays be damned.

I care a lot less about the outcome of the vote and more about the process being reasonably fair and democratic. I would rather play in a format with some annoying tech than a format where major lines of play are at risk of being eradicated because staff is vehemently against banning Sand Attack(???).

 

[Shedinja-43152]

I know it is another topic but please Ban it.

I guess that why play OU is so boring, every strategy developed is banned.
And there is no tier Gen3 Alles Goes to us play without that monstruos amount of bans

The problem is the move Baton Pass. Not Ninjask. Not Mr Mime. Not Smeargle. Baton Pass. Baton pass has always been the problem, and always will be the problem, until the move is banned. If we take any decision short of banning Baton Pass, we'll be back for Baton Pass v185 soon enough.

Baton Pass is not a problem, it can be countered easily with a Roar/Whirlwind.
If you are afraid specifically of Baton Pass chains you can also bring a Hazer or a Taunter.

 

[Bedal Roscoe]

Baton Pass is not a problem, it can be countered easily with a Roar/Whirlwind.
If you are afraid specifically of Baton Pass chains you can also bring a Hazer or a Taunter.

Quite funny that you are saying that because it is the use of swagger to prevent opposing mon from phazing

 

[BigFatMantis]

Quite funny that you are saying that because it is the use of swagger to prevent opposing mon from phazing

Swagger was banned earlier today actually. So this is no longer an issue.

 

[Funkybeangamer]

Quite funny that you are saying that because it is the use of swagger to prevent opposing mon from phazing

Many jask just run mag + toxic on the jask to kill the phaser. They stall them out then try the speed trick again.

 

[FJ2K]

Honestly, I just find it funny seeing ADV mains seeing tiering leaders finally be tired of giving them so much leeway, favourtism, and slack and pulling back on that a bit, and they all start launching into conspiracy theory bullshit. Just absolutely massive levels of entitlement thats embarassing to watch

I've noticed you don't have any posts regarding ADV before but frequently go into SV threads to insult players who you consider to be "scrubs". Could you post any proof that you have ever played this tier

 

[Bedal Roscoe]

Many jask just run mag + toxic on the jask to kill the phaser. They stall them out then try the speed trick again.

yeah Mag can reliably remove Skarm, Suicune and even Pert with HP Grass. I guess since Swagger is banned, Mag+toxic Ninjask will be the only way.

 

[Funkybeangamer]

yeah Mag can reliably remove Skarm, Suicune and even Pert with HP Grass. I guess since Swagger is banned, Mag+toxic Ninjask will be the only way.

Mag + toxic jask has been what players like abr hit 1899 with before swagger was banned, and it's suboptimal to use swagsand on jask as it is inconsistent in the winning matchups jask should be consistent in.

 

[Cdijk16]

Where do I go to wage a crusade against general tiering policy?

Also, glad to see the concerns RE Ninjask and community wishes for an option to ban that rather than speedpass addressed via dismissal.

If you want to suggest changes to current tiering policy, I think Policy Review is the best place to do so.

 

[Cdijk16]

I think that most (and only) problematic baton pass strategies are in the form of Ninjask speed pass and to a far lesser extent, Zapdos speed pas.
I think that fully banning BP is unnecessary to resolve the issue and causes way too much collateral damage. There's a lot of balanced Dry Pass and Sub Pass strategies that would get removed by a full BP ban. StatPass strategies other than Speed pass such as CM/SD Pass from Celebi are also a balanced and a healthy part of the meta, there's no need to ban them.
Doing nothing would leave Ninjask pass alone, so I'm not in favor of that.
Speed pass causes some moderate collateral damage in the form of removing the fairly healthy Salac pass Vap and the less busted uses of Agility Pass Zapdos, but it solves the main issue of Ninjask pass.
Out of the 4 options, I am most in favour of banning Speed pass for reasons given above.
If possible, I would prefer to only have Ninjask pass banned in order to preserve Salac Pass Vaporeon, but the OP says that's not an option.
There should've been an option to ban Ninjask/Speed Boost though since that's what a good chunk of the community wanted.

 

[Zacpz]

If you want to suggest changes to current tiering policy, I think Policy Review is the best place to do so.

If I could post there I would

 

[Cdijk16]

If I could post there I would

There's a form to request access for it. I could also make a proxy post on your behalf.

 

[airports]

going to vote ban. im not a fan of statpassing in general due to the ease with which passers enter the field, the size of the punish they threaten, and how, as a result, from t1 their counterplay is quite forced. right from the start, it's difficult to midground around statpassers.

 

[Century Express]

As selfish as it might sounds like, honestly i'd rather play a slightly stable, centralized (I guess boring might be the right word…) version of RSE OU, instead of a metagame rich in diversity and innovation featuring occasional BP-influenced strategies (again I apologize for being the fun police in advance). While keeping Baton Pass free opens a wider variety of options to enable agression, on the flipside I believe it causes a significant amount of headaches in the teambuilder as well - anyway, I stand by the idea that: the benefits caused by a Baton Pass / SpeedPass ban outweighs the issues caused by it.

There are a fair amount of sequences where Baton Pass strategies can be answered reasonably well with the aid of proactive play and / or phazing, but more often than not, I feel like a lot these Baton Pass vs. Roar / Whirlwind interactions lead to some (lowkey) autopiloting sequences: for example, there are a lot of games where you're nearly coerced to do "off-beat" plays, because passers such as Agility Zapdos, Smeargle and fast Umbreon all have a respectable 1v1 match-up against most of the tier's most common phazers - you cannot afford to be hellbent into the funny Roar or Whirlwind button and expect it to work everytime, after all. But this isn't the main issue IMHO - I think the worst part is navigating around "hi-risk / reward" mid- or end-games generated by the product of Agility or Speed Boost + BP, such as: Rock Slide flinches or misses (e: Marowak, Aerodactyl or Tyranitar via BP), Meteor Mash boosts or misses (Metagross via Agility, BP or pinch berries), secondary effect spamming (Jirachi + BP, a well-timed freeze or burn can be devastating even against Jirachi's best answers), 1~4 Spore turns forcing x player to gamble around their momentum (Smeargle and Breloom) Hydro Pump (revenge kill attempts aimed at Ttar or Marowak), and a few other gamestates.

While I acknowledge some of these scenarios are natural aspects of the RNG / metagame, I feel like some of these little RNG breaks are very hard (or nearly impossible) to have a consistent backup plan for both players (I'm not defending 100% the player facing BP, just to be clear), to the point were you wonder if some of your wins / losses were under you control in the first place, regardless of your in-game decisions. Personally, I would enjoy to play a metagame where these scenarios (e: domino effects, or "fraudulent" wins / losses influenced by the significant lack of outplaying potential) become less realistic than the usual.

tl:dr I'm a supporter of a simple, straightforward & controversial take AKA banning Baton Pass entirely, but at the same time, i'm not that naive about the current metagame context, and it's important to acknowledge that a Baton Pass hard ban would be irrealistic for the community standards. In this case, I believe that a Baton Pass + any potential element that directly triggers the Speed stat (e: Agility, Salac Berry, Starf Berry, Silver Wind, AncientPower, etc.) would be another acceptable solution, even though it's not my personal favourite option.

 

[Funkybeangamer]

As selfish as it might sounds like, honestly i'd rather play a slightly stable, centralized (I guess boring might be the right word…) version of RSE OU, instead of a metagame rich in diversity and innovation featuring occasional BP-influenced strategies (again I apologize for being the fun police in advance). While keeping Baton Pass free opens a wider variety of options to enable agression, on the flipside I believe it causes a significant amount of headaches in the teambuilder as well - anyway, I stand by the idea that: the benefits caused by a Baton Pass / SpeedPass ban outweighs the issues caused by it.

There are a fair amount of sequences where Baton Pass strategies can be answered reasonably well with the aid of proactive play and / or phazing, but more often than not, I feel like a lot these Baton Pass vs. Roar / Whirlwind interactions lead to some (lowkey) autopiloting sequences: for example, there are a lot of games where you're nearly coerced to do "off-beat" plays, because passers such as Agility Zapdos, Smeargle and fast Umbreon all have a respectable 1v1 match-up against most of the tier's most common phazers - you cannot afford to be hellbent into the funny Roar or Whirlwind button and expect it to work everytime, after all. But this isn't the main issue IMHO - I think the worst part is navigating around "hi-risk / reward" mid- or end-games generated by the product of Agility or Speed Boost + BP, such as: Rock Slide flinches or misses (e: Marowak, Aerodactyl or Tyranitar via BP), Meteor Mash boosts or misses (Metagross via Agility, BP or pinch berries), secondary effect spamming (Jirachi + BP, a well-timed freeze or burn can be devastating even against Jirachi's best answers), 1~4 Spore turns forcing x player to gamble around their momentum (Smeargle and Breloom) Hydro Pump (revenge kill attempts aimed at Ttar or Marowak), and a few other gamestates.

While I acknowledge some of these scenarios are natural aspects of the RNG / metagame, I feel like some of these little RNG breaks are very hard (or nearly impossible) to have a consistent backup plan for both players (I'm not defending 100% the player facing BP, just to be clear), to the point were you wonder if some of your wins / losses were under you control in the first place, regardless of your in-game decisions. Personally, I would enjoy to play a metagame where these scenarios (e: domino effects, or "fraudulent" wins / losses influenced by the significant lack of outplaying potential) become less realistic than the usual.

tl:dr I'm a supporter of a simple, straightforward & controversial take AKA banning Baton Pass entirely, but at the same time, i'm not that naive about the current metagame context, and it's important to acknowledge that a Baton Pass hard ban would be irrealistic for the community standards. In this case, I believe that a Baton Pass + any potential element that directly triggers the Speed stat (e: Agility, Salac Berry, Starf Berry, Silver Wind, AncientPower, etc.) would be another acceptable solution, even though it's not my personal favourite option.

Banning baton pass whole would be catastrophic for the ou metagame. Zapdug is dead and so is jolteon. Zapdos can "ohko" bliss on the switch by passing to dug. Jolteon uses drypassing to escape dug. The suggestion of removing baton pass has massive collateral that will hurt alot of Pokémon that have never had a issue with pass as they are using the momentum and not passing boost to mons who normally cannot obtain said boost.

 

[spookysocialist]

Banning baton pass whole would be catastrophic for the ou metagame. Zapdug is dead and so is jolteon. Zapdos can "ohko" bliss on the switch by passing to dug. Jolteon uses drypassing to escape dug. The suggestion of removing baton pass has massive collateral that will hurt alot of Pokémon that have never had a issue with pass as they are using the momentum and not passing boost to mons who normally cannot obtain said boost.

Since when do we determine whether or not an element should be banned based on how it affects specific pokemon in the metagame? Should we unban Sheer cold because it would buff Articuno? Should we unban double team to buff celebi? Should we unban groudon to buff Shiftry and Exegutor? Saying Baton pass shouldn't be banned because it would hurt the pokemon that use it isn't an argument, it's just stating a fact and acting as if it shuts down the discussion.

 

[5imian]

Since when do we determine whether or not an element should be banned based on how it affects specific pokemon in the metagame? Should we unban Sheer cold because it would buff Articuno? Should we unban double team to buff celebi? Should we unban groudon to buff Shiftry and Exegutor? Saying Baton pass shouldn't be banned because it would hurt the pokemon that use it isn't an argument, it's just stating a fact and acting as if it shuts down the discussion.

I do not think you understand how important having bp as a tool is for offense in general. both CM pass and ZapDug, as well as Agizap and SalacVape, allow offense to have tools to help them address common threats to them in the metagame (fat on the front end and aero on the back end) and open so much room for a wide variety of offensive teams to exist. A complete baton pass ban is quite literally metagame killing, and we shouldn't be looking to standardize tiering through forcing old gens to warp into much worse formats just to make smogon policy forum mains happy.

 

[Eeveeto]

Banning baton pass whole would be catastrophic for the ou metagame. Zapdug is dead and so is jolteon. Zapdos can "ohko" bliss on the switch by passing to dug. Jolteon uses drypassing to escape dug. The suggestion of removing baton pass has massive collateral that will hurt alot of Pokémon that have never had a issue with pass as they are using the momentum and not passing boost to mons who normally cannot obtain said boost.

I am against Batton Pass nerf or Ban in general, but if what you say is true, then we should Ban either Blissey for walling capabilities or Dugtrio for overcentralization and making almost every Electric, Fire, Poison, Steel and Rock Mon unviable.

 

[Blizihguh]

I am against Batton Pass nerf or Ban in general, but if what you say is true, then we should Ban either Blissey for walling capabilities or Dugtrio for overcentralization and making almost every Electric, Fire, Poison, Steel and Rock Mon unviable.

With all due respect... huh???????

 

[Funkybeangamer]

Since when do we determine whether or not an element should be banned based on how it affects specific pokemon in the metagame? Should we unban Sheer cold because it would buff Articuno? Should we unban double team to buff celebi? Should we unban groudon to buff Shiftry and Exegutor? Saying Baton pass shouldn't be banned because it would hurt the pokemon that use it isn't an argument, it's just stating a fact and acting as if it shuts down the discussion.

Limiting fair and important uses of baton pass would be bad for the meta. Jolteon, zapdug, and other drypassers do nothing wrong.


This is very different from passing speed or stats. It's a u-turn.

 

[Siglut]

Banning baton pass whole would be catastrophic for the ou metagame. Zapdug is dead and so is jolteon. Zapdos can "ohko" bliss on the switch by passing to dug. Jolteon uses drypassing to escape dug. The suggestion of removing baton pass has massive collateral that will hurt alot of Pokémon that have never had a issue with pass as they are using the momentum and not passing boost to mons who normally cannot obtain said boost.

Just coming in to throw in my two cents - I think the impact that baton pass has on the metagame is drastically overstated. The vast majority of teams don't use the move at all, and that's an even greater majority of teams that are considered consistent and good. My personal feelings about zapdug aside (it's not viable, I don't think I've lost to it since the first time I fought it on ladder), the style doesn't even really need baton pass to survive. You can double switch, you can pressure blissey in other ways, sac mons, etc to get dug in on bliss.

For jolteon, I honestly don't even think baton pass is a good move on it. Roar is more important, and again you can just double switch. And what do you need to escape dugtrio for? Jolteon is faster and kills it after a round or two of spikes. If your jolteon gets trapped by dug you probably deserve to lose anyway.

I'm not in favor of a baton pass ban, but it feels disingenuous to claim that it would ruin or even significantly alter the tier.

Edit: ok 1 if you disagree with anything I said you are probably wrong. 2 Banning baton pass is dumb and we should not do it at all, I just think we should be reasonable on both sides here and not pretend that it ruins the tier irreparably if that happens here (which it won't, there's one guy in favor of that, so it's kinda pointless getting all hot and bothered about it anyway)

 

[Allidoishuynh]

Absolutely shattered that ninjask/speed boost ban isn't an option. But all the same, glad something is being done. I have great attachment to speed pass since one of my favorite gen 3 teams I ever made was double BP (zap/vap) + physical abusers (medi/dug). That team ran agizap exclusively as a means to sweep late game after bliss/lax/tar/celebi/rachi were all dead. But if the cost of getting rid of ninjask BP teams is that some cool setup sweepers/pivoters are significantly weakened, I'll happily take that trade to rid adv of my least favorite aspect of the tier.

The only thing I'll add is that I think getting rid of ninjask teams will make the ladder a much more enjoyable experience at all levels. The goal of tiering should always be competitive balance/health, but I'm excited to see a change that will also reduce the frustration people experience in the lower forms of competitive adv. Obviously, there will always be stuff that makes ppl rage (raises hand), but getting rid of the primary strategy that actively relies on it is something I'm looking forward to.

 

[vapicuno]

baton pass has on the metagame is drastically overstated

I don't think baton pass should be viewed with hindsight. For many bans like Sand Veil you can look back and draw conclusions because the downside is concrete but there is no flexibility for upside. Keeping Sand Veil, you will not see a new team that make you go "wow". Baton Pass, however, opens up possibilities which by definition do not exist in the past.

Year after year we've seen very interesting uses of Baton Pass (speed pass as well) that I dare say cannot be anticipated. I came onto the scene when Agility + CM Pass was pretty much the only common non-cheese speedpass strategy (or maybe Agilipass to Marowak if you don't consider that cheese). Then over time, we've seen some interesting and (imo non-cheese) successful innovations listed in rough chronological order

Speedpass to CBTar/Dol/EndPert (Astamatitos)
Speedpass to Rhydon (pasy_g)
Starfpass with Swellow (me)
CM pass with Magneton (me)
SalacPass Vaporeon (me)
LiechiPass Zapdos + Jolteon (Astamatitos)
Speed + CM pass on Vaporeon CM Spam (McMeghan)
SubPass to Beat Up Dugtrio (me)
Skarm Speedpass (McMeghan)
Speedpass to RestOffCune (me)
LiechiPass Zapdos Rain Hera (Mana)
I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting more.

If anyone, including the frequent BP builders, stopped looking at the list at any point in time, would one have been able to anticipate any of the following innovations? I doubt it.

Sure, the metagame can "survive" if one wants to stay in the same cushy desk job for one's entire career.

But if we're serious about metagame development we should be looking for that 1% of ideas that can propel us into the future. A platform full of opportunities like Baton Pass should be treated with care.

(It's also pretty inaccurate imo to say that ZapDug is not made hugely more consistent by BP - people go to the extent of using SubPass to get the guaranteed momentum; I dare anyone to double to dug vs a full HP skarm)