Implemented ADV Ubers Baton Pass Discussion II

[Lasen]

approved by Fc and Aberforth

In recent years, there's been debate amongst community members over the position of Baton Pass within the ADV Ubers metagame. The community voted to restrict Baton Pass to only 1 user per team almost two years ago in this vote and things seemed to be running smoothly. However, the playerbase feels that Baton Pass should be re-examined. Due to the bloated nature of the Ubers tournament schedule, there hasn't been enough downtime to open this discussion. With ADV Ubers Open running as of late, UWC III being right around the corner, the circuit having no big ADV tournaments in the immediate future, and Baton Pass being picked up by more and more players and leading to subsequent wins, this feels like a good opportunity to look at the issue at hand again.

Posts have been made in the discussion thread, such as this one by MMII, and further discussion has happened in the ADV and main Ubers Discords. Approaching Baton Pass is always a delicate subject because one has to figure out what exactly is the "broken" aspect of it. SpeedPass and BellyPass are the two forms of Baton Pass that are most prominent with examples of them found here. As well as these, Mean Leak + Baton Pass can be run by Umbreon for the ability to trap foes.

While we've not officially ran a survey, MMII's post is loosely indicative of the opinions of tournament level players in the format. However, his message to the various players was about whether we should outright ban Baton Pass, and neglects looking at other options (such as banning SpeedPass). This does end up skewing the results as some people didn't want to outright ban Baton Pass but still being open to a different avenues for dealing with Baton Pass. On the flipside there are ban voters who seemingly would be opposed to any restriction on Baton Pass.

This thread should only revolve around Baton Pass related discussions and any related aspects of the metagame. This is not the correct venue to argue for banning/restricting other moves, mechanics or Pokémon. For example discussion around a potential Ninjask ban is warranted, but not discussion around a Wobbuffet ban.

Some recent tournament examples:
zf vs Heysup from UWC II
Xrn vs fourmi from UWL
Lasen vs MMII from ADV Uber Open
LpZ vs troutinspace from ADV Ubers Open

If you don't have posting access, you can request it here.

 

[Minority]

There's been over a dozen threads in PR alone about Baton Pass in only the last three years. How many more pages of red tape can you possibly expect to collect on this topic before accepting the reality that BP has no place in competitive singles.

 

[Exiline]

^no point arguing about BP
allow drypass, ban stat-boosting g_g
if it's "too complex", just ban the whole move

 

[Heysup]

I feel like I've been using BP since I started playing this meta more seriously and have mixed feelings. My view is that Ubers should really not be banning anything other than mechanics related things but that's probably old school. BP as a mechanic? I can kind of get behind that sort of ban, but I also do think you can prepare for BP and should be punished if you don't.

That being said, I don't think anyone wants to spend the kind of time that OU has been spending on this. The only reason BP hasn't been banned in OU as far as I can tell is because of the sunk cost fallacy. Therefore, if anything is to happen, I would only want BP to be banned altogether and not do anything to save a playstyle that is just going to get tweaked at infinitum like it is in OU. Either ban it or do nothing forever. Since the latter isn't an option (who knows what newer users may want to do) it may be that we just ban it, even in light of what I said above.

I think we would all just be content losing to Thunder paralysis instead of BP anyway.

 

[Inspirited]

I was told that this thread needs more posts and that one-liner agreements work. Exiline said everything I would want to say on this subject.

 

[Vileman]

As I said in my post, i think both mean pass and speed pass are problematic in adv ubers. I think the general consensus is that Something should be done about bp in adv, with most people (as far as i know!) agreeing that speed pass is dumb in this tier.

Not sure if we could proceed with a poll or something to gather opinions on this, but personally I'd want both of those gone. BP as a whole not sure if worth banning.

 

[BigFatMantis]

I still stand by what I stated in that previous survey linked in OP - Ninjask is really dumb but somewhat manageable, and other passing seems fine. Even though I think Ninjask passing in manageable and I agree with Heysup you should be punished for ignoring it, I wouldn’t miss it if it was gone.

I don’t think we need a blanket BP ban though, I think Umbreon mean passing is viable and not nearly as dumb as Ninjask passing, and I think the strats behind it are more rewarding to good play than a simple Ninjask pass team.

 

[MMII]

My opinion isn't a secret, just ban bp. I don't think complex bans are worth pursuing; this meta is niche as hell and there was a lot of delay and red tape just to get a policy review thread on the subject. Keeping dry pass is "fine" if you are a Shedinja fan but, imo, the mon is cheesey as hell and still viable without having braindead bp clicks. (I'm a Shedinja fan)

This isn't adv ou, there isn't actual collateral to be worried about.

 

[Ajencis]

i've spoken about this before, but i'd like to see baton pass restricted further.

- it's fishy, most baton pass strategies have highly variable matchup spreads by virtue of a significant part of the team being countered by some specific move or combination of moves. this results in the strategy reducing the competitiveness of the tier whenever it's used. one might argue that this incentivizes good prep - prepping for bp when it's plausible and not doing so when it isn't - but the result is mostly just a weighted rps which, while itself somewhat interesting, reduces other parts of the skill in building and playing and thus makes the tier less competitive.

- it's not very enjoyable to use or face, though this is of course subjective. since bp tends to be fairly flowcharty, using it and playing vs it aren't all that interesting. this is related to the first point, but as well as reducing the competitiveness of the tier it impedes its enjoyability.

- it's restrictive on teambuilding, teams need to sacrifice to have good counterplay to it. this isn't necessarily an issue in principle - after all, i think stall is healthy even if it forces other teams to think about how to beat stall in the builder. however, in this case the restrictions on teambuilding given the variable nature of how to account for different types of baton pass are fairly significant especially for offense and often stretch teams' resources unreasonably far in the builder. combined with the fishy nature of bp many teams become overall less reliable preparing for something that is itself unreliable and therefore not that valuable a bring. this is related to why bp is fishy in the first place; counterplay to bp is all-or-nothing to a fairly significant degree and teams have to checklist various forms of bp or be at a significant disadvantage vs them.

- in my experience, players don't like its impact on the tier. i have somewhat limited tour experience, but i have (non-gender-specific) gentlemanned no bp or been offered it on multiple occasions. imo if players are deliberately agreeing to change the ruleset unofficially the ruleset has an issue. this isn't necessarily a knock-down argument; i know at least one player who has tried to gentleman no stall and i don't think stall ought be banned at all, and furthermore my sample size is very small, but this still strongly implies theres a problem imo.

- mm2 sent an informal survey to a number of good players and a fairly significant quantity of them wanted some restriction. this is particularly significant because adv ubers is a fairly slow-moving tier and the bp issues are fairly recent, so a number of top players have changed their mind in fairly short order.


my preferred solution has changed since i last discussed this, but i'd like to ban bp entirely.

- while i don't think ruleset complexity it the only relevant criterion to a good restriction it is *a* relevant criterion. banning baton pass is quite a simple and elegant solution.

- banning bp imo preserves ubers' identity well. ubers to my mind is the tier where no pokemon are banned but strategies can be. banning baton pass fits well into existing bans such as evasion clause and ohko clause, which approach banning a strategy by banning the moves that constitute it. we wouldn't be making an exception for bp with a ban of the move in the way that we would if we banned, say, ninjask.

- there is limited collateral to a bp ban imo. every strategy that involves bp is some combination of very niche and what we want to target with bp in the first place. drypassing strategies are very limited, the only mons that can plausibly drypass imo are umbreon, celebi, and shedinja. idt that the former two need drypassing to be usable and as much as i love shedinja it is incredibly niche.

 

[Lasen]

Alright, enough time has passed and through discussion both in the thread and over on discord, it's pretty obvious that anything short of a black and white approach to Baton Pass is gonna end in a dissatisfied playerbase and community. As such, we're gonna be voting on either banning Baton Pass altogether or keeping it as it currently is. The Ubers moderation team has compiled a list of players who have shown prowess in the tier in the past year or two. We will also be running two livetours for people to be able to gain voting rights. The two livetours will be held in the Ubers room on PS! on January 7th at 6pm GMT+0 and January 13th 11pm GMT+0. The winners of these roomtours will be able to vote in the suspect test. If the tournaments are won by someone who has already gained their vote, no additional votes will be provided for a 2nd place finish. A vote will be held on January 15th.

Qualified Voters

note: some people qualified from multiple categories but are only listed once here for simplicity's sake
4 games of ADV played in UPL XI with at least 2 wins (8): Magician, iry, SEA, Vileman, Heysup, HANTSUKI, MMII, FatFighter2
4 games of ADV played in UWL II with at least 2 wins (3): Ajencis, fourmi, Xrn
4 games of ADV played in ADVPL III with at least 2 wins (3): Fogbound Lake, The Strap, mitana
ADV Cup 2023 top 4 (2): Highlord, entrocefalo
ADV Cup 2022 top 4 (4): Farce Of The Death, Rhmsitb, Exiline, skimmythegod
ADV Ubers Open I top 6 (6): Alder ST, Li Xiao Long, temp, Jhonx~, RichardMillePlain, Raph369
Livetour winners (2): KeshBa54 , leoperi99

 

[Fc]

Baton pass has been banned in ADV Ubers by majority vote.