Rejected Allow DryPass in every tier

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self-explanatory

Harmless strategy that is currently unavailable post gen5 because of the current stupid tiering policy of not wanting complex bans (or idk what honestly). Passing a sub or Aqua Ring is the best you can get out of it so it feels like a terrible limitation in comparison to having a few more Pokémon get a pivot move. Having a higher number of options available when teambuilding is always a good thing.

DPP OU and BW2 OU have allowed it back recently and there's been no problem with it. For some reason I fail to comprehend, lower tiers of these gens still have Baton Pass as a whole banned.

Outside of people that would sell their mother before breaking tiering policy and Excal who in big 2024 keeps trying to convince people that Aqua Ring + BP is broken in DPP, I would not really understand opposition to this.
 
I will be attempting a diplomatic version of what my good pal SoulWind is trying to convey.

In terms of brokenness, it's obvious that there would be no risk in allowing drypassing. Traditionally that means no stat boosts but sub or aqua ring or whatever could always be included within that definition as well, though I doubt that's even necessary.

If it's within our tiering policy to enable such rules in some gens, it should probably be within our tiering policy to enable such rules in all gens. These aren't archaic rules either, the past 1-2 years have seen BP changes in gens 3-5 (and gen 2 a bit before then). I also dislike complex bans overall but they're less arbitrary if they apply to multiple gens at once (sleep frz clause etc). Heavily support this.

If this doesn't go through, then the only logical followup is to outright ban BP in all gens, but I doubt that would be popular. So, let it pass rn.

Thanks
 
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If it's within our tiering policy to enable such rules in some gens, it should probably be within our tiering policy to enable such rules in all gens.
This. We either have to be uniform or revert things to a full ban on BP, which is far worse for quality of life.

Most complex ban proposals are stupid and I even opposed this being implemented into BW to avoid opening a can of worms, but it is even more stupid to allow it in a few tiers while disallowing it in others when the reasoning is the same across the board.

We can just allow dry pass and codify it in a way that doesn’t allow for it to be used as precedent for more disruptive things.
 
Is this proposal for every SV tier? Or for every SV tier + every old gen tier? For SV it seems fine to do, but unbanning it in every tier ever Gen 5+ is kind of a big deal in that it significantly shifts the viability of certain mons in a way that the freeze on how the separate tiers ended up via usage based tiering could no longer be accurate.

That being said, even for just SV, how would you reconcile drypass with the following:
  • Stat boost berries
  • Other items that "could" boost stats, such as Adrenaline Orb
  • Items that can copy an opponents stat change like Mirror Herb
  • Abilities that "could" boost stats but not necessarily will, like Defiant/Competitive/Rattled
edit: just having "don't pass with boosted stats" doesn't really solve some of these issues unless you "gray out" baton pass if your stats are boosted which doesn't seem like a very palatable solution. You could ban baton pass if you have any of these items/abilities I guess but then there's always the opp using a move on you that boosts your stats too.

It seems fine to test it out in SV all tiers, just a bit concerned about all other oldgen lower tiers suddenly getting drypass freed - the point of the oldgen freeze is to preserve those oldgen lower tier metagames and so it'd seem a bit silly to force this their way unless those particular tiers want it to happen.
 
drypass is a widely understood ban across draft league communities and various non-smogon affiliated tiers that functions with absolutely zero issue. the ban itself is easily summarized with "don't pass stats with baton pass" and you could easily add "or positive status conditions" onto this summarization. new players have very little diffuculty understanding drypass as long as the rule is uniform.

supposed loopholes like your opp clicking coaching on you then you clicking bp are memes, if im being honest. these situations dont happen in serious gameplay and it's much like trying to fish for multiple sleeps with relic song meloetta in sv ou where it's funny but not actionable.

i dont see drypass opening a tiering can of worms, there is no move that has been tiered remotely close to it or that has similar functionality. universal drypass in bw+ seems like a fairly straightforward implementation that I am heavily in favor of.
 
The whole situation with Dry Pass is less about if it is broken (is not), and more about what is the general view of complex bans, when are they ok, what is allowed to be complex banned, and how consistent are "our" decisions across all tiers.
I don't think Baton Pass is worth having complex rules for, even if Dry Pass is fine, I prefer if we keep complex bans away from standard tiers, but that doesn't mean I would try to force it to be removed from tiers that already have it if people are enjoying it. There is no real need to force the rules to be interpreted the same way for everyone, while the rules are something everyone have to follow, they can be read in different ways when trying to make your format work the best for the people playing it.
 
That being said, even for just SV, how would you reconcile drypass with the following:
  • Stat boost berries
  • Other items that "could" boost stats, such as Adrenaline Orb
  • Items that can copy an opponents stat change like Mirror Herb
  • Abilities that "could" boost stats but not necessarily will, like Defiant/Competitive/Rattled
edit: just having "don't pass with boosted stats" doesn't really solve some of these issues unless you "gray out" baton pass if your stats are boosted which doesn't seem like a very palatable solution. You could ban baton pass if you have any of these items/abilities I guess but then there's always the opp using a move on you that boosts your stats too.
Hiya, we actually already have a clause for (most) of this, Baton Pass Stat Clause - A Pokemon with Baton Pass may not have any way to boost its stats. (BW OU uses this clause)

The following sets will not validate under Baton Pass Stat Clause:
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Full list can be found here and includes things like Defiant.

Psych Up still passes and Baton Pass Stat Clause isn't implemented in gens with Mirror Herb or w/e but I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to add stuff to the already existing clause (disclaimer: Not a programmer). I don't really care about Baton Pass, just wanted to note that there is a technical infrastructure in place for this sort of thing already in case that becomes a major hang up.
 
It's amusing to see people say we have to be uniform about Baton Pass -- like freeing drypass in current gens would create any semblance of uniformity when you can still pass stat boosts in GSC and ADV. In DPP we had an existing complex Froslass ban that could have been improved to preserve the Pokemon, but instead we had to fully ban Froslass because tiering policy heads made the council either ban it or keep the existing nonsensical complex ban that didn't let you use Snow Warning on Mamoswine but allowed it on other Pokemon.

Why do I mention the Froslass situation? Because simultaneously, the DPP council freed drypass with various complex bans implemented to do so. For some reason, we've decided that all complex bans, no matter how simple and intuitive, are forbidden in any tier; even in old generations, where some minor ones may be unanimously community supported and may improve the playing experience...but not Baton Pass, that's the only exception. We can tier Baton Pass as complexly as the tiering policy heads feel like but we can't complex ban anything else, anywhere, because those who govern tiering lazily enforce the status quo without pragmatism and serve themselves as opposed to the old generation communities that they oversee.

DPP OU and BW2 OU have allowed it back recently and there's been no problem with it. For some reason I fail to comprehend, lower tiers of these gens still have Baton Pass as a whole banned.

Outside of people that would sell their mother before breaking tiering policy and Excal who in big 2024 keeps trying to convince people that Aqua Ring + BP is broken in DPP, I would not really understand opposition to this.
Honestly, I'm not thrilled at all with unbanning BP in DPP. While it hasn't unlocked any broken strategies, it's been completely useless so far. We saw 0 usage of Baton Pass in SPL and all it does is give some shit mons like Jolteon a niche pivoting option and allow some random bullshit to exist in the tier. Aqua Ring isn't some gamebreaking cheese that's going to turn the tier on its head, but you'd be naive to think it has zero abuse potential when permasand is DPP's most integral component.

Which leads me to this. I don't care about drypass. In DPP it provided no positives and some small negatives to unban it. In tiers where U-turn is ubiqutous and BP's move distribution isn't that impactful, you're not gonna see it much in OU. I support tiers doing what they want to free drypass if they think it can benefit their tier -- it's intuitive that passing stats has absurd abuse potential in any tier. But acting like freeing drypass in gens 6+ would provide uniformity at the expense of having to ban BP in all our tiers is a ridiculous notion. Stop acting like we're serving policy needs and start focusing on what really matters: what benefits our metagames, if it's intuitive, and if it has enough community support.

SoulWind I support your proposal and agree that our current tiering policy is stupid.
 
Is this proposal for every SV tier? Or for every SV tier + every old gen tier? For SV it seems fine to do, but unbanning it in every tier ever Gen 5+ is kind of a big deal in that it significantly shifts the viability of certain mons in a way that the freeze on how the separate tiers ended up via usage based tiering could no longer be accurate.

That being said, even for just SV, how would you reconcile drypass with the following:
  • Stat boost berries
  • Other items that "could" boost stats, such as Adrenaline Orb
  • Items that can copy an opponents stat change like Mirror Herb
  • Abilities that "could" boost stats but not necessarily will, like Defiant/Competitive/Rattled
edit: just having "don't pass with boosted stats" doesn't really solve some of these issues unless you "gray out" baton pass if your stats are boosted which doesn't seem like a very palatable solution. You could ban baton pass if you have any of these items/abilities I guess but then there's always the opp using a move on you that boosts your stats too.

It seems fine to test it out in SV all tiers, just a bit concerned about all other oldgen lower tiers suddenly getting drypass freed - the point of the oldgen freeze is to preserve those oldgen lower tier metagames and so it'd seem a bit silly to force this their way unless those particular tiers want it to happen.

I remember putting a list like that together seven years ago when this was initially discussed for SM OU, I can assure its very trackable. As Theia said, a list like this is kept and is already utilized/adjustable on PS. Using a simple teambuilder ban is pretty much a solid go-to. There's not much merit in trying to allow nuanced items like Mirror Herb; or trying to add grey-outs against Swagger. Nobody is contending that Baton Pass is overpowered because you can pass Swagger over.


Real Point: I'm Mostly posting because of Theia's note on Psych Up (and to the same extent, Heart Swap and Spectral Thief) not being banned and missing things on the list. It just looks like the list only includes things relevant to the tiers Baton Pass Stat Clause is actually relevant to, it'd just need to be updated. Compiling the list is the harder part if anything, adding to the clause in PS is easy.

On Psych Up and Friends: Yeah, these definitely should be added. Really surprised they're not. They can boost stats, probably more easily than some of the other banned methods. Some of these moves on the list would only be for hackmons or future proofing (Marshadow doesn't get BP for instance) but if this is something we're expecting to permiate most tiers, it needs to be exhaustive.

I'm interested to see more oldgen TL/top player input on replacing BP ban with Stat Pass ban across various oldgens, and hopefully awaiting the breath of fresh air for this change to maybe hopefully finally squash Baton Pass's omnipresence in Policy Review after it comes up again and again and again.
 
Since ppl have brought this up a few times already: A general important aspect of tiering policy is making sure the ruleset is easily understood by new players. It's really easy to take for granted when you're already established or have been around for a while, but the average new player is not as willing to stick around and find out the reasoning for stuff as most people here are. This is a very simplified summary of the reasoning against complex bans as a whole. I get the vitriol against it when it feels like it's not supporting what they playerbase wants, and there are valid arguments that it needs adjustment that I don't really disagree with, but it's important to keep in mind that site growth is important too. Regardless of all of that, I don't really think it applies to drypass.

Drypass is a pretty universally understood concept; even for a new player it really doesn't take a lot to figure out why unrestricted boost passing is silly. It's also generally pretty clear to me that stuff like Subpass or Aqua Ring pass or whatever other weird niche condition is just not that powerful, not significantly more than like Chilly Reception or just U-turn lol. It'd be nice to have a dedicated site page that lists everything that's banned with BP as a combo if this is to go through though since I doubt many people are gonna remember like... Snowball or Cell Battery, and reading through PS source code for it can be a bit unwieldy.

The main thing I wanna mention is I think we should stray away from going *too* overboard with the ability bans and stuff when doing this. It'd be a shame to hurt a few of the weaker mons that'd actually get decent use out of this like Dachsbun and Farigiraf just because they can maybe pass a boost if the stars align. Feels like we can just handle the boosting moves first (and the obvious abilities like Speed Boost) and then work from there.

If we can do this cleanly I support it. I don't really think it'd do much considering everything learns uturn nowadays anyway but it's worth giving it a shot regardless.
 
Why exactly do we need to introduce the most complex ban in the history of competitive mons to allow a move that has been proven broken time and time again?

How is it that we're here creating tiered sub-ban lists and talking about them like they're simple?

Why are we also expecting every single oldgen tier to upend their process for this idea on top of all this?

How is this still a thing, and also how isn't there more objection to it? Feel like I'm losing my mind reading this thread. It's not even about "not breaking tiering policy", it's that we've never litigated like this to such an extreme extent for such a long period for 1 single thing and the level of exception we're willing to make for it is bonkers. This is lv75 Mewtwo to the power of Speed Boost + Blaziken at this point and I'm pretty sure it's more complex than that.
 
i just... really don't see why this is necessary? like what is it about baton pass of all moves that justifies either a cartridge mechanics modification or a complex ban that includes a list of like 60 different things all to allow a strategy that, even by the admission of the drypass supporters in this thread, would not have much of an impact at all in most if not all of the tiers it would affect?

the issue is not a "think of the poor newer players who would get confused" thing or a "it would become absolutely necessary for players to memorize the list of all the ways to boost stats" thing, but more of a "why are we instituting a massive complex ban that includes incredible, earth shattering stuff like ganlon berry, ominous wind, rage, and cell battery, not to mention has tons of ambiguous edge cases to be endlessly debated on, all for a very minor change that there's no guarantee will be a positive one?" thing. i generally agree with the sentiment that holding ourselves to long-standing traditions like "complex bans are always bad" isn't a good idea, but that doesn't mean something should be implemented just because it could.

i don't know if people on this site still foam at the mouth when you bring up a slippery slope argument, but i do think it applies in this case: why go through all this effort to pick apart incredibly broken moves into little pieces just to allow them in fractions of their original use cases? if the reason for allowing drypass is just that it isn't broken, then genuinely what's the difference between that and taking any other broken move, stripping it down to the bare minimum way it could be used without being problematic, and instituting a massive complex ban to implement it? just does not seem worth the headache to me
 
Was thinking about this idea and I'm hesitant after considering some of the possibilities with a few other players, at least in SV OU. I think the inevitable outcome is that drypassing (specifically Subpass) will lead to a cheese metagame, with stuff like Subpass Gliscor raising a few alarm bells for me. Perhaps it will be harder for these sets to work in practice than on paper, but I do see it making Pokemon that are already difficult to deal with like Roaring Moon, Darkrai, and Gouging Fire even more difficult to contain. Other Pokemon will most likely be balanced users of the move - Pokemon like Farigiraf, Scream Tail, Florges, Umbreon, Clefable, Hatterene, etc. seem like they would be honest users of the combination in OU / lower tiers (though Drypass Clef alongside Drypass Mola likely encourages more uninteractive gameplay loops). SV OU does have some experience with Subpassing in a more limited scope with Shed Tail - which was almost universally despised. Now, Subpassing isn't exactly comparable to Shed Tail, but I do see a similar amount of cheese being enabled with its inclusion, particularly given the verstility of some of its users such as Gliscor + in tandem with Terstalization from various abusers like Gouging Fire. There isn't much harm in testing drypass, but I believe it would be wise to include subpassing in the banlist for SV specifically.
 
if the reason for allowing drypass is just that it isn't broken, then genuinely what's the difference between that and taking any other broken move, stripping it down to the bare minimum way it could be used without being problematic, and instituting a massive complex ban to implement it? just does not seem worth the headache to me
Seeing that baton pass has quite an unique effect, probably an example of any other move that could be "stripped down to the bare minimum" without any cartridge mod could be nice to make your argument more clear regarding possible mouth-foam slipper slopes. Seriously, calling the banlist complex, extreme, or arbitrary is ignoring exactly what the purpose of this thread is.

"No stat boosting elements" seems pretty simple to follow. It there are +60 elements that do it, does their relevance/usage really matters? It's not a massive complex ban at all, and has a lot of precedents across multiple formats. This effort to make it a blanket clause is actually attempting to reduce the complexity of the bans in general. At most the discussion can derail to one or two niche elements on it, like the mentioned Psych Up. But overall I cannot do more than echo the community's need to settle on a simple solution to the bimonthly BP threads and this seems to be it.
 
Was thinking about this idea and I'm hesitant after considering some of the possibilities with a few other players, at least in SV OU. I think the inevitable outcome is that drypassing (specifically Subpass) will lead to a cheese metagame, with stuff like Subpass Gliscor raising a few alarm bells for me. Perhaps it will be harder for these sets to work in practice than on paper, but I do see it making Pokemon that are already difficult to deal with like Roaring Moon, Darkrai, and Gouging Fire even more difficult to contain. Other Pokemon will most likely be balanced users of the move - Pokemon like Farigiraf, Scream Tail, Florges, Umbreon, Clefable, Hatterene, etc. seem like they would be honest users of the combination in OU / lower tiers (though Drypass Clef alongside Drypass Mola likely encourages more uninteractive gameplay loops). SV OU does have some experience with Subpassing in a more limited scope with Shed Tail - which was almost universally despised. Now, Subpassing isn't exactly comparable to Shed Tail, but I do see a similar amount of cheese being enabled with its inclusion, particularly given the verstility of some of its users such as Gliscor + in tandem with Terstalization from various abusers like Gouging Fire. There isn't much harm in testing drypass, but I believe it would be wise to include subpassing in the banlist for SV specifically.
I’m not sure who wants to include subpassing. For the sake of simplicity, banning every potential stat raise and positive status condition makes it very easily understood without arguable edge cases.

Is passing Defiant boosts or Aqua Ring broken? Probably not. Are they worth preserving? Absolutely not. You eliminate all these discussions of Snowball, Well-Baked Body, Ingrain, Psych Up, etc. by simply banning the combination of stat raising or positive status conditions with Baton Pass. I believe this makes more sense not only from a policy perspective but a logistical perspective to make the drypass ban easier to implement in future tiers.

I don’t buy into Baton Pass being remotely comparable to other moves. It’s uniquely situated to receive complex tiering as its functionality is massively more expansive than any other move with the ability to store every stat all at once, individually, or not at all. Other broken moves like Last Respects don’t have nearly the same functional flexibility. What are you going to do with Last Respects, ban someone from loading more than 4 mons with it? Baton Pass can easily be transformed into Drypass with a single clause that doesn’t modify game mechanics. There simply is not another move with the same mechanical diversity, there is no slippery slope here.

While banning Baton Pass outright is a passable solution to some extent, Drypass is just significantly better. It’s not a hard rule to understand, provides valuable utility to several mons across all tiers, and is already a common rule across various non-smogon tiers.

I feel like people oppose tiering actions that improve tiers out of fear of some “precedence boogeyman” where some randoms will come out of the woodworks pitchfork in hand arguing for a ton of complex bans. Why can’t we just evaluate tiering actions individually? It’s clear to me that Drypass is an easy unique implementation, we can worry about “lvl 75 mewtwo” man when he appears.
 
I’m not sure who wants to include subpassing. For the sake of simplicity, banning every potential stat raise and positive status condition makes it very easily understood without arguable edge cases.

Is passing Defiant boosts or Aqua Ring broken? Probably not. Are they worth preserving? Absolutely not. You eliminate all these discussions of Snowball, Well-Baked Body, Ingrain, Psych Up, etc. by simply banning the combination of stat raising or positive status conditions with Baton Pass. I believe this makes more sense not only from a policy perspective but a logistical perspective to make the drypass ban easier to implement in future tiers.

I don’t buy into Baton Pass being remotely comparable to other moves. It’s uniquely situated to receive complex tiering as its functionality is massively more expansive than any other move with the ability to store every stat all at once, individually, or not at all. Other broken moves like Last Respects don’t have nearly the same functional flexibility. What are you going to do with Last Respects, ban someone from loading more than 4 mons with it? Baton Pass can easily be transformed into Drypass with a single clause that doesn’t modify game mechanics. There simply is not another move with the same mechanical diversity, there is no slippery slope here.

While banning Baton Pass outright is a passable solution to some extent, Drypass is just significantly better. It’s not a hard rule to understand, provides valuable utility to several mons across all tiers, and is already a common rule across various non-smogon tiers.

I feel like people oppose tiering actions that improve tiers out of fear of some “precedence boogeyman” where some randoms will come out of the woodworks pitchfork in hand arguing for a ton of complex bans. Why can’t we just evaluate tiering actions individually? It’s clear to me that Drypass is an easy unique implementation, we can worry about “lvl 75 mewtwo” man when he appears.
Why do we even need Baton Pass if all the interesting interactions are off the table then?
We now have another U-turn clone that is going to be used by like two relevant mons, that doesn't sounds like a great payoff for something that is going to be a big enough discussion to divide the community, if the move is going to keep causing problems even if we restrict every form of stat boosting from items, moves and abilities then what is even the point of it.
What are we even preserving if what is left may as well be nothing, sounds quite pointless to me.
 
Just want to say this would be a little more palatable if we didn’t try to force it on every single oldgen/oldgen tier. If it’s just for SV then it should be something that the SV OU council can choose to test no? And so if we want to usher in a new era of allowing drypassing in CG then SV is the starting point. But leave the oldgens alone - they can decide for themselves if they want to include drypassing or not, and trying to normalize something across the board for every single possible metagame across gens 4+ is incredibly silly given how different all of these are and how different the interactions will be.
 
Why do we even need Baton Pass if all the interesting interactions are off the table then?
We now have another U-turn clone that is going to be used by like two relevant mons, that doesn't sounds like a great payoff for something that is going to be a big enough discussion to divide the community, if the move is going to keep causing problems even if we restrict every form of stat boosting from items, moves and abilities then what is even the point of it.
What are we even preserving if what is left may as well be nothing, sounds quite pointless to me.

Why is "what are we even preserving" a relevant tiering question? If an element is available and no it broken/uncompetitive, it should be available on the teambuilder. Otherwise, following that line of logic, should we ban Tail Whip? Water Gun? Power Anklet?
The first premise of this thread is about BP being inconsistently handled across gens and lower tiers which no apparent reason beyond it having the particularity of enabling simple builder restrictions if included in a moveset, much like some weather + ability interactions in the past, and some formats testing it while others not.
The point of this thread is to come to a common midground of "BP is fine as dry pass in general, and there is no need to preemptively ban it when it isn't broken; not doing so enables multiple tiresome and disorganized clauses across tens of formats that are heavily more confusing than understanding what dry pass is".
Therefore, it's interesting that there are people saying that dry BP would be an innocuous addition, while others fear it can break tiers, say SV OU. Given the purpose of this thread, rebuttals should be about the latter. The former is an empty protest, since by its own premise Dry BP doesn't make a difference.
Arguments about not doing anything or dismissing BPs relevance miss the point of this thread and are following too strict interpretations of the tiering guidelines in disdain of a more simple midground to address a years long tiering nuisance. Warnings against the possible need to fully ban BP instead are addressable, as mentioned by ABR.
 
Why is "what are we even preserving" a relevant tiering question? If an element is available and no it broken/uncompetitive, it should be available on the teambuilder. Otherwise, following that line of logic, should we ban Tail Whip? Water Gun? Power Anklet?
The first premise of this thread is about BP being inconsistently handled across gens and lower tiers which no apparent reason beyond it having the particularity of enabling simple builder restrictions if included in a moveset, much like some weather + ability interactions in the past, and some formats testing it while others not.
The point of this thread is to come to a common midground of "BP is fine as dry pass in general, and there is no need to preemptively ban it when it isn't broken; not doing so enables multiple tiresome and disorganized clauses across tens of formats that are heavily more confusing than understanding what dry pass is".
Therefore, it's interesting that there are people saying that dry BP would be an innocuous addition, while others fear it can break tiers, say SV OU. Given the purpose of this thread, rebuttals should be about the latter. The former is an empty protest, since by its own premise Dry BP doesn't make a difference.
Arguments about not doing anything or dismissing BPs relevance miss the point of this thread and are following too strict interpretations of the tiering guidelines in disdain of a more simple midground to address a years long tiering nuisance. Warnings against the possible need to fully ban BP instead are addressable, as mentioned by ABR.
Water Gun doesn’t need a clause to not break the game.
Under your logic we can go back to the previous discussion on how this any different from allowing ubers at level 80. Which is also a wrong way to see the discussion.
We should be open to tier differently, but if the objective is to just keep stuff even if it is no longer the same it originally was, then are we really preserving anything?
If the difference between a clause and the full ban isn’t really noticeable then the clause isnt accomplishing anything.
 
I’m just casually adding my support to the DryPass unban. I have supported this for a very long time, as DryPass is a perfectly balanced move. It doesn’t matter how few currently competitive Pokémon this unban will benefit, as it is a normatively beneficial decision. Pokémon may rise in viability as a result, or they (likely) won’t because DryPass isn’t a powerful enough move to change a Pokémon’s viability by itself. Either way, the point is that DryPass is not a broken move, and keeping it banned for “clarity” or whatever doesn’t currently fit any tiering ideology.

Full casuals aren’t incapable of understanding that if “raises” is a word in any element of a Pokémon’s set, be it move, item, or ability, then they can’t also run Baton Pass. Believing that that is the case is basically infantilising casuals.

This is a sensible step to develop formats beyond more traditionalist and absolutist thought. I think we are at a stage as a community where we can move past the binary thought behind “potentially boosting move = bad” and can adequately action Baton Pass, which is an extremely high variance move that is balanced if we remove the highest variance utility of the move.

DryPass has been brought up many times over Smogon’s history. This is because, despite the precedent, enough respected users eventually decide “DryPass simply cannot be determined as broken — it’s the worst pivot move in the game”. And that statement is true, so even if we reject it not, it will have to be rejected again in a maximum of a couple years unless the requisite cultural change occurs within that time. DryPass being unbanned isn’t radical — it’s an inevitability.

The rhetoric behind banning Baton Pass is an untapped controversy anyway. Baton Pass mostly got banned because of Shell Smash, which if we follow Smogon’s general ideology of banning the root cause means that Shell Smash should be banned, not Baton Pass. IMO the main reason this never happened is the combo only exists on weaker mons — if Cloyster learned Baton Pass, Shell Smash probably would have been banned instead. Because Pokémon like Huntail/Gorebyss had to be depended upon to pass Shell Smash boosts, and these Pokémon weren’t respected as potentially high tier threats, Baton Pass got restricted instead as the distinguishing feature between Cloyster and Gorebyss/Huntail.

A flat ban on Baton Pass across all formats should not be the solution to this OU-minded view, however. This unban would simply be correcting a fault of the past.
 
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Why is "what are we even preserving" a relevant tiering question? If an element is available and no it broken/uncompetitive, it should be available on the teambuilder. Otherwise, following that line of logic, should we ban Tail Whip? Water Gun? Power Anklet?

I can see the reasons to complex ban the broken elements of Baton Pass away in order to preserve healthy and relevant pivoting options for the sake of metagame balance, but this in particular is an absolute nonsense argument.

DryPass isn't a move. It's not an existing game element that can be evaluated in isolation based on whether or not it breaks the meta or not. It's a made-up idea that just represents a move without 90% of its intended function to be evaluated based on the positive value brought by that remaining 10%.

It's an absurd shift of the burden of proof to treat DryPass as an expected part of the non-broken unbanned status quo, where we need some kind of tangible unhealthy reason to ban it, when the move and concept literally do not exist in the game. It was made up. Baton Pass is a fundamentally broken move, we all KNOW this fact, the argument should be about whether DryPass brings an actual tangible positive benefit to the health of the game that makes its restricted use cases WORTH preserving.

Every point where the thread failed to address this idea when trying to argue in favor of its complex preservation has been disappointing to read. Are people seriously willing to die on defining out the 60+ move/ability/item factors and arguing about the cheese potential of including historically irrelevant options like Substitute/Aqua Ring, for a brutally complex ban that creates NO actual tangible metagame benefit? Things like this should, at the very minimum, be done for an actual reason.

Appeals to meaningless uniformity are, at best, just policy bullshit for policy bullshit's sake. If it doesn't accomplish anything for the actual game, then trying to push a complex rule solely for that reason is a waste of time.
 
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So if I'm following the train of logic here, drypass deserves to be relegislated into the meta purely because it'd be cool to run on some things and for no more important reason. This necessitates clausing away the completely agreed upon broken part of a move to save the non-broken part, because this admittedly unique situation is so important that it justifies this completely different action. And finally, in order to fundamentally change the property of this move from its developer-intended origins in order to preserve it in the metagame, we're going to start conditionally limiting the legality of things that are universally considered not remotely broken.
Look it's not that I don't sympathize, drypass is always extremely fun and would be really cool for PU, but the proposals seem to be essentially deleting half of what a move was literally designed to do and comes with the side effect of imposing restrictions on the legality of things like Steadfast, Anger Point, and Snowball. Like we don't even want to have a sleep clause mod anymore but essentially we're good taking the Burn chance off of Scald because it'd be more fun. I would absolutely enjoy drypass as a competitor, but justifying it would mean prioritizing that over a sane ruleset, and for a pretty small reward.
 
I have no qualms with allowing individual past metages to evaluate wether or not they want to introduce DryPass into their metas.

Where I do draw the line however is imposing this decision on every single tier, as well as lower tiers beneath them.

To introduce a complex ban like this, there needs to be an agreed benefit to the tier, that warrants the breaking of the current policy. This could be lack of pivots, a need for switching counter play to powerful threats, or giving pivoting options to offensive pokemon that are underpowered in a defensively riddled metagame.

This should be a decision that at the very least is discussed by the respective metagame councils, and at the most suspect tested. This is a major change that greatly affects dozens of different tiers, there's no saying wether or not it'll be a net positive based on 2 metagames that have tried it.

There's a reason tier freezing was imposed, and shouting out for a sense of uniformity is nonsensical. Different tiers are going to have different things banned, and that's ok. There's a reason why we're not going back and removing sleep clause from every tier.
 
Seeing that baton pass has quite an unique effect, probably an example of any other move that could be "stripped down to the bare minimum" without any cartridge mod could be nice to make your argument more clear regarding possible mouth-foam slipper slopes. Seriously, calling the banlist complex, extreme, or arbitrary is ignoring exactly what the purpose of this thread is.

Even looking at the extremely small number of moves that have been banned in past gen ous, there's a very similar example and a somewhat similar example. Assist is banned in gen 5 because it works with prankster to get priority on very specific moves that become broken when used with priority. it would be very easy to ban only the combination of assist and those moves, far, far easier than it would be with baton pass, but the move as a whole is banned instead. why? because assist is an otherwise never used gimmick move in gen 5. the only reason baton pass would be any different is because it does have a marginal use outside of passing stat boosts, so what you're really arguing here is that there should be a completely arbitrary, imagined level of viability a small non broken use case of a broken move that would justify picking it apart into tiny pieces to allow it in some cases with a complex ban. this adds another massive element of subjectivity into an already very subjective and messy task of deciding which edge cases should be allowed with drypass and which shouldn't.

the other example is gen 6 swagger, it was not banned because it was broken on some normal set of some random ou pokemon, it was banned specifically because of its use with abilities and moves like thunder wave, prankster, foul play, substitute, etc. you could absolutely do the same thing as a proposed drypass clause with swagger by, say, allowing swagger foul play but not with prankster or thunder wave, allowing certain numbers of certain combinations, etc, and some of them might even end up being viable but not broken. why not do this, then? because it's a pointless waste of time that needlessly complicates a ban list all because a broken move is only broken in some cases, and it's exactly the same with drypass. maybe i could see why an exception would make sense for drypass it were suspect tested and found to be some massive, game changing savior that fixes a specific metagame, but no one in this thread has even tried to argue of a case where it would have a substantial positive impact, let alone why that makes it a good idea to implement such a clause in all tiers bp is currently banned in.

"No stat boosting elements" seems pretty simple to follow. It there are +60 elements that do it, does their relevance/usage really matters? It's not a massive complex ban at all, and has a lot of precedents across multiple formats. This effort to make it a blanket clause is actually attempting to reduce the complexity of the bans in general. At most the discussion can derail to one or two niche elements on it, like the mentioned Psych Up. But overall I cannot do more than echo the community's need to settle on a simple solution to the bimonthly BP threads and this seems to be it.

not exactly sure what the precedent you're talking about it, but i'm assuming it's this:

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which honestly i think kind of proves my point? listing the exact combinations of moves that aren't allowed is clearly the correct choice over only listing the vague (yet much, much less vague than "any move or ability that can raise the user's stats in any circumstances") "baton pass + partial trapping moves", but such an itemized list for all of the very large number of stat boosting mechanics would frankly look ridiculous and completely dominate the page with a bunch of nonsense that would never matter in any circumstance like "baton pass + anger point". i'm really not sure how a list with like 50+ combinations on it isn't "massive", and not listing them would mean that the list of rules for the tier doesn't actually list exactly what isn't allowed in the tier, which seems more than a little backwards to me. are people supposed to go look directly through ps's code to find out if baton pass + heart swap is legal?

you mentioned psych up, but that's far from the only edge case. there's also heart swap and spectral thief, which were mentioned earlier in the thread, and what about stuff like z moves? should the already gigantic list include stuff like "baton pass + normalium z + whirlwind" because you can use that on an otherwise normal set to pass +1 special defense boosts? but if you think that's too minor to need to be banned, then how do you ban that but not that obviously broken "baton pass + normalium z + celebrate"? there's no reason to think there won't be more new cases like this in future gens that would also be automatically put under the effect of a blanket baton pass clause.

this is what i mean when i say this isn't worth the headache. this would be a blanket ban across several generations that would have unique nuances and edge cases in each generation all for a move that would likely have very little impact, let alone positive impact, in any of them. maybe if you love endlessly arguing about stuff that doesn't matter this is a good thing, but of all things to do this for, why have it be to allow a mangled, crippled form stripped of the entire point of the move of one of the most broken moves that has ever been in pokemon? if you want to remove needless complexity, then ban the move that's broken in 99% of use cases instead of jumping through hoops to allow the 1% where it isn't.

Is passing Defiant boosts or Aqua Ring broken? Probably not. Are they worth preserving? Absolutely not. You eliminate all these discussions of Snowball, Well-Baked Body, Ingrain, Psych Up, etc. by simply banning the combination of stat raising or positive status conditions with Baton Pass. I believe this makes more sense not only from a policy perspective but a logistical perspective to make the drypass ban easier to implement in future tiers.

I am very confused as to what you mean here. How exactly do you "ban the combination of stat raising or positive status conditions with baton pass" without either making a list of moves / items / abilities it applies to or completely changing cartridge mechanics? you can't ban an abstract concept; there's no way to actually enforce that. there has to be an actual list somewhere, whether it's shown on the page describing the clause or not. As long as said list exists, there will have to be some ambiguity as to what should go on it, as i explained in my previous paragraph.

overall, this is just a solution looking for a problem. what exactly is wrong with having a move that is absurdly broken in its intended use case just... being banned? the problem is not that adding complexity to banlists is always a bad thing that should never be done, the problem is that this specific case is a combination of absurd and unnecessary that really doesn't have any benefit and is just change for the sake of change.
 
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