Baton Pass - its role in the metagame and possible solutions to nerf full Baton Pass chains

[I AM THE JAMAICAN BOBSLED TEAM]

Hello all, Hiphiphooray here. Not sure if anyone here will recognize me, but I actually was one of the first to popularize this style of Baton Pass chain teams and coined the term Defensive Baton Pass teams back in BW when they took effect. I am currently writting a guide for how to play and beat Baton Pass. That guide can be found here.

In that guide I conclude with the future of Baton Pass. That conclusion in a nutshell is basically this:

"We have seen that in order to build an effective Baton Pass team, we build it based on countering popular OU threats. We have also noted that there exists a small subset of uncommon pokemon that are virtually unbeatable (i.e. they hard counter all Baton Pass, example: prankster haze). From this its easy to see that the success of Baton Pass rests on a lack of creativity among the top-tier players.

The top tier players typically stick to using a specific subset of OU pokemon and those pokemon typically run a single useful set. By countering this subset, we can easily win with Baton Pass. Once Baton Pass becomes problematic or OverUsed itself, we will immediately see a drastic decrease in the success of Baton Pass. Once people start to lose to enough Baton Pass teams, they will view them as a competitive threat, and build teams capable of beating them every time by incorporating novel pokemon like haze users or prankster users."

What I see in this thread is enough to make me laugh. People still refuse to view Baton Pass as a competitively viable tactic and would rather ban in than learn to counter it. Looking back at the BW era, we could have easily banned weather users, but instead, we took them as viable and started using underused Pokemon like dugtrio to beat them.

Why aren't people doing that now? Be creative, go try to work with Pokemon that aren't OU powerhouses...

In conclusion, Baton Pass has a huge negative stigma about it from its early style of gimmicky play (shell smash gorebyss, etc). So much so that Smogon still refuses to accept Baton Pass teams into the RMT archives. But the truth is that Baton Pass is a competitively viable tactic and we have two options:
1. Get creative and introduce new pokemon to OU status to beat them.
2. Continue to dismiss it as gimmicky and ban in.

Look mate, the pokemon you are looking for is Murkrow. If you are forced to run fucking MURKROW to defeat BP, it shows it is unhealthy to the meta as murkrow is absolute garb outside of defeating baton pass. Also, a pokemon doesn't need to be OU to be used. I use a fucking Victini on my team ffs. And before you retort, I have been able to easily beat BP by just setting up alongside them(tho I do use HO, which typically beats BP.) And if we use this philosophy, then the game becomes a fucked up game of rock-paper-scizor where games are won or lost at team preview, regardless of skill. We don't want the meta to be like that, do we?

 

[Hiphiphooray]

Dugtrio was OU in BW for a single reason - stop weather. I think we should expect to see something like this for Baton Pass this generation. My suggestion is infiltrator Crobat with haze or Thundurus. Like I said, Baton Pass's success is based on the redundancy of OU. We don't want a meta that only uses 50 pokemon and bans any combinations that forces us to use other pokemon, do we?

Volt-turn and stacking priority is also a great offensive threat to Baton Pass teams currently. Talonflame and Pinsir can only be stopped by Zapdos. If you eliminate Zapdos, you win.

And as mentioned before, mold breaker + phasing is a great way to beat Baton Pass. Wish support for it and Baton Pass is no longer viable at all. Maybe Haxorous with Roar will become the new standard in stall teams. Who knows.

 

[I AM THE JAMAICAN BOBSLED TEAM]

Dugtrio was OU in BW for a single reason - stop weather. I think we should expect to see something like this for Baton Pass this generation. My suggestion is infiltrator Crobat with haze or Thundurus. Like I said, Baton Pass's success is based on the redundancy of OU. We don't want a meta that only uses 50 pokemon and bans any combinations that forces us to use other pokemon, do we?

Volt-turn and stacking priority is also a great offensive threat to Baton Pass teams currently. Talonflame and Pinsir can only be stopped by Zapdos. If you eliminate Zapdos, you win.

And as mentioned before, mold breaker + phasing is a great way to beat Baton Pass. Wish support for it and Baton Pass is no longer viable at all. Maybe Haxorous with Roar will become the new standard in stall teams. Who knows.

Thing is, dugtrio wasn't garb outside of trapping weather users. It could be paired with genesect to kill (BAN ME PLEASE).

 

[Conflict]

Baton Pass and Full BP teams have been around forever and now suddenly in Gen6 they are a problem because they gained like what 1-2 new effective users?

BP is as unreliable as ever and still has the same drawbacks as it used to. Granted its not the most popular style because it sometimes invokes a feeling of helplessness so theres that. Anyways i feel like you need to play differently vs BP-teams and people to adapt and learn how to play vs BP-chains instead of trying to ban some shit.

No Mons should be banned for this. Neither Espeon nor Scolipede (or others) are broken as stand-alone Mons and they have distinct strategical niches. Pretty much everything that can use BP was around last gen besides Speed Boost-Scolipede and Megamawile (which then misses out on Leftovers which can prove to be detrimental).

On the flipside Offense even gained some checks to BP-chains with the reintroduction of Thundurus-I (Prankster TWave/Taunt), Excadrill (fast, hits hard etc).

BP is also extremely one-dimensional. Usually you get only 1 maybe at maximum 2 shots at trying to win the game and if that fails youre screwed and pretty much guaranteed an autoloss.

Conclusion: BP is good as it always has been, but its not inherently broken exspecially not because it hasnt gained much in comparison to last generation.

if you think baton pass is a skillful playstyle or a 'competitively viable tactic' or even refuse to acknowledge that it is anything more than trash then just 'lol'

[08:04 pm] <@ashborer> it has a stigma because its fucking stupid as shit

Been around forever, been beatable forever so - deal with it? (And yes BP requires a certain amount of skill if you want to be successful repeatedly).

 

[sidakarya]

The top tier players typically stick to using a specific subset of OU pokemon and those pokemon typically run a single useful set. By countering this subset, we can easily win with Baton Pass. Once Baton Pass becomes problematic or OverUsed itself, we will immediately see a drastic decrease in the success of Baton Pass. Once people start to lose to enough Baton Pass teams, they will view them as a competitive threat, and build teams capable of beating them every time by incorporating novel pokemon like haze users or prankster users."

Those things, as said many times before, are dead weight against non baton pass teams. And even if you adapted to these teams, Baton Passers can adopt back - actually no, in most of these cases, they don't even have to. Murkrow, M-Garados, Haxorus, Sableye all lose to Sylveon. Haze Quagsire can be just be overpowered by Stored Power. Even Thundurus can be overcome with Sylveon and certain varieties of Zapdos. The arguably best way to beat BP, by just bashing away with your HO Team, as seen before can still be overcome (Jukain's replays above, and that has he just done with a 4-Pokémon-chain), and that's not getting into the hairiness of asking people to play exclusive HO.

Trust us, the last time we tried to counter a ridiculous threat with Sableye of all things, you couldn't ask in the bounds of any reason, to "adapt" to it. The possibilities by this point have been thoroughly looked into and exhausted.

What I see in this thread is enough to make me laugh. People still refuse to view Baton Pass as a competitively viable tactic and would rather ban in than learn to counter it. Looking back at the BW era, we could have easily banned weather users, but instead, we took them as viable and started using underused Pokemon like dugtrio to beat them.

Why aren't people doing that now? Be creative, go try to work with Pokemon that aren't OU powerhouses...

BW is a terrible example to bring up since in retrospect, a lot of people (including myself) of all skills would have rather seen the whole of the weather wars disappear. Had the 5th generation lasted longer and a late suspect of Drizzle brought, it surely would have been banned. Weather is cited as the example of overcentralisation to the point of spoiling a metagame, and this is a valuable lesson to have learned in the generation therafter. We need to "play around" this no longer, especially seeing as we've essentially exhausted our possibilities.

In conclusion, Baton Pass has a huge negative stigma about it from its early style of gimmicky play (shell smash gorebyss, etc). So much so that Smogon still refuses to accept Baton Pass teams into the RMT archives.

That is not why it's stigmaised at all. It's stigmatised in the same way, Swagplay was stigmatised - because it's a degenerate strategy, winning by which requires no knowledge or even skill for that matter - you just follow a formula and win. And clearly is it not "gimmicky", when their efficacy is so, that they become ever more popular and numerous as we speak, or when three players all topped the ranks for months with the same BP team!!!

 

[Mahmudkipz]

I am quite new to the OU metagame so bear with me if I make any mistake. In my view, Baton Pass teams often struggle with priority, and if anything the Gen 6 OU metagame told me is that priority is flying everywhere, from Gale Wings Brave Bird from Talonflame to Aerialate Quick Attack from Mega Pinsir, Choice Banded Extreme Speed from Dnite to Prankster Taunt from Thundurus. All of these things supposedly should kill a BP chain easily before they could grab too many Defensive boosts, especially since the Speed Boost + Baton Pass combo users are all weak to flying. AFAIK you can't just BP to something esle in from of these things without eating a heavy hit because BP doesn't have priority (except Volbeat/Illumise unlike manual switching and thusly you can't just BP to the counter without taking a huge hit on the BPer. Prankster Taunt is the same - you can't just BP into Espeon since BP occurs after the Taunt, which stops BP from happening - and although you can somewhat prevent it with mental herb, you can't have mental herb on everything as it costs the mon's longevity in not running Lefties or Sash.

 

[Hiphiphooray]

Crobat is a great counter that doesn't seem to be getting mentioned enough. Able to stop scolipede and haze faster than anything unboosted. Also able to roost and stay healthy.

Hyper offense isn't needed. Volt-turn and priority works great too if you have a choice item and can do at least 25% damage.

Don't expect a single pokemon to beat an entire team... Be creative and try something new. Having mega pinsir on a team causes the Baton Passer to lead with Smeargle or Zapdos. Both of which can be dealt with by a variety of Pokemon.

 

[toshimelonhead]

Hide

Hello all, Hiphiphooray here. Not sure if anyone here will recognize me, but I actually was one of the first to popularize this style of Baton Pass chain teams and coined the term Defensive Baton Pass teams back in BW when they took effect. I am currently writting a guide for how to play and beat Baton Pass. That guide can be found here.

In that guide I conclude with the future of Baton Pass. That conclusion in a nutshell is basically this:

"We have seen that in order to build an effective Baton Pass team, we build it based on countering popular OU threats. We have also noted that there exists a small subset of uncommon pokemon that are virtually unbeatable (i.e. they hard counter all Baton Pass, example: prankster haze). From this its easy to see that the success of Baton Pass rests on a lack of creativity among the top-tier players.

The top tier players typically stick to using a specific subset of OU pokemon and those pokemon typically run a single useful set. By countering this subset, we can easily win with Baton Pass. Once Baton Pass becomes problematic or OverUsed itself, we will immediately see a drastic decrease in the success of Baton Pass. Once people start to lose to enough Baton Pass teams, they will view them as a competitive threat, and build teams capable of beating them every time by incorporating novel pokemon like haze users or prankster users."

What I see in this thread is enough to make me laugh. People still refuse to view Baton Pass as a competitively viable tactic and would rather ban in than learn to counter it. Looking back at the BW era, we could have easily banned weather users, but instead, we took them as viable and started using underused Pokemon like dugtrio to beat them.

Why aren't people doing that now? Be creative, go try to work with Pokemon that aren't OU powerhouses...

In conclusion, Baton Pass has a huge negative stigma about it from its early style of gimmicky play (shell smash gorebyss, etc). So much so that Smogon still refuses to accept Baton Pass teams into the RMT archives. But the truth is that Baton Pass is a competitively viable tactic and we have two options:
1. Get creative and introduce new pokemon to OU status to beat them.
2. Continue to dismiss it as gimmicky and ban in.

I've been waiting to see what you had to say on this! Yes, BP does have a stigma beyond Shell Smash users, but I would trace it actually as early as ADV. The problem I've always had with BP is that when it takes time and energy to create good teams, losing to something that doesn't take much time to build is demoralizing. At least when someone rips an RMT team, I know that playing against the creator increases the efficacy of the team, but I think the strategy for BP is fairly standardized, especially with the hands of a good player.

I think the meta will eventually adapt to BP, especially since this isn't BP's first rodeo and the tricks haven't changed much. What has changed is the ability to provide defensive boosts to Espeon is much easier. Baton Pass is one of the few viable strategies where boosting defenses is much more useful than boosting offenses. Stall doesn't boost much and uses status and hazards to deal damage. Furthermore, with the number of viable OU mons out there, it's tough to fit another mon on a team specifically for Baton Pass.

 

[psVoltage]

Imo we should focus on something that is actually broken, Knock off.....

 

[Timurid_5]

My quick words on Baton Pass, which will be clarified later.: there are some chains which have too much momentum to beat, and either a ban on Magic Bounce/Baton Pass combo (that would make it possible for stall to beat BP) and/or a limit on Baton Passers per team would make the strategy more complex and interesting than "switch to X if Y is out.

Slightly more complex than that, but the point should be a given by now.

 

[skies]

Imo we should focus on something that is actually broken, Knock off.....

Knock Off is powerful, but not broken imo. But this isn't the thread [I'd love to discuss with you over VM though :]]

 

[StarkGod]

Baton Pass and Full BP teams have been around forever and now suddenly in Gen6 they are a problem because they gained like what 1-2 new effective users?

BP is as unreliable as ever and still has the same drawbacks as it used to. Granted its not the most popular style because it sometimes invokes a feeling of helplessness so theres that. Anyways i feel like you need to play differently vs BP-teams and people to adapt and learn how to play vs BP-chains instead of trying to ban some shit.

No Mons should be banned for this. Neither Espeon nor Scolipede (or others) are broken as stand-alone Mons and they have distinct strategical niches. Pretty much everything that can use BP was around last gen besides Speed Boost-Scolipede and Megamawile (which then misses out on Leftovers which can prove to be detrimental).

On the flipside Offense even gained some checks to BP-chains with the reintroduction of Thundurus-I (Prankster TWave/Taunt), Excadrill (fast, hits hard etc).

BP is also extremely one-dimensional. Usually you get only 1 maybe at maximum 2 shots at trying to win the game and if that fails youre screwed and pretty much guaranteed an autoloss.

Conclusion: BP is good as it always has been, but its not inherently broken exspecially not because it hasnt gained much in comparison to last generation.



Been around forever, been beatable forever so - deal with it? (And yes BP requires a certain amount of skill if you want to be successful repeatedly).

Again, someone who I suspect has not played a serious BP team this gen nor certainly has observed higher ladder play. The top 20 players consistently hold their position because they all use the same team. The same exact bp team to be exact. There are no real counters outside of obscure hazers (Not taunters because Espeon exists) that have no use other than attempting to beat bp. With the right team (And by that, I mean the one everyone over 1700 seems to whore out) It is an incredibly broken playstyle that gives even the worst of players the tools to crush some of the finest. If you don't have some obscure Pokemon with a set to specifically annoy bp, you lose. Right of the bat, Period. There are two main issues that cannot be stressed enough with 6th gen BP: Scolipede and Magic Bounce Espeon. There are the pillars of broken that make BP nearly untouchable by any practical means. It's far from unreliable. When you have a playstyle where so many people can use the same exact team and crush the ladder with no effort; I would call this extremely reliable. And broken. Again. Something has to change.

 

[URFBOWND]

My quick words on Baton Pass, which will be clarified later.: there are some chains which have too much momentum to beat, and either a ban on Magic Bounce/Baton Pass combo (that would make it possible for stall to beat BP) and/or a limit on Baton Passers per team would make the strategy more complex and interesting than "switch to X if Y is out.

Slightly more complex than that, but the point should be a given by now.

I like the idea of limiting the number of baton passers per team. I propose a limit of 2 as some pokemon use it as an alternative to u-turn and just two pokemon baton passing around isn't too difficult to deal with.

 

[MythTrainerInfinity]

Currently having a lot of fun with Infiltrator ScarfTrickTomb.

Its Trick/Status move will pierce the heavens (and subs)!

Some of you need to put your claims to practice on the ladder instead of arguing. SHOW ME YOUR MOVES!

 

[Waltz01]

Currently having a lot of fun with Infiltrator ScarfTrickTomb.

Its Trick/Status move will pierce the heavens (and subs)!

Alright name me five other pokemon Infiltrator Spiritomb beats

 

[radianthero156]

in my current team, i just run mega alakazam with taunt in order to stop BP. you can trace speed boost from scolipede, and then procceed to 2HKO their entire team, taunting any calm mind attempts. also mega alakazam is a great mon itself, trace is a wonderful ability against heatran, swift swimmers, gliscor, manectric, a lot of stuff.

(i was just mentioning it as a counter, i still obviously think baton pass is broken and should be banned)

 

[Hiphiphooray]

This thread seriously lacks creativity. Just because you have to change your team to adjust with the meta doesn't mean Baton Pass is broken... If they are using the exact same team and you want to beat all of them, pick up a counter. This game isn't about making one team and expecting to beat everyone with it, every team will have some weakness...

Whimscott is a great Pokemon in OU. It can entirely shut down Baton Pass teams with Prankster Taunt or Encore. Yes Espeon can setup Calm Minds on it and Scolipede can pass it at least +1 speed. So now all your team needs: 1. Something faster than can use protect and substitute to outstall Stored Power. 2. Something faster than can 1hko it. 3. Something with Priority that can 1hko it. 4. A Sturdy RedCard user. 5. A physically strong Dark Pokemon, that can threaten the defensive core (Bisharp works great here, as it can sword dance on Espeon's Baton Pass and then outspeed and deal significant damage to anything with Knock Off. Revenge killing should be straight forward from there.

Heck Whimscott plus any Dark Pokemon with volt-turn wins outright actually. Just volt-turn slower and if they switch go to whimscott to encore lock the Baton Pass.

Curse Trevenant anyone? Very viable and wins easily!

Shedinja cannot be killed by any pokemon on a Baton Pass team... haha, have fun with that little guy.

Come on guys, so many viable counters if you are willing to change your team a little bit!

 

[Dope Boi Magic]

As a user of full baton pass I want to say that the hate for this strategy is absurd and illogical. There should not be a ban, the community should simply adjust.

Everyone here seems to be complaining that baton pass forces them to incorporate a counter or they lose. Isn't that how the game is suppose to be? You incorporate a counter for each of the common Pokemon within the tier that you play so that you don't lose to those Pokemon. In RMT threads critics walk in all the time and say "Oh your team is weak to this, incorporate this." What's so difficult about "Oh your team is weak to baton pass incorporate this."? If baton pass is so powerful this generation, people will want to use it more, and as such, the meta should adjust. Just like it does to any other top tier threat within the game. Baton pass is powerful, but not broken by any means. At the highest levels of play it still requires prediction and thought like any other team, maybe not as much but still it requires it.

Prankster, roar, whirlwind, taunt, haze, encore, sturdy, red card, mega pinsir, talonflame, crobat, trace mega gardevoir, and thundurus are all examples of good checks to baton pass. All of those things require smart play to deal with for a full baton pass chain. Haze is the biggest counter to bp by far, followed by thundurus and mega pinsir. All it takes is one move, ONE move to counter baton pass. And that is haze. Your team has room for it. If you don't want to do that, incorporate another counter. Hell even volt turn pressure can be used against baton pass.

This thread seems to be a bunch of people who are mad because they don't account for baton pass in their team, and don't want to either. Instead of implementing a silly complex ban on a viable strategy that is entirely possible to beat, the meta game should adjust to it.

 

[Sacredtwin11]

As a person who's tried out baton pass myself, and beaten several good baton pass teams pretty high up on the ladder(1800ish range) with stall team no less, I can safely say that baton pass isn't broken. It's possible to have pokemon useful outside of beating baton pass and providing other uses on a team.
Nobody has mentioned deoxys with knock off and taunt, 2 relatively common moves(which I happened to run). Pokemon with taunt and knock off in General can take out Espeon while forcing it to stay in or get taunted.
Or ditto to send in after you break a sub.
Or overwhelming them with strong special attacks from the start which isn't that difficult. Scolipede can't boost special defense and if you don't lead scoliosis you lose out on vital speed boosts.

 

[Waltz01]

Heck Whimscott plus any Dark Pokemon with volt-turn wins outright actually. Just volt-turn slower and if they switch go to whimscott to encore lock the Baton Pass.

Curse Trevenant anyone? Very viable and wins easily!

Shedinja cannot be killed by any pokemon on a Baton Pass team... haha, have fun with that little guy.

Alright so I want to stop Baton Pass so I pack BOTH Whimsicott and a "Dark Pokemon with Volt-Turn". And I'll just battle other ladder teams 6 on 4. When you're suggesting Shedninja as a solid counter something is wrong

This thread seems to be a bunch of people who are mad because they don't account for baton pass in their team, and don't want to either. Instead of implementing a silly complex ban on a viable strategy that is entirely possible to beat, the meta game should adjust to it.

Not when adapting means screwing yourself against literally any other viable playstyle by packing some ridiculous shit to counter BP. So instead of "adapting" by using some random unviable bullshit and playing man down against DeoSharp Offense, or whatever, we want to nerf the mindless strategy that turns laddering into Rock Papper Scissors. Sorry.

 

[Jukain]

This thread seriously lacks creativity. Just because you have to change your team to adjust with the meta doesn't mean Baton Pass is broken... If they are using the exact same team and you want to beat all of them, pick up a counter. This game isn't about making one team and expecting to beat everyone with it, every team will have some weakness...

Whimscott is a great Pokemon in OU. It can entirely shut down Baton Pass teams with Prankster Taunt or Encore. Yes Espeon can setup Calm Minds on it and Scolipede can pass it at least +1 speed. So now all your team needs: 1. Something faster than can use protect and substitute to outstall Stored Power. 2. Something faster than can 1hko it. 3. Something with Priority that can 1hko it. 4. A Sturdy RedCard user. 5. A physically strong Dark Pokemon, that can threaten the defensive core (Bisharp works great here, as it can sword dance on Espeon's Baton Pass and then outspeed and deal significant damage to anything with Knock Off. Revenge killing should be straight forward from there.

Heck Whimscott plus any Dark Pokemon with volt-turn wins outright actually. Just volt-turn slower and if they switch go to whimscott to encore lock the Baton Pass.

Curse Trevenant anyone? Very viable and wins easily!

Shedinja cannot be killed by any pokemon on a Baton Pass team... haha, have fun with that little guy.

Come on guys, so many viable counters if you are willing to change your team a little bit!

This is just grasping for straws. Whimsicott is mediocre at best in OU. Curse Trevenant and Shedinja are downright unviable. Honestly, I think you know this, and are just trying to preserve the playstyle that you supposedly 'created' and lets you autowin 95% of the time. It's broken, we'll ban it.

 

[Sacredtwin11]

Alright so I want to stop Baton Pass so I pack BOTH Whimsicott and a "Dark Pokemon with Volt-Turn". And I'll just battle other ladder teams 6 on 4. When you're suggesting Shedninja as a solid counter something is wrong



Not when adapting means screwing yourself against literally any other viable playstyle by packing some ridiculous shit to counter BP. So instead of "adapting" by using some random unviable bullshit and playing man down against DeoSharp Offense, or whatever, we want to nerf the mindless strategy that turns laddering into Rock Papper Scissors. Sorry.

First of all, neither whimsicott nor a dark type with volt-turn are deadweight. Whimsicott is a solid stop to set up sweepers with priority encore. With stun spore it can spread status and subseed if it wants. And any pokemon with volt switch or u-turn will find use because of the easy momentum it grabs. Secondly, where the hell is the Rock Paper Scissors coming from? Make a better team that can handle baton pass and other threats then. It's up to you to adapt instead of cry every time you find something you can't beat.

 

[-Tsunami-]

First of all, neither whimsicott nor a dark type with volt-turn are deadweight.

The Volt-Turn part is true but the main part of this combo is Whimsicott, which honestly is just a subpar Pokemon in the OU metagame, and basically forces its user to be at a disadvantage against many other teams.

 

[KztxL7]

Some of these anti-ban arguments are getting close to the nonsense I saw from the old Mega Kangaskhan thread.

When your methods of "adapting" to the metagame are forcing some suboptimal sets/pokemon/strategies just to avoid an easy loss to a single team archtype which will weaken your ability to handle pretty much every other team there is a problem.

Understand what proper and healthy evolution and adaptation of a metagame is before throwing this out.

Please.

 

[Waltz01]

First of all, neither whimsicott nor a dark type with volt-turn are deadweight. Whimsicott is a solid stop to set up sweepers with priority encore. With stun spore it can spread status and subseed if it wants. And any pokemon with volt switch or u-turn will find use because of the easy momentum it grabs. Secondly, where the hell is the Rock Paper Scissors coming from? Make a better team that can handle baton pass and other threats then. It's up to you to adapt instead of cry every time you find something you can't beat.

"Rock-Paper-Scissors" is like this:

BP Teams beat "Standard" teams (meaning, they lack BP counters)
Teams with BP counters beat BP teams
"Standard" teams usually beat teams with BP counters as the Counter is shit like Whimsicott or other champs like Shedninja which are pretty much death fodder in a match not against BP.

Whimsicott is A) outclassed at "setting up sweepers" by Wobbuffet, which can actually, y'know, trap and B) just terrible.