Metagame np: SS Ubers Stage 2 - Pass Out (Baton Pass Banned)

[Nayrz]

​

Time for a suspect test! If you have been following the most recent "On The Radar" thread the target of the suspect test shouldn't be a huge surprise - we're suspecting Baton Pass.

Baton Pass in SS has had a diverse range of strategies that have been growing as more Pokemon release into the metagame. Full Baton Pass teams where all six Pokemon aim to pass boosts between each other in a methodical manner to an eventual sweeper are feared by many with limited in-battle counterplay. There are choices in the teambuilder that can make the matchup against full Baton Pass teams easier, such as SD + Sacred Sword Zacian-C and Haze users, but at the cost of limiting your team's options against many other metagame threats. Other Baton Pass strategies centered around Magearna are also growing in popularity - choose what boosts you want Magearna to Baton Pass to amplify the strength of Pokemon like Choice Band Dracovish or Eternatus and watch them go. Baton Pass is also more innocently used to allow Pokemon such as Umbreon to pivot out of threats, however, the community has been outspoken that Baton Pass's strongest strategies endanger the health of the metagame, so we're putting it up for a vote!

The SS Council considered the options between a full BP test or a BP clause internally and in the recent discussion thread, and eventually concluded that it is better to evaluate Baton Pass as a whole rather than tackle the numerous challenges that a clause presents - some of which I outlined in this post. We invite the community to decide amongst themselves if the less abusive strategies that Baton Pass can be part of are worth the downsides of keeping it in the tier and vote in their chosen direction.

For this suspect test we will be using a newer GXE strategy in order to obtain voting requirements. The method is simple - have a higher GXE than necessary and your total required minimum games will be reduced. The minimum requirements to vote involve having a GXE of at least 80 after 50 games played. Every 0.2% of GXE you have over 80 will reduce your minimum required games by 1, with the lowest possible requirements being an 84% GXE after 30 games. Here's a full table of how it looks to make it easier:

GXE Requirements vs Games Needed

GXE	minimum games
80	50
80.2	49
80.4	48
80.6	47
80.8	46
81	45
81.2	44
81.4	43
81.6	42
81.8	41
82	40
82.2	39
82.4	38
82.6	37
82.8	36
83	35
83.2	34
83.4	33
83.6	32
83.8	31
84+	30

We will be using the standard Ubers ladder for this suspect test, but participation requires the use of a newly created account using the tag U4E (Name). For example, I could use the account U4E Nayrz. Accounts that aren't using this tag are not valid for voting requirements, so this is your warning!

This test will run until Sunday, July 19th at 10pm (GMT +1). Post proof of your requirements in the Alt Identification thread by the same date. As a quick reminder to everyone while I'm here, Ubers operates on a supermajority ban threshold of 2/3rds (66.6%)!

Current SS Council

Nayrz
Cynara
dream
Hack
Manaphy
Minority
Mysterious M
Reje
Terracotta

Friendly reminder that suspect test threads like this will be closely moderated, so we encourage folks to remain civil and on topic. Happy laddering!

 

[Nayrz]

There is currently a bug on the Ubers ladder where Mewtwo is able to use Dynamax. Now that I'm telling you this and giving fair warning, U4E accounts caught abusing this bug on their way to reqs after this announcement post will have that account disqualified from voting eligibility and be infracted for their trouble. While it's being fixed, don't do it! I would personally suggest avoiding the ladder until then - I'll edit this post when the bug is confirmed fixed.

dream edit: It has been now fixed, feel free to resume laddering normally

 

[dhelmise]

Nayrz the ladder is fixed

 

[Cynara]

Baton Pass shouldn't have a place in competitive Pokemon. Ever.

It takes the game out of both players hands, and invalidates player skill. It is simply a solved strategy of choices and plays out like a flowchart, it is no longer competitive Pokemon. You either break the Baton Pass chain or the Baton Pass user wins. A lot of games are decided at preview due to this, Baton Pass may be heavily matchup reliant, but this is part of the problem to it.

Baton Pass has rather limited counter-play options in the teambuilder such as Haze Quagsire/Toxapex, the already mentioned Swords Dance + Sacred Sword Zacian-C, Roar users. most of these alone usually don't come close to a stop to Baton Pass chains, due their constantly evolving ways to deal with their counter-play options. It requires significant degrees of counter-measure to just get around Baton Pass, to the point most players would rather just accept the loss every time and ignore it in the teambuilder; and focus on the other metagame threats. It isn't as simple to approach like other logistical problems to teambuilding such as checking a Pokemon, and these teambuilding constraints are part of the problem. Players shouldn't be expected to completely compromise their teams against metagame threats or be forced to use Haze users on every team they build, even when taking this into consideration you're still never going to completely stop it.

Full-pass strategies aren't even where the problem ends either, quick passing strategies are also rather problematic and uncompetive to a similar degree, Magearna being the biggest offender with Shift Gear / Calm Mind Pass, but other strategies such as Shell Smash pass to Eternatus with Polteageist also cause problems with competitiveness. This replay of a Ubers premier League game is a decent example of why Quick-pass strategies are a problem, the game devolved to whoever could best deploy their quick passing setup to win the game and this takes it out of the hands of both players.

 

[Rarycaris]

I haven't seen Sash Marshadow mentioned as possible counterplay. With Smeargle gone, and a chain's Ghost immunity with it, what counterplay do Baton Pass chains have to Spectral Thief (and a potential countersweep) beyond stopping it from being executed in the first place?

 

[perishsonglol]

I haven't seen Sash Marshadow mentioned as possible counterplay. With Smeargle gone, and a chain's Ghost immunity with it, what counterplay do Baton Pass chains have to Spectral Thief (and a potential countersweep) beyond stopping it from being executed in the first place?

First time poster here, wanted to comment on this as bp is my favorite playstyle. Some of you have probably seen me around.

Marsh is practically a non issue since gen 8 gifted us Dubwool and Indeedee. Dubwool is stupid bulky with fluffy and CC will not break sub after just 1 cotton guard. Marsh also can't dynamax anymore to bypass fluffy. Indeedee is also half normal, and is immune to spectral thief.

The real problem is a lack of decent fire resists overall. Vaporeon is nice, but can't stat boost by itself.

Is it broken? Imo not really. I don't even think it forces niche picks to deal with. Pex and quag are decent outside of dealing with bp, and Cinderace is great on its own too. Hell, even just an aggressive playstyle to deny setup is good enough often times. You wouldn't say stall is broken, even though it requires careful play and sometimes a stallbreaker. In the same way, bp requires careful play to defeat.

 

[perishsonglol]

To make my points clear, I'm gonna address the top reasons people want to ban BP because honestly, they are really weak arguments. I'll address quick pass later, this is pertaining to full pass.

1. "It take no skill to execute"

It is simply a solved strategy of choices and plays out like a flowchart

I'm gonna be blunt on this one. Anyone who says this simply does not understand how full pass teams operate. There is no "master flowchart" in my head as I play the team. You might say, "well but you lead Ninjask most of the time". While this is true, dedicated leads are not unique to BP teams, and certainly doesn't make it "brainless". Are you going to tell me every team with lead ttar/exca/deo-s/whatever is brainless too? And fine, you might counter and say "Well, but you always switch in your dubwool against zacian everytime, that's pretty linear". If that's really why you feel BP is linear/braindead, then you'd better push to have stall banned as well. Are you going to tell me stall doesn't do the exact same thing, switching in the same walls for each threat?

The truth is BP is heavily, heavily prediction reliant. Especially against good players, I have to win multiple 50/50's and accurately predict my opponent while also considering my risk for each play. Don't forget, I'm using PU mons to take on Ubers. So I repeat, there is no flowchart that makes BP less skilled to play.

2. "It restricts teambuilding and forces me to run some obscure shit to beat it"

Players shouldn't be expected to completely compromise their teams

As mentioned before, haze is a very effective stop to BP. It is up to the player to make good pays to counter my predictions and it's frankly an entitled mentality that because you can't beat it means that it should be banned. Here's a list of standard sets that have legitimate use outside of countering BP.
- Sacred sword Zacian
- GMax zard
- Quiver Dance Volcarona
- Haze pex/quag
- Taunt Mewtwo
- Nasty Plot Mewtwo
- Heart Swap Magearna

None of those listed above will "compromise" your team against a more standard build. It is ultimately up to the opponent to properly use the tools to win. That is what makes a matchup competitive.

3. "It's annoying and takes forever to beat even if I win"
Yeah, and so? Stall is the same way, but when was the last suspect on Chansey? Oh right, never.

In summary, BP is perfectly competitive exactly because it forces the opponent to think outside the box and play differently. The skill in BP is reflected more strongly in teambuilding, but execution is a difficult task too. As for quick pass, it's really just another thing to be prepared for in the tier. It would be stupid to build a team without a Zacian check, right? Should we ban Zacian? I mean, it forces literally every team to come with a Zacian check right? That seems pretty restrictive.

 

[orch]

The issue isn't whether if Baton pass is competitive or not. It's unquestionably a competitive and intelligent strategy that requires incredible amount of foresight, prediction, and skill to succeed with. Anyone who disagree with this premise is ignorant or salty enough to be dishonest. Including members of Ubers council.

In my opinion, the real argument for pro-ban Baton pass is that it encourages players to bring tiny, cute, and fluffy pokemon to Ubers. We're playing Ubers, not PU. I don't want to see any more Dubwool, Indeedee, or whatever whenever I click Find match in ubers ladder. If I wanted to see these pokemon, I'd play NU, PU, or whatever. I play Ubers for big, high BST, and legendary pokemon clashing eachothers.

 

[Ropalme1914]

To make my points clear, I'm gonna address the top reasons people want to ban BP because honestly, they are really weak arguments. I'll address quick pass later, this is pertaining to full pass.

1. "It take no skill to execute"


I'm gonna be blunt on this one. Anyone who says this simply does not understand how full pass teams operate. There is no "master flowchart" in my head as I play the team. You might say, "well but you lead Ninjask most of the time". While this is true, dedicated leads are not unique to BP teams, and certainly doesn't make it "brainless". Are you going to tell me every team with lead ttar/exca/deo-s/whatever is brainless too? And fine, you might counter and say "Well, but you always switch in your dubwool against zacian everytime, that's pretty linear". If that's really why you feel BP is linear/braindead, then you'd better push to have stall banned as well. Are you going to tell me stall doesn't do the exact same thing, switching in the same walls for each threat?

The truth is BP is heavily, heavily prediction reliant. Especially against good players, I have to win multiple 50/50's and accurately predict my opponent while also considering my risk for each play. Don't forget, I'm using PU mons to take on Ubers. So I repeat, there is no flowchart that makes BP less skilled to play.

2. "It restricts teambuilding and forces me to run some obscure shit to beat it"

As mentioned before, haze is a very effective stop to BP. It is up to the player to make good pays to counter my predictions and it's frankly an entitled mentality that because you can't beat it means that it should be banned. Here's a list of standard sets that have legitimate use outside of countering BP.
- Sacred sword Zacian
- GMax zard
- Quiver Dance Volcarona
- Haze pex/quag
- Taunt Mewtwo
- Nasty Plot Mewtwo
- Heart Swap Magearna

None of those listed above will "compromise" your team against a more standard build. It is ultimately up to the opponent to properly use the tools to win. That is what makes a matchup competitive.

3. "It's annoying and takes forever to beat even if I win"
Yeah, and so? Stall is the same way, but when was the last suspect on Chansey? Oh right, never.

In summary, BP is perfectly competitive exactly because it forces the opponent to think outside the box and play differently. The skill in BP is reflected more strongly in teambuilding, but execution is a difficult task too. As for quick pass, it's really just another thing to be prepared for in the tier. It would be stupid to build a team without a Zacian check, right? Should we ban Zacian? I mean, it forces literally every team to come with a Zacian check right? That seems pretty restrictive.

Using PU mons has nothing to do with it being uncompetitive or not though. Like said multiple times before, you either have the tools to beat Baton Pass or you don't: if you have one of the mons that you mentioned like Sacred Sword Zacian (which is very unoptimal compared to Close Combat just for this matchup), then full BP will barely have anything to do, but if you don't, then BP will go on full force with basically nothing that you can do.

Saying that you need to win multiple 50/50 isn't exactly right either: half of the time you're using a pivoting that gives you momentum, so the advantage will be on your side. If your Pokémon can't at very least 2HKO every BP mon, then you'll just go to your safe switch-in and set up more and more, making it even harder to break the chain.

Outside of Haze Toxapex/Quagsire and Nasty Plot Mewtwo (Taunt is only really used on stalltwo, which won't beat Baton Pass since they'll just go to Xatu/Espeon and Magic Bounce it), none of those Pokémon or sets are standard, and you even mentioned Heart Swap Magearna, which is not a move that's avaliable on SwSh. Haze Toxapex isn't a guaranteed win either, it's just prevents you from being swept, but it doesn't do anything back either, making teams that feature it like balance just prolonguing the battle by not breaking it back.

 

[theotherguytm]

Vaporeon is nice, but can't stat boost by itself.

Acid Armour and Aqua Ring say hi.

he truth is BP is heavily, heavily prediction reliant. Especially against good players, I have to win multiple 50/50's and accurately predict my opponent while also considering my risk for each play.

Substitute tends to take away a lot of 50/50s if used correctly. Also, as stated above, you almost always have momentum on your side, which gives plenty of opportunities to invest in a Sub.

In my opinion, the real argument for pro-ban Baton pass is that it encourages players to bring tiny, cute, and fluffy pokemon to Ubers. We're playing Ubers, not PU. I don't want to see any more Dubwool, Indeedee, or whatever whenever I click Find match in ubers ladder. If I wanted to see these pokemon, I'd play NU, PU, or whatever. I play Ubers for big, high BST, and legendary pokemon clashing eachothers.

There has never been a Gen where this happens less often. Take for instance, the following teams:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8ubers-509297.
There are only 3 Uber Pokemon out of 12 (one of which is Dracovish), 4 if you count Gyara with Dynamax. 4 of the Pokemon are UU. Dynamax and the restricted Dex have made lower-tier mons an integral part of Gen 8 Ubers.

Anyway, it's pretty obvious that between two competent players, games involving BP, and especially FullPass, are decided in the teambuilder. You either have BP counterplay or you don't. There's no "middle ground" play you can make, because at the end of the day you'll be staring down a Pokemon with 1182 SpA firing off a 300 BP STAB move while reflecting all status moves or you won't. It really is that black and white. Sure, the FullPass player can Taunt on the Haze, or you can try and play pivoting games to get Marsh in safely, but by and large when you play against FullPass, you must dance to their tune and focus on stopping their strategy at all costs because you won't get to execute yours unless it is a faster or better version of BP. And that is where "player skill" goes out the window. It doesn't matter what strategy you have or what tech options you bring outside of a predictable and exploitable few choices which the BP player has the option of adapting to beat. Your gameplan is completely irrelevant, and all you can do is try and stop your opponents.

But this is par for the course when BP is involved. So what about this gen in particular makes BP worthy of a ban?

Reduced Dex, Reduced Counterplay (or Wait, who gets Perish Song again?)
Name an Uber Pokemon that knows the move Perish Song. Arceus probably leaps out of your mind first. Then lesser thoughts like Mega Gengar and non-Uber mons, but Arceus was by far the most common user of the move that killed unprepared BP teams on the spot, forcing them to give up a teamslot to Mr. Mime of all things to stand a chance. But of course, Arceus no longer exists. So fitting Perish Song on your team is not as simple as giving up a moveslot on a commonly used Pokemon. Instead, you have to actively run normal Gengar, Azumarill or Primarina on your team. None of which are especially viable picks, even more so when they are effectively a moveslot down in most situations that don't call for a convoluted version of Roar or giving up a second moveslot to trapping.
Name an Uber Pokemon that knows the move Haze. ZyGod and the non-Ubers Tapu Fini and Toxapex spring to mind, with Mega Gengar and Greninja both learning it but never using it. This gen, there is Toxapex and Zekrom, the latter of which never wants to use it, and the former being weak to Stored Power, together with Quagsire, an Unaware Pokemon.
Seeing a pattern? FullPass has increasingly high opportunity cost to cover compared to last gen, where top Uber threats could give up a single moveslot to relatively painlessly increase the chances of winning against FullPass massively. This gen, covering FullPass requires a teamslot. Sure, Toxapex is a decent Pokemon, but its previous niche of dishing out Tspikes is done better by Eternatus, relegating it to the rank of "wall".
Ok, but what about Whirlwind and Roar? Don't they have many good users? Yes, but they are much, much shakier FullPass counterplay, due to Magic Bouncers and Taunt, and in practice only Skarmory and Hippowdon actually end up using Whirlwind. Dragon Tail arguably has many good users too, but also many downsides, notably including being blocked by Substitute and doing nothing to Magearna. So FullPass counterplay comes down to "try and kill them before they kill you" in many situations, which rarely works out for a player not using Marshadow.
And what has FullPass lost? Smeargle. That is a hit, but it's not as big of a hit as you'd imagine. Smeargle's niche of Ingrain+Baton Pass isn't as valuable this gen due to phasing being rarer, and its other niche of being able to fit Spore into its set isn't exactly the end of the world either. It would take Moody being allowed for Smeargle to be mandatory on FullPass again, and that's mostly for convenience rather than a do-or-die trait. And in return, Gen 8's increased BP distribution has allowed Pokemon like Magearna and Jirachi onto FullPass that function fine in Ubers without BP, and added a great deal of inherent redundancy that makes BP counterplay all the more shaky, since it has be repeated multiple times to truly bring down the FullPass team.

Splashability of Baton Pass (or Whose idea was it to give Magearna Baton Pass?)
I've mostly talked about FullPass thusfar, but it should be recognised that there are other forms of BP too. Some of these are difficult to see from Team Preview (in contrast to the highly telegraphed FullPass) to the extent that it looks like any other Ubers offensive team, that happens to have a Magearna on it. The fact Magearna is capable of running non-BP sets on offense like Shift Gear 3 Attacks or OTR Calm Mind or even its own Stored Power set should be more than sufficient to underline how much harder it is to recognise when to keep your BP counterplay alive. But since it's totally not broken, the chances are that said Magearna is a BP set of some sort. BP+Screens, BP+TR, BP+Double/Triple Dance, BP+2 Attacks, all these work well in conjunction with many possible teammates and can pass boosts of any kind depending on the sweeper's needs. The fact the BP player on these teams can afford to choose mid-game the appropriate recipient rather than having to commit to one or maybe two in the builder makes these strategies very effective. More "informal" BP counterplay such as Ditto tends to work better against these teams due to them having to prepare for things other than BP counterplay, but the opportunity cost of these strategies is very low.
There are other, more telegraphed, plans such as SmashPass or straight SD+Speed Boost Pass, but they all boil down to the same thing: getting around the restriction of a Pokemon's movepool, 4MSS, and setup risk by making a second Pokemon do all the work, producing a broken sweeper at the end of it which has a good chance to end the game there. The entire balancing factor of things like DD Zekrom is their risk of setup and the counterplay of certain walls. But, like Dynamax, Baton Pass alows Zekrom to gain a power boost and have much more health to sweep with so it bypass its usual counters and instantly beats any team without a select group of checks or Ditto. Except Zacian and Eternatus cannot Dynamax. They can receive a Baton Pass however.

So that's my thoughts on Baton Pass. It's matchup-based rather than skill-based, making many battles lost/won in the teambuilder rather than in battle, and its counterplay has a large opportunity cost to the point that the more BP counterplay you have, the worse a team you have overall. Thanks for reading my wall of text.

 

[orch]

I don't mind having some niche pokemon in Ubers metagame. I do mind when teams of six tiny, cute, and fluffy pokemon become meta. As you can note: Volcarona, Skarmory, Gyarados, Corviknight, Excadrill, and Tyranitar are massive, monstrous, high BST, and decidedly not low of lowest tier.

 

[perishsonglol]

Love the good discussion guys. Some counter points to the things I'm seeing:

you either have the tools to beat Baton Pass or you don't

This really applies for any team though, and isn't unique at all to bp. Either I have an Eternatus answer, or I get run over by it. Either I have a Zacian check, or I get smashed by sword doggo. As for your point about SS Zacian being inferior to CC, I agree. However, its primary use is for things like Bulk Up/Iron def Corviknight. It isn't a BP only tech, in other words.

Saying that you need to win multiple 50/50 isn't exactly right either: half of the time you're using a pivoting that gives you momentum, so the advantage will be on your side. If your Pokémon can't at very least 2HKO every BP mon, then you'll just go to your safe switch-in and set up more and more, making it even harder to break the chain.

Substitute tends to take away a lot of 50/50s if used correctly

This also isn't completely true. There are 2 different "stages" of a full pass team: setup and maintenance. The most vulnerable time for any full pass team is during the setup, and that is where I can be forced into numerous 50/50's. Once I have a few boosts in, then you are correct, I can just bounce between walls and accumulate more boosts. Sub does help with easing predictions, but it isn't like I can spam sub during the setup stage. On any given turn, I can either boost or sub, but not both. There is a penalty for using sub over boosting, and a smart opponent will exploit this.

Outside of Haze Toxapex/Quagsire and Nasty Plot Mewtwo (Taunt is only really used on stalltwo, which won't beat Baton Pass since they'll just go to Xatu/Espeon and Magic Bounce it), none of those Pokémon or sets are standard, and you even mentioned Heart Swap Magearna, which is not a move that's avaliable on SwSh. Haze Toxapex isn't a guaranteed win either, it's just prevents you from being swept, but it doesn't do anything back either, making teams that feature it like balance just prolonguing the battle by not breaking it back.

Hat, Xatu, and Espeon are all sort of out of fashion. As mentioned by someone else above, no Smeargle means there needs to be a normal type on the team that can kill Marsh, and Dubwool really enjoys having Body Press over Zen/Payback. Not to say they aren't usable, but they aren't exactly staples anymore. And although you are correct that Pex can't do anything back, it leaves my team extremely vulnerable to the rest of your team. Nobody is going to leave their pex in and expect it to kill anything, that isn't his role on the team. I can tell you from experience that Haze puts serious stress on the team and forces me to guess when Pex is coming in, and that put you (the opponent) in a favorable position to outpredict me. You can also add Life Orb Eterna to the list of things that bring trouble, which is about as standard as it gets. Stall eterna is trash tho.

Anyway, it's pretty obvious that between two competent players, games involving BP, and especially FullPass, are decided in the teambuilder

(Emphasis is mine). There is nothing wrong with having matches decided in the teambuilder. Stall players put the vast majority of their time in the builder, and execution is a the last 10%. Teambuilding is an extraordinary display of skill. Teams requiring more weight on execution vs building is a poor gauge of how "skillful" a team is to use.

FullPass has increasingly high opportunity cost to cover compared to last gen

I have to disagree. The core question is "does BP require more preparation/tech than other playstyles?", not "can I beat it with standard sets?" If I build a team without considering stall and I have all standard stuff, I am practically guaranteed to lose. I keep making a comparison with stall because stall also requires aggressive play and preparation too. Fine, I concede that a Chansey isn't going to run you over with a 1000BP move, but you will still hard lose to stall if you aren't prepared.

 

[theotherguytm]

This really applies for any team though, and isn't unique at all to bp. Either I have an Eternatus answer, or I get run over by it. Either I have a Zacian check, or I get smashed by sword doggo. As for your point about SS Zacian being inferior to CC, I agree. However, its primary use is for things like Bulk Up/Iron def Corviknight. It isn't a BP only tech, in other words

Have you ever heard of "soft checking?" It's using things like Rocky Helmet Corviknight and a Scarfed Earthquake user to beat a mon like Zacian-C you lack a hard counter to. In this way, you can lose to it on paper and still be fine. This does not apply to BP in any way. You either have BP counterplay or you lose. That's the difference.

This also isn't completely true. There are 2 different "stages" of a full pass team: setup and maintenance. The most vulnerable time for any full pass team is during the setup, and that is where I can be forced into numerous 50/50's. Once I have a few boosts in, then you are correct, I can just bounce between walls and accumulate more boosts. Sub does help with easing predictions, but it isn't like I can spam sub during the setup stage. On any given turn, I can either boost or sub, but not both. There is a penalty for using sub over boosting, and a smart opponent will exploit this

Substitute is basically putting off your prediction for one turn in order to ease it. I am aware of how BP works, see below. Also, you keep talking about how your opponent can outpredict you or whatever, put the point stands that whenever you play against BP, you have to drop everything you're doing and play "stop the chain". Think of it from the opposing point of view. Your strategy is completely irrelevant to the outcome of the battle, and all you can do is see how good your team is at stopping BP. You have to win multiple 50/50s that are weighted in the BP player's favour, because they know what works against them and what doesn't, and they nearly always have momentum on their side past turn 3.

Hat, Xatu, and Espeon are all sort of out of fashion. As mentioned by someone else above, no Smeargle means there needs to be a normal type on the team that can kill Marsh, and Dubwool really enjoys having Body Press over Zen/Payback. Not to say they aren't usable, but they aren't exactly staples anymore. And although you are correct that Pex can't do anything back, it leaves my team extremely vulnerable to the rest of your team. Nobody is going to leave their pex in and expect it to kill anything, that isn't his role on the team. I can tell you from experience that Haze puts serious stress on the team and forces me to guess when Pex is coming in, and that put you (the opponent) in a favorable position to outpredict me. You can also add Life Orb Eterna to the list of things that bring trouble, which is about as standard as it gets. Stall eterna is trash tho

Magic Bounce being "out of fashion?" That is a HUGE red flag, because in past gens if you didn't have a Magic Bounce user on FullPass, you lost instantly to one of a dozen things. Something as integral as Magic Bounce being optional speaks volumes about the flexibility FullPass has this gen to pick and choose the counterplay that doesn't work. Case in point: you can get away with running Dubwool for the luxury of doing nothing but checking Marshadow and providing redundancy with boosting and sweeping.
We're not saying Haze Toxapex isn't effective counterplay to BP. We're saying it doesn't auto-win in the way Perish Song used to auto-win, because hazing the boosts just puts BP back to square one, from where they have many more tools than ever before to restart the chain.
Also:
+1 252 SpA Espeon Stored Power (80 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Eternatus: 408-482 (96.9 - 114.4%) -- 81.3% chance to OHKO
+1 252+ SpA Espeon Stored Power (80 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Eternatus: 450-530 (106.8 - 125.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252+ SpA Espeon Stored Power (100 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Eternatus: 374-444 (88.8 - 105.4%) -- 31.3% chance to OHKO
What Life Orb Etern?

(Emphasis is mine). There is nothing wrong with having matches decided in the teambuilder. Stall players put the vast majority of their time in the builder, and execution is a the last 10%. Teambuilding is an extraordinary display of skill. Teams requiring more weight on execution vs building is a poor gauge of how "skillful" a team is to use.

I think this is pretty inaccurate, but we'll assume for the sake of argument it's not. See below.

have to disagree. The core question is "does BP require more preparation/tech than other playstyles?", not "can I beat it with standard sets?" If I build a team without considering stall and I have all standard stuff, I am practically guaranteed to lose. I keep making a comparison with stall because stall also requires aggressive play and preparation too. Fine, I concede that a Chansey isn't going to run you over with a 1000BP move, but you will still hard lose to stall if you aren't prepared

I think you don't understand what opportunity cost means. Basically, any move you choose to run on a given team is always instead of the opportunity of running something else.
Just so we're on the same page, a quick axiom of teambuilding I think isn't too hard to accept: It is impossible to build a team that has 100% good matchups. (A fun corollary of this is it's always possible to build a cteam for any given team.)
Hence opportunity cost because it means that any choice you make on your team has the inherent cost of some matchup or another. From this we conclude that the best movesets and teams are the ones that give up the fewest matchups possible within what you can reasonably expect to face. ie:Highest possible winrate against a random ladder team assuming competent opposition.
With teambuilding 101 out of the way, let's evaluate the opportunity cost of preparing for, using your analogy and assuming it is correct, stall and FullPass.

Things that can be used to prepare for stall, in increasing order of effectiveness
Good type coverage against common defensive cores.
This is an extremely low opportunity cost. In fact, you could argue it's needed for a solid team in general.
Setup
Again, another low opportunity cost. While most stall teams pack Unaware users precisely for this, if a particular setup sweeper beats common Unaware users it can flatten stall. The only teams that don't tend to pack setup of some kind are other stall teams.
Strong hazard control/setters
Especially on balanced teams, another low opportunity cost. The opportunity cost on offensive teams tends to be higher (eg:Defog Scarf Kartana/Lando-T last gen OU), but HO teams tend to pack leads for precisely this reason: the opportunity cost of running hazards and hazard control on a sweeper is too high.
Taunt
Now the opportunity cost starts to rise a bit. But it should be emphasised: Taunt is an amazing move. Against anything that isn't LO/Choiced 4 Attacks or Assault Vest, Taunt is a useful move to have prepared. In fact, I think it is one of the best moves in the game. Certainly it does a lot more than beat/cripple stall.
Status Absorber
Now this has a fairly high opportunity cost, mostly due to the fact that only certain Pokemon can fulfil this role. Still, having a "partial" status absorber has a reasonably low opportunity cost and can be effective against common balance playstyles, and is useful to have against offensive Toxic Spikes teams.
Trapping
Especially in Ubers, a much lower opportunity cost than you would expect. But the precise opportunity cost of a trapper varies wildly depending on the metagame, the range of trap-able targets, and how much the rest of the team goes to town once the target is dead. Again though, it is clearly not just an anti-stall measure and is effective against a wide variety of teams and playstyles.
Dedicated Stallbreaker
This is the granddaddy of all opportunity costs: giving up a teamslot. But is it just for stall? Ask yourself, if you have a good stallbreaker against balance teams, will it put in work? Hell yes it will. Even against certain bulky offenses a stallbreaker is more than capable of pulling its weight. It's only when you come against Hyper Offense that stallbreakers begin to show their opportunity cost, which is why they are often left out of teams. It's got nothing to do with "you didn't prep for stall you bad", it's got more to do with "I'd rather prep harder for something else and use one of the above, easier to fit measures instead, and accept a few losses to stall."
Aside: I once made a list of non-Pokemon-specific counterplay to Chansey. It was hilariously long.

Right, let's compare Baton Pass.
Things that can be used to prepare for FullPass, in increasing order of effectiveness
General rapid offense
This is one way of putting pressure on a BP team: just attack unrelentingly with strong attackers. Effectiveness of this is debatable, especially since attackers can often be blown back by a weak Stored Power to generate more setup. And even the opportunity cost of this is fairly high, as it implies you are running a reasonably offensive team.
Priority Spam
Notable Ubers threats such as EKill... Wait never mind. Unless you're running Scizor or QA Zacian-C, it ain't happening.
Taunt
As noted above, Taunt is a good move that fits on many mons. But it is probably the first thing FullPass players will counterprep for. In other words, if a FullPass team loses to a predictable Taunt, the team needs to be rebuilt.
Roar/Whirlwind
Gone are the days when you could slap Roar on Pdon or Whirlwind on Lugia and say "that's also my BP counterplay I guess". Even though FullPass has many ways to mitigate these moves, the fact FullPass is presently rarely called upon to do so is worrying, with most of these move's users nearly always running them too, making them predictable. In other words, the opportunity cost of these moves is no longer worth the BP matchup unless the mon in question is running them anyway. Why is that? Because running Roar on, say, Lunala gains less favourable matchups than, say, Toxic or extra coverage. This is the pattern with BP: to run counterplay to it involves surrendering common matchups and is hence supoptimal. So you lose to BP even though you are perfectly capable of beating it, not because you don't want to run counterplay to it, but because it is actually suboptimal in the long run to cover the BP matchup over others.
Haze
I discussed this one above already. Suffice to say it works, but the opportunity cost of having to run Toxapex or having to run Haze on Quagsire is pretty big.
Perish Song
Rip.
I would like to share a Flying Press article quote looking back on the era of Baton Pass Clause OU that I find insightful.

A big part of why these countermeasures were unreliable was that they could only act as countermeasures before the right sweeper received boosts or [said countermeasures] lost to some members of the team.

This is just the ever-repeating pattern of Baton Pass teams. The counterplay works IF X and NOT Y. And the counterplay has such a large opportunity cost attached to it that you are better off conceding the 5% of battles you have against BP teams at preview, then winning a greater proportion of the remaining 95%. This is what I meant when I said:

It's matchup-based rather than skill-based, making many battles lost/won in the teambuilder rather than in battle, and its counterplay has a large opportunity cost to the point that the more BP counterplay you have, the worse a team you have overall.

Thanks for reading.

 

[AllTerrainVen0moth]

First time poster here, wanted to comment on this as bp is my favorite playstyle. Some of you have probably seen me around.

Marsh is practically a non issue since gen 8 gifted us Dubwool and Indeedee. Dubwool is stupid bulky with fluffy and CC will not break sub after just 1 cotton guard. Marsh also can't dynamax anymore to bypass fluffy. Indeedee is also half normal, and is immune to spectral thief.

The real problem is a lack of decent fire resists overall. Vaporeon is nice, but can't stat boost by itself.

Is it broken? Imo not really. I don't even think it forces niche picks to deal with. Pex and quag are decent outside of dealing with bp, and Cinderace is great on its own too. Hell, even just an aggressive playstyle to deny setup is good enough often times. You wouldn't say stall is broken, even though it requires careful play and sometimes a stallbreaker. In the same way, bp requires careful play to defeat.

i see one problem with your first statement. BOTH OF THEM ARE UNVIABLE

 

[InChandyWeTrust]

i see one problem with your first statement. BOTH OF THEM ARE UNVIABLE

I agree that Dubwool has no place in Ubers, but Indeedee could have a niche as a suicide lead to set up Psychic Terrain.

 

[theotherguytm]

i see one problem with your first statement. BOTH OF THEM ARE UNVIABLE

I agree that Dubwool has no place in Ubers, but Indeedee could have a niche as a suicide lead to set up Psychic Terrain.

Uhhh, FullPass??? The subject of conversation? Both of them get Baton Pass, Indeedee gets Calm Mind and Dubwool gets Cotton Guard.
It's not that far off running Mr. Mime, who was a staple on FullPass for Soundproof to counter the now-rare Perish Song and Roar.
Indeedee-F (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Psychic Surge
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Baton Pass
- Calm Mind
- Imprison/Stored Power/Aromatherapy/other filler
- Substitute
Dubwool @ Leftovers
Ability: Fluffy
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Baton Pass
- Cotton Guard
- Thunder Wave/Body Press/Swords Dance/other filler
- Substitute
These kinds of sets were what he was discussing.

 

[pikachu<3]

Have you ever heard of "soft checking?" It's using things like Rocky Helmet Corviknight and a Scarfed Earthquake user to beat a mon like Zacian-C you lack a hard counter to. In this way, you can lose to it on paper and still be fine. This does not apply to BP in any way. You either have BP counterplay or you lose. That's the difference.

I know this doesn't have anything to do with BP, but please don't insult the monster known as Zacian-C.

+1 252+ Atk Zacian-Crowned Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Corviknight: 183-216 (45.7 - 54%) -- 46.9% chance to 2HKO
+3 252 Atk Zacian-Crowned Wild Charge vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Corviknight: 418-492 (104.5 - 123%) -- guaranteed OHKO

If you're relying on Corviknight to check Zacian-C, you're going to have a bad time.

Scarf EQ users indeed beat Zacian, but none of them can switch in, and the only one that guarantees removal fails to KO without chip damage or a defense drop:

252+ Atk Dugtrio Earthquake vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Zacian-Crowned: 266-314 (81.8 - 96.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

It's not uncommon for teams to have 2-3 slots dedicated partially to helping check Zacian-C. It is a monster; prep accordingly.

For the record, it is possible to soft check fullpass teams. Imposter ditto is an excellent example of a soft check; it can break the chain with a well-timed switch into something like Taunt mew/umbreon/mr.mime and hit them with Taunt. Of course this requires good play with help from teammates; this is why it is a soft check and not a counter. Other soft checks involve clever use of Dynamax to break the chain, or prevent the chain from going up in the first place. For example, LO Excadrill can break Scolipede turn 1 with max rockfall:

252+ Atk Life Orb Mold Breaker Excadrill Max Rockfall vs. +2 252 HP / 0 Def Scolipede: 231-273 (71.2 - 84.2%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock-- Excadrill proceeds to outspeed and KO next turn

Other weather abusers (Swift Swim) and max airstream abusers can accomplish something similar with the aid of dynamax. These are only soft checks due to the need to use the dynamax to break the chain, but they are checks nonetheless.

With teambuilding 101 out of the way, let's evaluate the opportunity cost of preparing for, using your analogy and assuming it is correct, stall and FullPass.

I believe you don't state (or accidentally understate) the possible counterplay to fullpass. There are a lot more options than what you make it look like. All my suggestions will be taken from the Ubers Viability Ranking Thread (https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ss-ubers-viability-rankings-v2.3661412/), so it's not like these mons I'm going to suggest are unviable outside of BP checking.

Things that can be used to prepare for FullPass, in increasing order of effectiveness
General rapid offense
This is one way of putting pressure on a BP team: just attack unrelentingly with strong attackers. Effectiveness of this is debatable, especially since attackers can often be blown back by a weak Stored Power to generate more setup. And even the opportunity cost of this is fairly high, as it implies you are running a reasonably offensive team.

I don't think the effectiveness of certain offensive builds can be debated. For example, let's take the BP team you posted on the forums and see how the it deals with certain offensive threats:

Just going to dump the brainless Fullpass I built and played today to some success despite being bad feat. Magearna.

BAN ME

It gets what? (Magearna) @ Leftovers
Ability: Soul-Heart
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shift Gear
- Calm Mind
- Stored Power
- Baton Pass
I wanted to build with BP Magearna, and this is pretty good. It can restart the chain if something goes wrong with Shift Gear, gather boosts with Calm Mind, sweep with Stored Power and Soul-Heart, or just be a generally tanky mon. It's a great glue mon that can do a lot as the battle goes on and gives a lot of redundancy.
I'm so sorry (Scolipede) @ Leftovers
Ability: Speed Boost
EVs: 248 HP / 8 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Substitute
- Baton Pass
- Iron Defense
- Protect
Standard BP lead. Scolipede is way better than Ninjask and Iron Defense is good. Not much more to say.
BAN ME (Espeon) @ Leftovers
Ability: Magic Bounce
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Baton Pass
- Stored Power
- Dazzling Gleam
- Substitute
Standard Espeon. Required on Fullpass. This is the only sweeper with a way to hit Darks, which is deliberate.
What now? (Mew) @ Leftovers
Ability: Synchronize
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Baton Pass
- Stored Power
- Encore
- Calm Mind
Mew stacks types a bit, but I think the unpredictability and redundancy it offers is worth it. You can fit literally anything you want on its set,but I went with Calm Mind Stored Power as a backup sweeper. Encore is a great move here, if you BP Mew into something using a status move, that's free setup. Mew has loads more options like Ammesia, Taunt, every coverage move ever, and so on. You can even use him to fit hazards or hazard removal if you want.
Denied (Mr. Mime) @ Leftovers
Ability: Soundproof
EVs: 248 HP / 8 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Taunt
- Baton Pass
- Substitute
- Calm Mind
Standard Mr. Mime. Required to have a chance vs Perish Song and Roar. Not that great otherwise tbh, it lacks bulk big style.
Ouch (Umbreon) @ Leftovers
Ability: Synchronize
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Baton Pass
- Substitute
- Wish
- Taunt
This is the reason I don't have Fairy moves on Magearna and Mew, as Umbreon lets me Improof them to a degree. It is generally a nice defensive option and wishpasser, but that last moveslot is very much up for debate. Doesn't help Umbreon only has Work Up and Curse for setup options, and I could easily see this being switched for something else (my first draft had Dugtrio here to trap and kill annoying things before using Memento to restart the chain).

This team has no answers to the following straightforward offensive threats:

1. NP mewtwo
2. Banded darm-galar; flare blitz OHKOs scoli even at +2. Scarf reg-Darm (which is ranked, like everything else mentioned) OHKOS.

252 Atk Sheer Force Darmanitan Flare Blitz vs. +2 252 HP / 0 Def Scolipede: 300-354 (92.5 - 109.2%) -- 56.3% chance to OHKO
252 Atk Choice Band Gorilla Tactics Darmanitan-Galar Flare Blitz vs. +2 252 HP / 0 Def Scolipede: 342-404 (105.5 - 124.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO

3. LO reshiram completely destroys this team
4. No counterplay to NP togekiss
5. Charizard eats this team alive
6. CM lulana has a positive mu vs every user of calm mind on the team
7. I'm not sure how this team deals with mixed shell smash cloyster or SS blastoise or Polteageist.

I'm sure there are many more threats that I'm missing/too lazy to find, but the point stands: The team has no answer to a lot of the offensive metagame, even when we only consider attackers.

The list extends even more when you include the pokemon that only need to win a 50/50 vs scolipede to break the team. For example,

1. SD Zacian-C

+1 252+ Atk Zacian-Crowned Behemoth Blade vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Scolipede: 363-427 (112 - 131.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+3 252+ Atk Zacian-Crowned Behemoth Blade vs. +2 252 HP / 0 Def Scolipede: 303-357 (93.5 - 110.1%) -- 62.5% chance to OHKO

2. BU cinderace

+1 252 Atk Cinderace Pyro Ball vs. +2 252 HP / 0 Def Scolipede: 300-354 (92.5 - 109.2%) -- 56.3% chance to OHKO

3. Dragapult

Can DD on a predicted protect or dynamax scoli for an OHKO turn 1. Also has infiltrator so that Sub is useless.

etcetra.

Priority Spam
Notable Ubers threats such as EKill... Wait never mind. Unless you're running Scizor or QA Zacian-C, it ain't happening.

You miss out on sucker punch users (e.g. cinderace), as well as other forms of priority (grassy glide riabloom, aqua jet crawdaunt, sneak marshadow).

Taunt
As noted above, Taunt is a good move that fits on many mons. But it is probably the first thing FullPass players will counterprep for. In other words, if a FullPass team loses to a predictable Taunt, the team needs to be rebuilt.

This is an extremely superficial analysis of Taunt vs BP. Let's look at it a bit more in-depth:

Prankster:

Grimmsnarl and Sableye are obviously hard counters to Fullpass.

Imposter:

As stated before, a well-timed Ditto switchin can break the chain.

Other Taunt Users:

Defensive taunt users (mandibuzz, stall two, etc) are indeed bait for magic bouncers. However, because Taunt is such an amazing move, even offensively oriented mons can use it, and those are not Espeon bait. For example:

Gyarados @ Lum Berry
Ability: Moxie
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Waterfall
- Bounce
- Taunt
- Dragon Dance

Taunt the Scoli turn 1 or 2, and proceed to 6-0 from there.

Or:

Hydreigon @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Nasty Plot
- Taunt
- Dark Pulse
- Earth Power

Functions similarly to the normal stallbreaker set, but has Taunt to help break stall harder than normal.

etc.

Roar/Whirlwind
Gone are the days when you could slap Roar on Pdon or Whirlwind on Lugia and say "that's also my BP counterplay I guess". Even though FullPass has many ways to mitigate these moves, the fact FullPass is presently rarely called upon to do so is worrying, with most of these move's users nearly always running them too, making them predictable. In other words, the opportunity cost of these moves is no longer worth the BP matchup unless the mon in question is running them anyway. Why is that? Because running Roar on, say, Lunala gains less favourable matchups than, say, Toxic or extra coverage.

Phazing is indeed less common than last gen, and most common phazers (e.g. mandibuzz) get walled by magic bounce, but the addition of dynamax more than makes up for it IMO. Regardless, you forgot one important tool.

Red Card:

Shuckle: Basically guarantees a broken chain; teams using Shuckle should be offensive enough that this is enough to win the game.

Haze
I discussed this one above already. Suffice to say it works, but the opportunity cost of having to run Toxapex or having to run Haze on Quagsire is pretty big.

You forgot about another option; Haze Vaporeon (https://www.smogon.com/dex/ss/pokemon/vaporeon/uber/).

The opportunity cost of these IMO isn't that high because any of these will only be run on stall/defensive balance builds regardless.

There's also another way of resetting boosts; Marshadow is BP counterplay to anyone not running dubwool/indeedee. Note that Spectral Thief ignores sub.

Perish Song
Rip.

You forgot about Lapras: https://www.smogon.com/dex/ss/pokemon/lapras/

I would like to share a Flying Press article quote looking back on the era of Baton Pass Clause OU that I find insightful.

This is just the ever-repeating pattern of Baton Pass teams. The counterplay works IF X and NOT Y. And the counterplay has such a large opportunity cost attached to it that you are better off conceding the 5% of battles you have against BP teams at preview, then winning a greater proportion of the remaining 95%. This is what I meant when I said:

Thanks for reading.

As I've covered above, you've conveniently left out many of the options to counter BP. There's a reason Full pass teams have no representation in UPL; it's because full pass just isn't good enough to be worth using.

I hope I've made it clear that there are enough counterplay options that fitting at least one onto a team isn't too much of a requirement for the builder. In my point of view, those who do not include any counterplay options simply deserve to lose to it.

You'll notice I didn't really talk about quickpass. That's because, although quickpass indeed viable (and strong!), it's not banworthy. Smash pass has been around since BW and hasn't broken Ubers for multiple generations now (viz: https://www.smogon.com/dex/bw/pokemon/smeargle/uber/). I see little reason why it would break Ubers in SS.

 

[theotherguytm]

Ok, let's go through this.

I know this doesn't have anything to do with BP, but please don't insult the monster known as Zacian-C.

+1 252+ Atk Zacian-Crowned Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Corviknight: 183-216 (45.7 - 54%) -- 46.9% chance to 2HKO
+3 252 Atk Zacian-Crowned Wild Charge vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Corviknight: 418-492 (104.5 - 123%) -- guaranteed OHKO

If you're relying on Corviknight to check Zacian-C, you're going to have a bad time.

Scarf EQ users indeed beat Zacian, but none of them can switch in, and the only one that guarantees removal fails to KO without chip damage or a defense drop:

252+ Atk Dugtrio Earthquake vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Zacian-Crowned: 266-314 (81.8 - 96.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

It's not uncommon for teams to have 2-3 slots dedicated partially to helping check Zacian-C. It is a monster; prep accordingly.

Yes, you dedicate two slots to checking Zacian-C. RH Corv and Scarf Duggy. Corv forces Zacian-C to take recoil Wild Charging and RH damage, then U-turns (if it lives) into Scarf Duggy. If it dies, Scarf Duggy gets a free switch-in anyway. Then Duggy kills. This, and similar measures, ensures every single Ubers team doesn't have to run Boots Nec-DM+Ditto for SD, or Quagsire, because even though you have a formal "weakness" to Zacian-C, you still beat it in practice most of the time, because if it ever claims a kill while chipped, out comes Duggy, while Corviknight forces it to switch out or kill it due to the threat of U-turn.

For the record, it is possible to soft check fullpass teams. Imposter ditto is an excellent example of a soft check; it can break the chain with a well-timed switch into something like Taunt mew/umbreon/mr.mime and hit them with Taunt. Of course this requires good play with help from teammates; this is why it is a soft check and not a counter.

Ditto is pretty bad because it relies on there not being a Sub up. Also, I love how you say it switches into Taunt when all that does is make it struggle. Even if it does copy a team member, it has to be a sweeper for Ditto to do any damage, else all it can do is BP whatever boosts have been acquired thusfar to its own team and hope that's enough.

Other soft checks involve clever use of Dynamax to break the chain, or prevent the chain from going up in the first place. For example, LO Excadrill can break Scolipede turn 1 with max rockfall:

252+ Atk Life Orb Mold Breaker Excadrill Max Rockfall vs. +2 252 HP / 0 Def Scolipede: 231-273 (71.2 - 84.2%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock-- Excadrill proceeds to outspeed and KO next turn

Other weather abusers (Swift Swim) and max airstream abusers can accomplish something similar with the aid of dynamax. These are only soft checks due to the need to use the dynamax to break the chain, but they are checks nonetheless.

I have no idea why the Scolipede user would ID turn one and not Sub. Then you just Protect on the one singular turn they are faster and oh look nothing happened.
252+ Atk Life Orb Excadrill Max Rockfall vs. 252 HP / 0 Def protected Scolipede: 114-135 (35.1 - 41.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 Atk Life Orb Excadrill Max Rockfall vs. 252 HP / 0 Def protected Scolipede: 104-123 (32 - 37.9%) -- 95.4% chance to 3HKO
Even if it stupidly IDs, Scolipede can use its own Dynamax to Max Guard if need be (though it does deservedly lose the 1v1).
Also, pro tip: Never run Adamant Drill because then all you do is set sand for opposing Jolly Drill to destroy you with. The Excadrill speed tie is way too important.
The pattern is similar with other Dynamax users: Scoli stalls them out with some combination of Max Guard, Protect and Sub.
Also, you seem to be under the impression that beating Scoli wins you the game, which is no longer the case thanks to Magearna having Shift Gear to restart chains.

This team has no answers to the following straightforward offensive threats:

1. NP mewtwo
2. Banded darm-galar; flare blitz OHKOs scoli even at +2. Scarf reg-Darm (which is ranked, like everything else mentioned) OHKOS.

252 Atk Sheer Force Darmanitan Flare Blitz vs. +2 252 HP / 0 Def Scolipede: 300-354 (92.5 - 109.2%) -- 56.3% chance to OHKO
252 Atk Choice Band Gorilla Tactics Darmanitan-Galar Flare Blitz vs. +2 252 HP / 0 Def Scolipede: 342-404 (105.5 - 124.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO

3. LO reshiram completely destroys this team
4. No counterplay to NP togekiss
5. Charizard eats this team alive
6. CM lulana has a positive mu vs every user of calm mind on the team
7. I'm not sure how this team deals with mixed shell smash cloyster or SS blastoise or Polteageist.

I'm sure there are many more threats that I'm missing/too lazy to find, but the point stands: The team has no answer to a lot of the offensive metagame, even when we only consider attackers.

The list extends even more when you include the pokemon that only need to win a 50/50 vs scolipede to break the team. For example,

1. SD Zacian-C

+1 252+ Atk Zacian-Crowned Behemoth Blade vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Scolipede: 363-427 (112 - 131.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+3 252+ Atk Zacian-Crowned Behemoth Blade vs. +2 252 HP / 0 Def Scolipede: 303-357 (93.5 - 110.1%) -- 62.5% chance to OHKO

2. BU cinderace

+1 252 Atk Cinderace Pyro Ball vs. +2 252 HP / 0 Def Scolipede: 300-354 (92.5 - 109.2%) -- 56.3% chance to OHKO

3. Dragapult

Can DD on a predicted protect or dynamax scoli for an OHKO turn 1. Also has infiltrator so that Sub is useless.

etcetra.

I think you mistake a team built on DLC Day 1 for an actually decent team. There's a reason it has all those weaknesses. Also some of the mons you mention are hilariously unviable (Mixed Cloyster?? Charizard? Yeah, Zard's on the VR but that doesn't make it good, especially when it occupies the same rank as Zamzamenta-C. The VR is for pre-DLC anyway).

You miss out on sucker punch users (e.g. cinderace), as well as other forms of priority (grassy glide riabloom, aqua jet crawdaunt, sneak marshadow).

Gee, I wonder how effective Sucker Punch is against a team of Sub users. Scolipede takes nothing from Grassy Glide and just accepts the free healing, Crawdaunt is only used on Trick Room, which is debatable in viability and has a reasonable but questionable BP matchup due to BP being able to stall TR turns, Marshadow would rather be using Spectral Thief.

Prankster:

Grimmsnarl and Sableye are obviously hard counters to Fullpass.

Both get shut down by Magic Bounce, and Taunt is an optional move on Sableye (its niche is Prankster Will-O-Wisp+Recover), who isn't run on serious teams anyway. Grimm fares reasonably against BP, but BP often runs things like Mental Herb Scolipede for this exact reason, and Grimm fares badly against the Magic Bounce users.

Other Taunt Users:

Defensive taunt users (mandibuzz, stall two, etc) are indeed bait for magic bouncers. However, because Taunt is such an amazing move, even offensively oriented mons can use it, and those are not Espeon bait. For example:

Gyarados @ Lum Berry
Ability: Moxie
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Waterfall
- Bounce
- Taunt
- Dragon Dance

Taunt the Scoli turn 1 or 2, and proceed to 6-0 from there.

Or:

Hydreigon @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Nasty Plot
- Taunt
- Dark Pulse
- Earth Power

Functions similarly to the normal stallbreaker set, but has Taunt to help break stall harder than normal.

etc.

Let's understand how this interaction actually plays out. Scoli Protects Turn 1, or Subs and uses its Mental Herb. Either way, it gets off a Speed Boost, and can do whatever it didn't do turn 1 for another one. Then (or straight on turn 2) it Baton Passes to the Magic Bouncer, and your Taunt is bounced back at your setup sweeper. Sub to scout Dynamax, and carry on. Don't pretend you have some kind of godly prediction power "if they BP to the Bouncer I Nasty Plot, else I Taunt" because no-one does. These are 50/50s, but they are inherently weighted towards the BP player because of your need to break the chain-the BP player wins if the position remains neutral.
252 SpA Espeon Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Hydreigon: 384-452 (118.1 - 139%) -- guaranteed OHKO
Gyarados poses more of a threat, but it suffers from vulnerability to having its Dynamax stalled. It has to use Airstream 3 times to overtake the BP team for speed, which means it gets no power boosts at all. And then becomes Scoli setup fodder again. Like I said, the 50/50s are always weighted in the BP player's favour because Gyara needs to make progress, while the BP player is perfectly happy to stall.
Besides, Taunt on either of these two over more coverage is pretty questionable (especially on Gyarados), so like I said, in order to combat BP, you've had to weaken your team against every other team by giving up coverage, which makes you lose to threats you should beat.

Red Card:

Shuckle: Basically guarantees a broken chain; teams using Shuckle should be offensive enough that this is enough to win the game.

Ok, send in Espeon, Magic Bounce shuts it down, hit it with a single move, threat over. And like I said, the increasing redundancy on Baton Pass means breaking the chain once is not an auto-win. You have to do it multiple times before you can win the game.

You forgot about another option; Haze Vaporeon (https://www.smogon.com/dex/ss/pokemon/vaporeon/uber/).

The opportunity cost of these IMO isn't that high because any of these will only be run on stall/defensive balance builds regardless

Ok, so on Vaporeon, to run Haze you have to give up one of: Wish Passing (its entire niche), Protect (gives it no way of healing itself reliably) DryPassing/Flip Turn (which makes it a total momentum sink and makes it much worse at Wish Passing) or Scald (makes it Taunt bait and passive). That enough of an opportunity cost? Vaporeon is niche as it is, no need to make it bad at the one thing it is good at, unless of course you want to beat Full Pass.

There's also another way of resetting boosts; Marshadow is BP counterplay to anyone not running dubwool/indeedee. Note that Spectral Thief ignores sub.

Yes, I do know this. Hence why BP builds run those mons. Also, unless you're using the ladder unset called "Sash Marshadow", then Mashadow gets OHKOed by a Super Effective Stored Power with minimal setup.

You forgot about Lapras: https://www.smogon.com/dex/ss/pokemon/lapras/

Oh yeah, that notable mon that wastes your Dynamax that your sweepers need to get up Aurora Veil. Clearly I should run that.

As I've covered above, you've conveniently left out many of the options to counter BP. There's a reason Full pass teams have no representation in UPL; it's because full pass just isn't good enough to be worth using.

re: Baton Pass in SS

Baton Pass is banned from SS Ubers effective immediately due to the ongoing suspect test. The community has expressed its view that Baton Pass is a problematic element in the tier and that for the time being it has no place in our premier tournament. steelskitty Stone_Cold Nayrz Skysolo Mysterious M Mr.378 Cynara Alkione make sure your players are aware that any use of Baton Pass in SS Ubers will forfeit their match.

Also, in AG it is common practice for players to make "gentleman's agreements" not to bring Baton Pass, as it ensures a more competitive and fun game, as well as making both player's prep easier.

You'll notice I didn't really talk about quickpass. That's because, although quickpass indeed viable (and strong!), it's not banworthy. Smash pass has been around since BW and hasn't broken Ubers for multiple generations now (viz: https://www.smogon.com/dex/bw/pokemon/smeargle/uber/). I see little reason why it would break Ubers in SS.

That's because we have what our TL calls "Whatever Magearna feels like doing-pass".

Magearna in particular can provide Shift Gear, Iron Defense, and Calm Mind boosts to whatever you want - or use it for its own purposes but this is only semi-relevant to the BP topic - and does this without sacrificing much in terms of the rest of the team considering Magearna is a good mon on its own. It's essentially a consistent method of abusing BP and the one I think people should be the most aware of. It can also use Dynamax to gain more boosts to pass (Max Steelspike), which isn't even a huge loss as many mons that love getting boosts passed to them can't or don't want to Dynamax (Dracovish, Eternatus, Ubers covered by the Dynamax Clause) in the first place.

Hope this clarifies a few things.

 

[pikachu<3]

Ok, let's go through this.

Yes, you dedicate two slots to checking Zacian-C. RH Corv and Scarf Duggy. Corv forces Zacian-C to take recoil Wild Charging and RH damage, then U-turns (if it lives) into Scarf Duggy. If it dies, Scarf Duggy gets a free switch-in anyway. Then Duggy kills. This, and similar measures, ensures every single Ubers team doesn't have to run Boots Nec-DM+Ditto for SD, or Quagsire, because even though you have a formal "weakness" to Zacian-C, you still beat it in practice most of the time, because if it ever claims a kill while chipped, out comes Duggy, while Corviknight forces it to switch out or kill it due to the threat of U-turn.

Ditto is pretty bad because it relies on there not being a Sub up. Also, I love how you say it switches into Taunt when all that does is make it struggle. Even if it does copy a team member, it has to be a sweeper for Ditto to do any damage, else all it can do is BP whatever boosts have been acquired thusfar to its own team and hope that's enough.

Apparently I was being unclear. Ditto ideally switches as the mon uses something other than Taunt or BP, and copies the mon, outspeeds, and taunts the opposing mon. This forces the opposing mon to struggle, which effectively breaks the chain. Is this more clear to you?

I've already acknowledge Ditto relies on there no being a Sub up--this is why Ditto is a soft check (and not a counter).

I have no idea why the Scolipede user would ID turn one and not Sub. Then you just Protect on the one singular turn they are faster and oh look nothing happened.
252+ Atk Life Orb Excadrill Max Rockfall vs. 252 HP / 0 Def protected Scolipede: 114-135 (35.1 - 41.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 Atk Life Orb Excadrill Max Rockfall vs. 252 HP / 0 Def protected Scolipede: 104-123 (32 - 37.9%) -- 95.4% chance to 3HKO
Even if it stupidly IDs, Scolipede can use its own Dynamax to Max Guard if need be (though it does deservedly lose the 1v1).
Also, pro tip: Never run Adamant Drill because then all you do is set sand for opposing Jolly Drill to destroy you with. The Excadrill speed tie is way too important.
The pattern is similar with other Dynamax users: Scoli stalls them out with some combination of Max Guard, Protect and Sub.
Also, you seem to be under the impression that beating Scoli wins you the game, which is no longer the case thanks to Magearna having Shift Gear to restart chains.

I think you're missing the point.

First of all, on this line of play, Drill prevents Scoli from passing any ID boosts (you take 55% min from tect + sub), which means that whatever else on the team will have to take an LO earthquake to the face, which no one on your team really wants to do. Since there's no other way to get ID boosts on the team, this effectively means a loss. Even if mew was running ID (it isn't), mew still can't be a BP recipient of the speed boosts:

252+ Atk Life Orb Excadrill Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Mew: 242-285 (59.9 - 70.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Life Orb Excadrill Earthquake vs. +2 252 HP / 0 Def Mew: 121-144 (29.9 - 35.6%) -- 30% chance to 3HKO
Combined with sandstorm damage, mew looks pretty dead to me.

The pattern with the "other dmax users" is the same: Are you really going to succeed with a chain after only passing speed against a physically offensive threat? I'd guess probably not.

I think you mistake a team built on DLC Day 1 for an actually decent team. There's a reason it has all those weaknesses. Also some of the mons you mention are hilariously unviable (Mixed Cloyster?? Charizard? Yeah, Zard's on the VR but that doesn't make it good, especially when it occupies the same rank as Zamzamenta-C. The VR is for pre-DLC anyway).

If you have a better team for me to discuss, I'll be happy to use that instead. The mons I mentioned are those taken form the most recent VR. If you have a better VR for me to work with, I will happily use that instead. I am simply doing the best I have with the current resources at my disposal.

Having said that, I can only assume an updated VR would include even more threats that shit on BP due to the inclusion of things like Urshifu forms and Volcarona.

About cloyster-- on the forums, there is a set for a SS sweeper (https://www.smogon.com/dex/ss/pokemon/cloyster/uber/) that can be mixed (viz explosion). This is the set I was talking about.

Gee, I wonder how effective Sucker Punch is against a team of Sub users. Scolipede takes nothing from Grassy Glide and just accepts the free healing, Crawdaunt is only used on Trick Room, which is debatable in viability and has a reasonable but questionable BP matchup due to BP being able to stall TR turns, Marshadow would rather be using Spectral Thief.

Both get shut down by Magic Bounce, and Taunt is an optional move on Sableye (its niche is Prankster Will-O-Wisp+Recover), who isn't run on serious teams anyway. Grimm fares reasonably against BP, but BP often runs things like Mental Herb Scolipede for this exact reason, and Grimm fares badly against the Magic Bounce users.

Again, you're missing the point.

Marshadow obviously uses both sneak and Thief (lol).

Sableye/Grim comes in against something not named Espeon/Umbreon and uses taunt. Unless you hard switch out to espeon (which breaks your chain), taunt comes out before BP, forcing struggle. Is this more clear to you? It doesn't matter that they lose to magic bounce because pransker outspeeds baton pass.

You say Sableye is unviable but I am simply taking mons off the VR rankings. If you have a better VR list for me to use, I'll happily use that instead.

You claim Taunt is an optional move on Sableye. This means you use Taunt if you need it (say, if your team is weak against full pass for example), and use another move if not. This means that any team with Sableye on it will be prepared for fullpass.

Let's understand how this interaction actually plays out. Scoli Protects Turn 1, or Subs and uses its Mental Herb. Either way, it gets off a Speed Boost, and can do whatever it didn't do turn 1 for another one. Then (or straight on turn 2) it Baton Passes to the Magic Bouncer, and your Taunt is bounced back at your setup sweeper. Sub to scout Dynamax, and carry on. Don't pretend you have some kind of godly prediction power "if they BP to the Bouncer I Nasty Plot, else I Taunt" because no-one does. These are 50/50s, but they are inherently weighted towards the BP player because of your need to break the chain-the BP player wins if the position remains neutral.
252 SpA Espeon Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Hydreigon: 384-452 (118.1 - 139%) -- guaranteed OHKO
Gyarados poses more of a threat, but it suffers from vulnerability to having its Dynamax stalled. It has to use Airstream 3 times to overtake the BP team for speed, which means it gets no power boosts at all. And then becomes Scoli setup fodder again. Like I said, the 50/50s are always weighted in the BP player's favour because Gyara needs to make progress, while the BP player is perfectly happy to stall.

The team posted as Leftovers on scoli, not Mental Herb. Regardless, protecting with Scoli is dangerous because gyra can DD on the tect turn for free.

You claim these 50/50s are weighted to the BP player, but they really aren't. If the chain is broken the game is basically over for the BP user as they have no real way to deal with gyrados otherwise. As much as the gyra user may "obviously" taunt, the BP user may "obviously" go to espeon, but giving gyra another DD for free is almost game over. It really is a 50/50 and not weighted for the BP user.

As for hydre-- you can actaully just spam dark pulse (or nasty plot on a predicted tect/BP) until something not named Espeon comes out (who goes espeon on a hydre spamming dark pulse?) and click Taunt.

Besides, Taunt on either of these two over more coverage is pretty questionable (especially on Gyarados), so like I said, in order to combat BP, you've had to weaken your team against every other team by giving up coverage, which makes you lose to threats you should beat.

As you've said yourself, Taunt is an amazing move that can hardly be considered a waste of a moveslot. Taunt helps Gyrados beat threats like Quagsire, Skarmory, and Corviknight, for example, and helps Hydregion beat things like Chansey. Of course the lost coverage sucks, but the opportunity cost of running Taunt is not so high as to not be worth at least considering.

For what it's worth, Hydregion's current set in the analysis (https://www.smogon.com/dex/ss/pokemon/hydreigon/uber/) runs Sub instead of Taunt, so it doesn't actually lose any coverage (and sub/taunt both cover status moves).

Ok, send in Espeon, Magic Bounce shuts it down, hit it with a single move, threat over. And like I said, the increasing redundancy on Baton Pass means breaking the chain once is not an auto-win. You have to do it multiple times before you can win the game.

You seem to not understand how Red Card works. Magic bounce only bounces back blocks certain status moves. It does not bounce back the effects of items. Red Card will still phase, and thanks to Sturdy, Shuckle will live any one hit.

Ok, so on Vaporeon, to run Haze you have to give up one of: Wish Passing (its entire niche), Protect (gives it no way of healing itself reliably) DryPassing/Flip Turn (which makes it a total momentum sink and makes it much worse at Wish Passing) or Scald (makes it Taunt bait and passive). That enough of an opportunity cost? Vaporeon is niche as it is, no need to make it bad at the one thing it is good at, unless of course you want to beat Full Pass.

I am doing nothing but looking at the analysis for Vaporeon (https://www.smogon.com/dex/ss/pokemon/vaporeon/uber/), which has Haze as the primary slash, over Baton Pass. If you have better resources for me to use, I'll be happy to use those instead.

Yes, I do know this. Hence why BP builds run those mons. Also, unless you're using the ladder unset called "Sash Marshadow", then Mashadow gets OHKOed by a Super Effective Stored Power with minimal setup.

Unless your opponent is running dubwool/indeedee, leading Marshadow turn 1 basically ensures BP never gets up any boosts and easily wins the matchup.

Oh yeah, that notable mon that wastes your Dynamax that your sweepers need to get up Aurora Veil. Clearly I should run that.

Again, I am simply picking mons from the Ubers VR ranking thread and analyses. If you have a better set of resources for me to use, I'll be happy to use those.

Also, for what it's worth, not all sweepers can use Dynamax in ubers (viz. Zacian-C, marshadow, Zekrom, Mewtwo, etcetra), so you would ideally be setting up Veil for these sweepers to abuse.

Also, in AG it is common practice for players to make "gentleman's agreements" not to bring Baton Pass, as it ensures a more competitive and fun game, as well as making both player's prep easier.

This doesn't have anything to do with Ubers, but AG has things like double team and minimize allowed, which of course makes BP uncompetitive since your counterplay can miss. Ubers does not have evasion moves allowed. AG also allows things like Moody smeargle.

EDIT: Also Full Pass was allowed during the first week of UPL, but it was never brought.

That's because we have what our TL calls "Whatever Magearna feels like doing-pass".

Magearna indeed makes BP far more reliable. However, the main point stands: the intrinsic act of passing boosts (even shell smash) does not inherently break the game. Perhaps Magearna is a bit too good at doing its job, but smash pass itself has been here for many generations; I don't see quickpass as being inherently bad for the game.

Hope this clarifies a few things.

I hope my response clarifies a few things for you too.

 

[Joseph Gomes]

Baton Pass is not broken by any means, nor it is centralizing in the slightest. Very few players can even pull off baton pass successfully, and even then it loses as many matches as any regular team in the top portion of the ladders.

 

[theotherguytm]

Sigh. Here we go again.

Apparently I was being unclear. Ditto ideally switches as the mon uses something other than Taunt or BP, and copies the mon, outspeeds, and taunts the opposing mon. This forces the opposing mon to struggle, which effectively breaks the chain. Is this more clear to you?

I've already acknowledge Ditto relies on there no being a Sub up--this is why Ditto is a soft check (and not a counter).

So it has to come in when there isn't a Sub up AND the BP player is not using Taunt, an attacking move or Baton Pass. If that's your FullPass counterplay, you lose to FullPass. It's not a soft check, because it just doesn't work.

I think you're missing the point.

First of all, on this line of play, Drill prevents Scoli from passing any ID boosts (you take 55% min from tect + sub), which means that whatever else on the team will have to take an LO earthquake to the face, which no one on your team really wants to do. Since there's no other way to get ID boosts on the team, this effectively means a loss. Even if mew was running ID (it isn't), mew still can't be a BP recipient of the speed boosts:

252+ Atk Life Orb Excadrill Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Mew: 242-285 (59.9 - 70.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Life Orb Excadrill Earthquake vs. +2 252 HP / 0 Def Mew: 121-144 (29.9 - 35.6%) -- 30% chance to 3HKO
Combined with sandstorm damage, mew looks pretty dead to me.

The pattern with the "other dmax users" is the same: Are you really going to succeed with a chain after only passing speed against a physically offensive threat? I'd guess probably not.

You're still calcing with garbage Adamant Drill, and clicking EQ on Scoli rather than a Rock move, so those calcs are pretty invalid. Also, both Dubwool and Vaporeon can use Cotton Guard/Acid Armour in Drill's face. Yeah, you are going to succeed after only passing Speed because speed is the most important stat. Once speed has been passed, whatever other boosts are needed are much easier to acquire.

If you have a better team for me to discuss, I'll be happy to use that instead. The mons I mentioned are those taken form the most recent VR. If you have a better VR for me to work with, I will happily use that instead. I am simply doing the best I have with the current resources at my disposal.

Having said that, I can only assume an updated VR would include even more threats that shit on BP due to the inclusion of things like Urshifu forms and Volcarona.

About cloyster-- on the forums, there is a set for a SS sweeper (https://www.smogon.com/dex/ss/pokemon/cloyster/uber/) that can be mixed (viz explosion). This is the set I was talking about.

I don't know, perhaps use some common sense to determine what is garbage that was ranked on a small niche and is now invalid due to the presence of a couple of pink blobs, and what is actually played in Ubers. And use some metagame experience to understand what BP actually plays. If you're just going to pick random mons from the C Rank of the outdated VR and rely on me to show you what a BP team actually looks like, the only conclusion that can be drawn is you don't know what you're talking about.
Also, pre-DLC BP was fine, post-DLC it was not, so I think there is a hole in your logic somewhere (and it's shaped like a big purple bug).

Again, you're missing the point.

Marshadow obviously uses both sneak and Thief (lol).

Sableye/Grim comes in against something not named Espeon/Umbreon and uses taunt. Unless you hard switch out to espeon (which breaks your chain), taunt comes out before BP, forcing struggle. Is this more clear to you? It doesn't matter that they lose to magic bounce because pransker outspeeds baton pass.

You say Sableye is unviable but I am simply taking mons off the VR rankings. If you have a better VR list for me to use, I'll happily use that instead.

You claim Taunt is an optional move on Sableye. This means you use Taunt if you need it (say, if your team is weak against full pass for example), and use another move if not. This means that any team with Sableye on it will be prepared for fullpass.

Which does more damage to BP teams, Sneak or Thief? Do they share the same immunities and thus switch-ins? Thank you.
You seem to be under the impression that I don't understand what you are saying, so rather than repeat myself:
1. Breaking the Chain=/=Winning
2. Team Preview is a thing.
3. Mental Herb is a thing.
Oh, and Taunt on Sableye is over Prankster Encore and Disable. Both of which are really powerful.

The team posted as Leftovers on scoli, not Mental Herb. Regardless, protecting with Scoli is dangerous because gyra can DD on the tect turn for free.

You claim these 50/50s are weighted to the BP player, but they really aren't. If the chain is broken the game is basically over for the BP user as they have no real way to deal with gyrados otherwise. As much as the gyra user may "obviously" taunt, the BP user may "obviously" go to espeon, but giving gyra another DD for free is almost game over. It really is a 50/50 and not weighted for the BP user.

As for hydre-- you can actaully just spam dark pulse (or nasty plot on a predicted tect/BP) until something not named Espeon comes out (who goes espeon on a hydre spamming dark pulse?) and click Taunt

I'll repeat myself:

Don't pretend you have some kind of godly prediction power "if they BP to the Bouncer I Nasty Plot, else I Taunt" because no-one does.

I'll just DD in front of the Scoli-whoops they have a Sub up now and can use Iron Defence or BP to an attacker to KO Gyara safely. That's an L I guess.
If all Hydreigon does is click Dark Pulse, it becomes setup fodder for Magearna and its probable Weakness Policy. And then you Taunt the Magearna that you are sure is not carrying a STAB Fairy move that OHKOs you instantly starting a Soul-Heart snowball? Brave.
You see, the BP player has to lose multiple 50/50s before he can truely throw in the towel. The other player only has to lose one, and the FullPass spirals out of control. That's why it's stacked in the BP player's favour.

As you've said yourself, Taunt is an amazing move that can hardly be considered a waste of a moveslot. Taunt helps Gyrados beat threats like Quagsire, Skarmory, and Corviknight, for example, and helps Hydregion beat things like Chansey. Of course the lost coverage sucks, but the opportunity cost of running Taunt is not so high as to not be worth at least considering.

For what it's worth, Hydregion's current set in the analysis (https://www.smogon.com/dex/ss/pokemon/hydreigon/uber/) runs Sub instead of Taunt, so it doesn't actually lose any coverage (and sub/taunt both cover status moves).

Running Taunt over EQ on Gyara is asking to get walled to hell and back by Ferrothorn, Nec DM, and basically every tanky Steel ever. It also means Gyara has no means of fighting Zekrom, a Pokemon it is meant to obliterate with EQ, and becomes setup fodder for it. Taunt is good when it's on utility mons, not sweepers. Oh, and Sub>Taunt on Hydreigon because it makes setting up Nasty Plots way easier and less risky.

You seem to not understand how Red Card works. Magic bounce only bounces back blocks certain status moves. It does not bounce back the effects of items. Red Card will still phase, and thanks to Sturdy, Shuckle will live any one hit.

You seem to not understand what Shuckle does. And that a 20 BP Stored Power still triggers Red Card. I'll let you go work that out.

I am doing nothing but looking at the analysis for Vaporeon (https://www.smogon.com/dex/ss/pokemon/vaporeon/uber/), which has Haze as the primary slash, over Baton Pass. If you have better resources for me to use, I'll be happy to use those instead.

Hey, so was I! But one of us actually understands the opportunity cost of Haze and why it is not the primary recommended option, especially now Flip Turn is in the format. The only reason Haze is viable at all on Vaporeon is because Baton Pass really, else it can just pivot out into a faster attacker that shuts down the sweeper, like Zacian-C.

Unless your opponent is running dubwool/indeedee, leading Marshadow turn 1 basically ensures BP never gets up any boosts and easily wins the matchup.

Ok, leading Marshadow beats 0% of prepped BP teams. Got it. As for why you can't just interrupt the chain halfway through, see the block of text you quoted.

Again, I am simply picking mons from the Ubers VR ranking thread and analyses. If you have a better set of resources for me to use, I'll be happy to use those.

Also, for what it's worth, not all sweepers can use Dynamax in ubers (viz. Zacian-C, marshadow, Zekrom, Mewtwo, etcetra), so you would ideally be setting up Veil for these sweepers to abuse.

Well isn't that obvious. Fun fact: Zamazenta-C is still on the Ubers VR. It's still garbage that should never used.

This doesn't have anything to do with Ubers, but AG has things like double team and minimize allowed, which of course makes BP uncompetitive since your counterplay can miss. Ubers does not have evasion moves allowed. AG also allows things like Moody smeargle.

EDIT: Also Full Pass was allowed during the first week of UPL, but it was never brought.

I was speaking of course about Galar AG, which is precisely the same format as Ubers except without Dynamax Clause because there aren't any mons it's worth bringing multiple of or any significant sleep inducers or any significant evasion boosters. In many ways, BP is harder to use in Galar AG because of the lack of Dynamax Clause, allowing things like Marshadow and Ditto to do serious damage, as well as letting Dynamaxed Zekrom lose on your team.
And as for UPL:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ubers-1145603250
Replay of "Magearna pass" in action.... On both sides. It also has Shuckle, so you can see what that does. Oh and Taunt only works here if you have your own Speed boosts, else Magearna just gets off the BP.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8ubers-508712
Replay of Magearna in action without BP, showing it can be hard to spot some versions of "Magearna pass" at preview, because it could just be a normal Magearna.
I wonder how many players made gentleman's agreements Week 1, and how many just figured that since everyone was thinking about it, everyone would bring the BP counterplay, so it wasn't worth it.
EDIT: Also, none of the counterplay you mentioned was bought to Week 1. Teams preferred to spam Haze Pex and Haze Quagsire instead.

agearna indeed makes BP far more reliable. However, the main point stands: the intrinsic act of passing boosts (even shell smash) does not inherently break the game. Perhaps Magearna is a bit too good at doing its job, but smash pass itself has been here for many generations; I don't see quickpass as being inherently bad for the game.

Apprently, top Ubers players disagree. Like I said, it's a sweeper bypassing all the risks of setting up itself and freeing up a moveslot or two for more coverage. Or a Choiced mon being able to set up. Or a sweeper getting access to boosting moves that it shouldn't. The issue is the quickpassers here: they are getting more and more reliable, to the point that Magearna Pass Offense is a full consistent strategy rather than just matchup cheese.

Baton Pass is not broken by any means, nor it is centralizing in the slightest. Very few players can even pull off baton pass successfully, and even then it loses as many matches as any regular team in the top portion of the ladders

You may want to try and understand why the suspect is being held. This is Ubers. Here, people do not care if something has 100% usage, they do not care if something is broken, they only care if it is competitive. Mega Ray, for instance, was banned for being so broken that it was uncompetitive, leading to games being decided by coin tosses on the Mega Ray switch-in rather than any player skill. BP is uncompetitive, hence it is being suspected.

 

[Joseph Gomes]

Baton Pass is competitive. It requires skills and predictions to pull off. It's also dynamic as you can't use the same mons over and over, it has to adapt alongside the meta. Comparing it with Gen 6 Mega Ray is nonsense. Mega Ray barely had any check, let alone counters. It could setup on anything and everything. Very poor analogy theotherguytm

 

[pikachu<3]

Sigh. Here we go again.

So it has to come in when there isn't a Sub up AND the BP player is not using Taunt, an attacking move or Baton Pass. If that's your FullPass counterplay, you lose to FullPass. It's not a soft check, because it just doesn't work.

Again, this is why it's a soft check. Obviously you'd need to have offensive pressure along with ditto to force the other player into umbreon/mew, and be threatening enough that they want to use iron defense/wish/curse instead of BP or taunt. It's like soft checking Zacian-C with Helmet Corviknight: It's not enough on its own but combined with other mons it can check the mon in question.

You're still calcing with garbage Adamant Drill, and clicking EQ on Scoli rather than a Rock move, so those calcs are pretty invalid. Also, both Dubwool and Vaporeon can use Cotton Guard/Acid Armour in Drill's face. Yeah, you are going to succeed after only passing Speed because speed is the most important stat. Once speed has been passed, whatever other boosts are needed are much easier to acquire.

Adamant Drill is not garbage; it's a perfectly viable set. Besides, I don't want to rely on a potential speed tie against opposing Excadrill. I'd rather just switch out into an actual Excadrill check (which we have to be running anyways due to Ditto's existence)

Against Scoli we do the following (if it isn't obvious enough): Max rockfall, max rockfall (scoli is at 45% now), and then max Quake, followed by eq spam. This line of play gives Scoli no chance to set up an iron defense, and it's forced to pass while excadrill clicks Earthquake. Is this clear enough for you?

viz:

252+ Atk Life Orb Excadrill Max Quake vs. +2 252 HP / 0 Def Scolipede: 173-204 (53.3 - 62.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Life Orb Excadrill Earthquake vs. +2 252 HP / 0 Def Scolipede: 133-157 (41 - 48.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

For what it's worth, dubwool can't switch in (or receive a pass) and gets 2HKO'd through Cotton Guard, assuming it's the set you listed above:

252+ Atk Life Orb Excadrill Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Dubwool: 242-285 (69.5 - 81.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ Atk Life Orb Excadrill Earthquake vs. +3 252 HP / 0 Def Dubwool: 97-114 (27.8 - 32.7%) -- 80.8% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

Neither can Vaporeon, it's it's 252 Special Def calm:

252+ Atk Life Orb Excadrill Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Vaporeon: 364-429 (78.4 - 92.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

I don't know, perhaps use some common sense to determine what is garbage that was ranked on a small niche and is now invalid due to the presence of a couple of pink blobs, and what is actually played in Ubers. And use some metagame experience to understand what BP actually plays. If you're just going to pick random mons from the C Rank of the outdated VR and rely on me to show you what a BP team actually looks like, the only conclusion that can be drawn is you don't know what you're talking about.
Also, pre-DLC BP was fine, post-DLC it was not, so I think there is a hole in your logic somewhere (and it's shaped like a big purple bug).

You seem to misunderstand why I'm using the current VR and your BP team.

I am relying on public resources because these are what the community currently agrees on. If I use my own opinions (viz: Volcarona is viable, for example), then we may get into a lengthy discussion about Volcarona's viability instead of the actual suspect at hand. If I say "BP uses X" someone else could say "BP uses Y set instead" and I don't want to get lost in such a discussion. This is IMO the cleanest way to stay at the topic at hand; use public resources that we can all agree on.

I am using your BP team because it is the only one publicly available. I have not faced any BP teams while laddering for suspect and there are none in the UPL replays.

For what it's worth, everyone's "common sense" is different. For example, you say Charizard is bad, but I know at least one person used it for reqs (on an admittedly garbage Ubers ladder). See the following post:

Confirming as U4E E4U

Both of my losses were to Reshiram missing Blue Flare, blind pos lol.

Shoutouts Ropalme1914 for the team that I slightly modified. G-Zard eats Baton Pass for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Which does more damage to BP teams, Sneak or Thief? Do they share the same immunities and thus switch-ins? Thank you.
You seem to be under the impression that I don't understand what you are saying, so rather than repeat myself:
1. Breaking the Chain=/=Winning
2. Team Preview is a thing.
3. Mental Herb is a thing.
Oh, and Taunt on Sableye is over Prankster Encore and Disable. Both of which are really powerful.

You seem to be under the impression that a BP user is happy to have their chain broken once a game. This is obviously false, as a broken chain can very easily mean game over. Is is possible to restart a broken chain? Sure. It is likely against a remotely offensive team with many weakened mons? Of course not.

Team preview being a thing makes life 100% easier for the player playing against fullpass. I fail to see why this is relevant.

Mental herb is a thing, but the BP user has to choose between lefties and Mental herb. It's not like the BP user will be spamming mental herb on every mon.

I'll repeat what I said: you run Taunt on Sableye if you need it. If your team already beats fullpass, feel free to run Encore or Disable.

I'll repeat myself:

I'll just DD in front of the Scoli-whoops they have a Sub up now and can use Iron Defence or BP to an attacker to KO Gyara safely. That's an L I guess.
If all Hydreigon does is click Dark Pulse, it becomes setup fodder for Magearna and its probable Weakness Policy. And then you Taunt the Magearna that you are sure is not carrying a STAB Fairy move that OHKOs you instantly starting a Soul-Heart snowball? Brave.
You see, the BP player has to lose multiple 50/50s before he can truely throw in the towel. The other player only has to lose one, and the FullPass spirals out of control. That's why it's stacked in the BP player's favour.

Getting a DD on a Scoli's protect is basically game over for the BP player. The safe play, of course, is to attack, but don't pretend that the BP player is incapable of losing turn 1, just like the anti BP player is capable of getting into a bad position. I fail to see how this is evidence of the 50/50 being weighted towards the BP player.

Taunting Magerana is hardly "brave". Losing a mon prematurely hurts a lot less vs fullpass than it does vs traditional strategies. So yes, of course I'm taunting Mage every time. The BP user isn't snowballing anytime soon; they want more speed/iron def/calm mind boosts.

Running Taunt over EQ on Gyara is asking to get walled to hell and back by Ferrothorn, Nec DM, and basically every tanky Steel ever. It also means Gyara has no means of fighting Zekrom, a Pokemon it is meant to obliterate with EQ, and becomes setup fodder for it. Taunt is good when it's on utility mons, not sweepers. Oh, and Sub>Taunt on Hydreigon because it makes setting up Nasty Plots way easier and less risky.

You can Taunt ferrothorn anyways so it's not as big of a problem. I'd argue you actually have an easier time vs Ferrothorn with Taunt over EQ because it can't leech seed you. Its only attack is usually body press or knock off, both of which deal minimal damage.

Do you really want to click EQ on Nec DM? Let's see the calcs:

252 Atk Gyarados Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Prism Armor Necrozma-Dusk-Mane: 129-153 (32.4 - 38.4%) -- 97.1% chance to 3HKO
252 Atk Gyarados Waterfall vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Necrozma-Dusk-Mane: 103-123 (25.8 - 30.9%) -- guaranteed 4HKO

EQ does marginally more than waterfall without a nifty flinch chance; moreover, EQ procs a potential weakness policy. Taunt, on the other hand, can help facilitate a sweep by preventing Necrozma from clicking Trick Room or Morning Sun. I think I'd prefer Taunt for this matchup.

Not having EQ indeed hurts against Zekrom. Having said that, the increased utility against threats like skarm, corviknight, and the like is more than worth it IMO.

Taunt is, to put bluntly, good on every mon that gets it. It is arguably one of the best moves in the game. It's definitely worth at least considering, especially on builds that want to prevent Defog (e.g. hazard stack HO)

You seem to not understand what Shuckle does. And that a 20 BP Stored Power still triggers Red Card. I'll let you go work that out.

At this point, it seems that you're not arguing in good faith.

Of course 20 BP stored power triggers Red Card. This is why, against full pass, you're not going to lead shuckle (Even though you lead shuckle in every other matchup) and instead lead something else (like Zacian-C for example). Then, after they've set up the chain with sufficient boosts to kill you at the cost of 50% health on every team member, you bring in shuckle, phaze them, and clean up. Is that easier to understand?

Hey, so was I! But one of us actually understands the opportunity cost of Haze and why it is not the primary recommended option, especially now Flip Turn is in the format. The only reason Haze is viable at all on Vaporeon is because Baton Pass really, else it can just pivot out into a faster attacker that shuts down the sweeper, like Zacian-C.

Ok, leading Marshadow beats 0% of prepped BP teams. Got it. As for why you can't just interrupt the chain halfway through, see the block of text you quoted.

Except Haze is the primary recommended option. Whoops.

Marshadow does beat the BP team you posted. Not every BP team will be carrying dubwool/indeedee (these mons are pretty bad otherwise), and it's pretty disingenuous to pretend every BP team will be having the exact counterplay to the team you decided to use.

Well isn't that obvious. Fun fact: Zamazenta-C is still on the Ubers VR. It's still garbage that should never used.

I was speaking of course about Galar AG, which is precisely the same format as Ubers except without Dynamax Clause because there aren't any mons it's worth bringing multiple of or any significant sleep inducers or any significant evasion boosters. In many ways, BP is harder to use in Galar AG because of the lack of Dynamax Clause, allowing things like Marshadow and Ditto to do serious damage, as well as letting Dynamaxed Zekrom lose on your team.

This is what's possible in AG:

Clefable @ Leftovers
Ability: Unaware
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Minimize
- Substitute
- Baton Pass
- Soft-Boiled

Ninjask @ Leftovers
Ability: Speed Boost
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Double Team
- Substitute
- Protect
- Baton Pass

I think it's understandable no one really wants to face this.

And as for UPL:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ubers-1145603250
Replay of "Magearna pass" in action.... On both sides. It also has Shuckle, so you can see what that does. Oh and Taunt only works here if you have your own Speed boosts, else Magearna just gets off the BP.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8ubers-508712
Replay of Magearna in action without BP, showing it can be hard to spot some versions of "Magearna pass" at preview, because it could just be a normal Magearna.
I wonder how many players made gentleman's agreements Week 1, and how many just figured that since everyone was thinking about it, everyone would bring the BP counterplay, so it wasn't worth it.
EDIT: Also, none of the counterplay you mentioned was bought to Week 1. Teams preferred to spam Haze Pex and Haze Quagsire instead.

You missed the point about Shuckle; obviously you're going to play completely differently against full pass than against quick pass.

Let's take a closer look at what was brought week 1, and their fullpass counterplay:

[DCV] Icemaster vs. [DRZ] TrueNora

One player brings Quagsire and other brings Urshifu.

[DCV] Cromagnet vs. [DRZ] Ballfire

I see a Volcarona and an Urshifu, both of which beat fullpass by themselves. They have Quagsire as well, but I don't know if quagsire is even running haze because it doesn't really need to here.

[DUR] Skysolo vs. [MEL] Royal1604

I see Meteor beam Eterneus--which also beats BP, I forgot to mention this--LO excadrill, and Marshadow as BP counterplay.

[DUR] TonyFlygon vs. [MEL] Fc04

One player runs Quagsire and other other runs Urshifu.

[HDH] dice vs. [CBT] crucify

There's LO excadrill, Volcarona, Marshadow, Quagsire, and Gyarados.

[HDH] Shuwri vs. [CBT] Alpha Rabbit

Red Card Shuckle, Urshifu, and Gyarados, and SS cloyster provide plenty of counterplay to Fullpass.

[RQZ] Goat Heart vs. [DLG] Reje

I see a Urshifu, Cinderace, Volcarona, and Quagsire as Fullpass counterplay.

[RQZ] Jaajgko vs. [DLG] 100%GXE

I see Volcarona, Ditto, and Quagsire.

Overall, it seems that there is plenty of Urshifu, Gyra, Marshadow, Quagsire, and Volcarona being spammed; enough so that Full Pass is probably going to lose if brought. This seems like a pretty far cry from "Bring haze or lose". Haze Toxapex never saw play, and I suspect some of the Quagsires weren't running haze; at least one (in the last game) was confirmed to be running curse instead.

Apprently, top Ubers players disagree. Like I said, it's a sweeper bypassing all the risks of setting up itself and freeing up a moveslot or two for more coverage. Or a Choiced mon being able to set up. Or a sweeper getting access to boosting moves that it shouldn't. The issue is the quickpassers here: they are getting more and more reliable, to the point that Magearna Pass Offense is a full consistent strategy rather than just matchup cheese.

What's wrong with quickpass teams being consistent? This doesn't make the tier noncompetitive in any way--in fact, it arguably makes the tier more competitive. Moreover, you claim it's a sweeper bypassing all the risks, which is false. It still has to take a hit--or have the mon passing be able to take a hit--on the switch in.

You may want to try and understand why the suspect is being held. This is Ubers. Here, people do not care if something has 100% usage, they do not care if something is broken, they only care if it is competitive. Mega Ray, for instance, was banned for being so broken that it was uncompetitive, leading to games being decided by coin tosses on the Mega Ray switch-in rather than any player skill. BP is uncompetitive, hence it is being suspected.

If this was line of thinking was legitimate, everything that got suspected should be banned. There's a reason suspects are held. For example, Shadow Tag was suspected last generation, and did not get banned. It is up to the voters to decide if BP is uncompetitive or not.

 

[Nayrz]

Baton Pass is now banned. The SS Council will be watching UPL closely for any further test subjects which will be covered in a later "On the Ubers Radar" thread if the time is right. Thanks to those who participated in the discussions and overall test around this vote.

 

[Jaajgko]

I don't have much time to make complete forum posts, which are long to write in a foreign language, but I'd like to open the discussion on the dynamax banlist. I think allowing mons like Tyranitar or Corviknight to dynamax in order to stop incredibibly strong threats like Lunala, Reshiram or Zacian is great. However, the dynamax banlist currently allows many sweepers to be as hard to deal with as the legendaries, and creates too much offensive versatility in the tier, which defensive options can't really keep up with, which creates a metagame where you pretty much have to pick what's going to destroy you. There are also flip a coin match-ups where one player has many dynamax users that could be threatening whereas the other doesn't, meaning that the non-dynamax user will either have to scout the whole game, or try to predict the turn where the opponent dynamaxes, which often isn't clear. I think the most problematic dynamax users are:
- Weather sweepers:
- Mons that can boost their speed:
- Mons that can get many stats boosts and quickly snowball:
I'm not saying those need to straight up being banned, nor that they are the top 10 strongest dynamax users, but that they have proven themselves to be very threatening and to get quickly out of hand, and need to be looked at. To me, the most outstanding ones are Gyarados and Excadrill, and have been threatening since day 1. They force certain counterplay like Rotom-Wash or Mow (for both), Corviknight/Skarm (for Drill) or Iron Defense Ferrothorn for Gyarados, which can be beaten anw, or sacrificing something into revenge killing with Ditto. Most of the mons I named bring almost no defensive utility to the tier, which it definitely needs more than offensive utility at the moment, so idt them being able to dynamax brings anything positive to the meta.