Metagame On the Ubers Radar #2 - Baton Pass

[Rarycaris]

Here's what I think boost means. It means any positive stat boost that is self-created. For example, Baton passing boosts from opponent's Swagger or Flatter would not trigger the clause. Baton passing Swords dance boost would lose you the game. Baton passing Special attack drop from Snarl would not lose you the game.

My understanding of the proposal is not that attempting the action loses you the game, but rather that it just fails to pass the boosts. So if you use Swords Dance after having your special attack lowered by Moonblast, and then Baton Pass, the new Pokemon switches in with the special attack drop and no attack boosts.

 

[Ropalme1914]

Why so many people are assuming we need a mod for this? From my understanding, we can just not allow Baton Pass alongside a boosting move on the teambuilder the same way we did with Mega Gengar and Hypnosis. Shadow Tag wouldn't just fail if Mega Gengar came on a Pokémon that's already sleeping, the same way Baton Pass shouldn't if your opponent used Swagger (which is 100% their fault if they did that lol). Contrary to Dynamax, I won't go to great lenghts to support the clause over the simple ban as the dimension of it is much lower, but if do the clause, I don't see why a mod is necessary over a teambuilder limit.

 

[orch]

My understanding of the proposal is not that attempting the action loses you the game, but rather that it just fails to pass the boosts. So if you use Swords Dance after having your special attack lowered by Moonblast, and then Baton Pass, the new Pokemon switches in with the special attack drop and no attack boosts.

I don't like this implementation. It's an unnecessary mod that alters Baton pass mechanics considerably. I would prefer if you just couldn't click Baton pass after using Swords dance. The button would be greyed out or something of that nature. In an ingame battle, you would lose on that turn.

e: Okay, I see a problem with this idea. For example, Ninjask is trapped by Gothitelle after getting its Speed boost. It also have no pp left except for Baton pass. In this situation, it is forced to lose the game right there or we can adjust mechanics that Ninjask escapes with no boost or it keep clicking Baton pass until it struggles. I think that auto-loss is the cleanest implementation even if it will feel "wrong" in very odd and specific situations.

 

[Ryota Mitarai]

Why so many people are assuming we need a mod for this? From my understanding, we can just not allow Baton Pass alongside a boosting move on the teambuilder the same way we did with Mega Gengar and Hypnosis. Shadow Tag wouldn't just fail if Mega Gengar came on a Pokémon that's already sleeping, the same way Baton Pass shouldn't if your opponent used Swagger (which is 100% their fault if they did that lol). Contrary to Dynamax, I won't go to great lenghts to support the clause over the simple ban as the dimension of it is much lower, but if do the clause, I don't see why a mod is necessary over a teambuilder limit.

To be completely honest, I thought BP clause was that, initially, given BP clause, in historical context, is... well, that, where you are not allowed to run BP and anything that boosts your own stats (like SD / Speed Boost etc.) so I got a bit surprised reading the whole thread that the BP clause was an in-battle mod.

However, upon thinking about it, I realized that the clause this way does not prevent (at least on first look) passing boosts completely, as someone may Dynamax, get some boosts (like from Max Knuckle or Airstream) and BP them anyways. Would this be worth handling? I can see the disadvantages of such strategy, because you can't BP while Dynamaxed (and trying to Max Guard to stall means less boost to get) and the recipient can be copied by Ditto or countered in some other way and thus forcing a switch and potentially wasting the opponent's Dynamax.

I can only theorymon about whenever BPing Dynamax boosts would be broken, unless we see how it goes. If it does end up being broken, either BP clause has to make it so BP users cannot Dynamax or BP should just be banned. Though, again, I have some doubts it's gonna be a game breaker, so for now, I am not gonna dive into it too much.

All in all, my personal stance is that BP clause should probs be "prevent running BP with self-boosting things", if that is possible and see if passing Dynamax boosts is broken. I do understand that Ubers Premier League is a thing right now and maybe "testing" wouldn't be a very appropriate decision in terms of affecting the tournament, so maybe ban BP initially and give a try to a BP clause after UPL? An initial ban on BP is "safer" because we know it's gonna address the problem with BP completely, while the BP clause on teambuilder level can potentially fail, if we do not artificially restrict Dynamaxing on BP users. But ultimately, I'd like to at least try BP clause at some point (on teambuilder level), because banning BP is already a complex ban (although the less complex one) and I personally think it's fine for Ubers, being the last official tier, to enact such clauses, in order to preserve an element's "official" presence on Smogon tiers.

 

[Ortheore]

How exactly is banning BP a complex ban? You're unconditionally banning a single game element, there's nothing complex about it lol

 

[Master Chief]

Can we just ban this bullshit in some sort of form rather than get bogged down by some stupid details before the next week of UPL -_-

 

[Nayrz]

tl;dr BP Clause is extremely complex to properly create and enforce (much moreso than the Dynamax Clause), we should accept the collateral of drypass and the move should be tested.

Baton Pass has a lot of variable strategies. We've covered drypass and fullpass, but haven't even touched on strategies like SmashPass (Polteageist to a sweeper) and then "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.

A "Baton Pass Clause" has a lot of possibilities to account for. The clause wants to essentially prevent anything beneficial being passed at all, which means a teambuilder ban of "Stat boost + BP can't be on the same set" is one of the only reasonable ways to go about it, but should we do that? It's a single move that has many abusive applications. A teambuilder ban that covers abilities (it has to because Speed Boost exists) prevents Magearna from ever using BP (Soul-Heart can boost stats), so one example of a mon to "preserve drypass" for is now gone unless you make Soul-Heart an exception, which is just getting silly.

If you deal with BP through an in-battle mod there are a lot of technical conditions players need to now know and be aware of (what is "beneficial" to pass??) and its extremely messy. This level of complexity differs a lot to the Dynamax Clause where we essentially said "You can't Dynamax these Pokemon". That is easily understood and easy to enforce. A BP clause through an in-battle mod is asking the simulator to constantly check for conditions to allow for Baton Pass to work or not, and I'd honestly feel bad asking this sort of ban to be configured on PS especially considering it might not have thought about absolutely everything.

When OU did their whack-a-mole balancing strategy for BP it resulted in people just looking for a different way to break it, and they succeeded multiple times before BP itself was banned. We are trying to learn from this by either banning the move or attacking BP exactly where it hurts (prevent all beneficial passing), but the more I think about it, the more against implementing a clause I feel. The benefits aren't worth the hassle and I'd feel much more confident in just evaluating the metagame benefits/downsides to the move as a whole.

I'll be frank - I believe that the non-abusive applications of Baton Pass are not worth the song and dance that a BP clause comes with. If people want to preserve BP for their deemed ok strategies like drypass or whatever then they should weigh that option against BP's worst abuse cases and choose to simply vote do not ban in a suspect test on the move itself, accepting everything that BP comes with to the metagame as a result.

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Lastly, UPL doesn't have to be strictly held to what is legal in the tier. It's entirely possible to just ban BP from SS in UPL until a test officially concludes one way or the other - assuming its a full BP test and not a clause test (enforcing a clause without the simulator shouldn't be forced on the players) - so rushing the decision just for UPL's sake isn't really necessary.

We'll be closing this thread sometime tomorrow night, so if you have something to say on the matter, post it soon!

 

[Ropalme1914]

Imo, it's either the teambuilder limit or full ban. I don't think not allowing Magearna to use BP at all is that bad (Sandslash entirely is banned from BW OU because all of its possible abilities are banned there despite being RU), and neither do I think including abilities makes the clause that much complex, but if it does, then fully ban it. I know Dynamax boosts can also be dangerous, and if they do prove they're broken by themselves, then Baton Pass has no saving, but OU's way to handle it back then was way worse (they tried to keep the boost passing part still, just with less boosts). But like I said before, a mod is a horrible ideia that makes things too confusing and probably would take a lot more time to implement on PS in general, alongside mods in general not being that desirable I think. Dry passers also aren't abundant, so despite I still thinking that they're interesting, the collateral still is much better than allowing Baton Pass as it is now.

 

[Talpr0ne]

I don't have any particular opposition to basically "house nerfing" the move in principle, but the amount of effort Smogon has gone to to preserve drypassing over the years is hilariously disproportionate to how relevant it is as part of the metagame. We've been going through this whole song and dance around this move for at least five years now, with all sorts of byzantine measures taken to balance it that have mostly failed to keep it in check. This clause would certainly balance it, but altering what a move does outside of the teambuilder is something that Smogon generally reserves for extreme circumstances (preserving sleep moves, although even these were considered for outright ban in gen 5 IIRC, and preserving Dynamax in ubers), and I'm not convinced that Drypassing is impactful enough to justify breaking cartridge fidelity.

I also dislike the potential custom interaction with Ingrain, since making it unable to be passed negates one of the meaningful downsides of that move -- namely, the inability to voluntarily switch out, which Baton Pass is not supposed to provide a means of circumventing. That said, I don't think this combination is legal on any relevant Pokemon, and it would be easy to just ban it at the teambuilder level or just allow the passing of Ingrain.

EDIT: Just checked, and the only things that learn both moves are Bellossom and Smeargle (which is likely not coming back for gen 8). I don't foresee Bellossom Baton Passing Ingrain to be a big enough problem that it needs specifically addressing.

Correct me if I am wrong, but a true drypassing clause (at teambuilder level or as a battle mod) has never been tried to my memory. Before giving up and banning Baton Pass in its entirety, most attempts to a clause wanted to preserve the function of stat passing.