Metagame On the Ubers Radar #2 - Baton Pass

[Nayrz]

​

The SS Council have been keeping our ears to the ground and listening to community opinions about the state of the new metagame. One of the biggest standouts among them is Baton Pass, and while it saw varying degrees of usage prior to the Isle of Armor's release, it's gaining more attention these days. Baton Pass strategies have had some very useful new additions with the DLC with Pokemon such as Scolipede and Magearna now being available.

Baton Pass has had and still currently does have some diverse uses in SS Ubers: "DryPass" - using BP as a simple pivot option, and "FullPass" - teams dedicated to passing boosts between a full team to an eventual sweeper, with some niche applications in between the two as well. There is a growing sentiment among ladder and tournament players that FullPass strategies endanger the health of the metagame and it should be addressed.

The SS Council feel that there are two main possible ways to address this:

- Ban Baton Pass (as a move entirely)
- A "Baton Pass Clause" that prevents any boosts from being passed to teammates.

Only one of these choices can be put up for a suspect test after this thread concludes. In other words, how we try to implement it will be decided here in this thread. The suspect test would decide if the implementation method is actually enforced or not. The goal of this thread is twofold: for the community to decide if Baton Pass merits any action at all, and if so, to decide which of the two above ideas is the superior option with all things considered. Posts arguing a case should be well thought out and contain evidence wherever possible.

We're hoping to wrap this up by the end of next weekend - let's hear what you have to say!

 

[SiTuM]

A Baton Pass Clause should be implemented as soon as possible, just for the well-being of UPL. Before DLC, Baton Pass was in my opinion already unhealthy to the metagame, as it just relied on the fact that your opponent didn't run things like Haze Toxapex or bad sets like Rock Blast Tyranitar. But now, because of Magearna, it has reached a stage where Baton Pass is both unhealthy and broken. The fact that Magearna, a Pokemon that possesses Calm Mind, Iron Defense and Shift Gear, as well as getting +1 in SpA when you get a kill, is able to give these boosts to some Pokemons like Volcarona, Eternatus, Dracovish etc is totally absurd. This mechanic doesn't require skill at all, just because of how stupidly bulky Magearna is.

 

[KyogreF4N]

I think we should suspect the boost pass, because as said in the thread it has new additions that make it stronger than before, and suspecting it allows to see whether it's healthy or not.
I'm not in favor of banning baton pass as a move because of umbreon, which has a decent usage, and for which baton pass is a good option to keep momentum. It is not a problem, just as u-turn, flip turn, volt switch and teleport.
Full pass always had its niche but I never considered it too threatening before the DLC because of its usual counters : taunt, haze, hazards, extra pressure from sd zacian very hard to deal with in some cases. But with magearna and scolipede becoming available, I'm worried about strategies like sd pass to dracovish that clicks Fishious Rend with boosts in speed and atk becoming out of control, especially with dynamax available. These strategies are uncompetitive in my opinion because they don't require any skill. Hence, they should be banned, or at least suspected, which is the purpose of this thread.

This is my opinion on this, looking forward what the other players have to say about it!

 

[Tacotaco]

Baton Pass as a move should definitely not be banned. Complex bans are done in a way that makes the ban least complicated while retaining as much of the mechanics as possible. Banning Baton Pass as a whole is the least complicated ban, but the Baton Pass clause allows for retaining more mechanics. Since the problem lies in passing stat boosts, the Baton Pass clause is clearly the better option.

I also fully support the clause of absolutely no stat boost passing. It's quite hard to pinpoint which stat or how much stat boost passing is banworthy, so it's best to just ban all kinds of stat boosts passing for simplicity's sake. Even though it may be counterable with the right conditions, it's just going to be even more matchup fishy than usual.

 

[Fc]

Baton pass as a move imo is not broken, but the mons that get it and are able to easily provide boosts for their teammates make it broken in certain situations. The obvious thing to talk about is the full pass chain teams, even though I don't think they're the best kind of baton pass teams. If you have a poor or even average match up against full pass chains, you're likely losing every time. The support for it is no where near as good as last gen mainly due to the lack of smeargle, but baton pass teams have evolved with the meta as well and are doing alright for themselves. With DLC, they have arguably gotten much better with the addition of scolipede and espeically magearna, which currently is one of the biggest problems with baton pass. There's some fairly good counterplay to this archetype such as ditto paired with something to break substitutes like lo eternatus or sd zacian preferably with sacred sword, haze as a move, and strong special attackers like charizard or volcarona, but when I do use full pass I run sp.def clefable with amnesia and unaware which makes volcarona set up obsolete, and dubwool is sometimes able to set up on physical attackers and win 1v1 with body press.

Now the bigger problem that I've seen with baton pass is the teams built around smash pass or basic stat pass like sd scolipede or magearna. These teams usually pass to dracovish on the physical side, and a fast dracovish with attack boosts and a choice band will beat every single mon in the game that isn't water absorb which ubers doesn't have a huge place for, sash marshadow, full health counter skarm, or ditto. The fact that 2 of those checks can be dealt with by simply getting up stealth rocks and they're also not on every team makes it extremely hard to counter this simple few turn set up from the opponent. Magearna is bulky enough and scolipede can hold a focus sash which makes the set up very hard to counter, and overall unhealthy for the meta, because you are forced into running specific mons or else you risk losing the game instantly. This is worse than having to always run a zacian counter or a lunala counter or something like that because those mons are very common in the meta and are some of the best on their own, but scolipede and dracovish while good are no where close to meta defining and shouldn't be in that same category of you must run a counter on every team.

Because of all these reasons I do think there should be a baton pass clause implemented to the ubers tier that doesn't allow the passing of stats. Baton pass as a move without stat passing is similar to teleport, while in some cases is even a worse move than teleport, so I don't think as a move it should be banned, especially since ubers thankfully hasn't ignored the idea of a complex ban with the addition of the ubers dynamax clause.

Edit: I don't know if I got my whole point across, so I wanted to summarize it. I don't think that baton pass as a move is broken, nor do I think it is broken as a strategy. However, I do think that it is uncompetitive as a strategy due to it forcing a way of playing the game that is not present in non baton pass metas in games that have baton pass, since games are usually decided within a few turns if bp can get the pass going. I don't think any portion of games should be fully decided by one player clicking a set up move and then clicking baton pass, which is why I think a bp clause should be put in.

 

[Maxomega]

I'm glad the council decided to open this thread about Baton Pass. I'm voting for the Baton Pass clause for different reasons :

- Firstly, I find that the Full Pass "strategy" does not require any skill of the player using it. The gameplay of these teams is "I lead with Ninjask / Scolipede, I do protect then I do sub and after I click Baton Pass". This description may seem exaggerated or even caricatural. But that's what a player with a Full Pass based team does : boosting his Pokemon to infinity and then sweeping with whatever hard hitting Pokemon. And with the DLC, Krookodile and his Power Trip attack are back, making this way of playing even more stupid. Moreover, Magearna came back with Calm Mind / Iron Defense / Shift Gear, making Full Pass teams easier to get boosts. Before DLC, this playstyle had to take at least ten turns, now it takes two: Shift Gear into Baton Pass and you can put your abuser (Dracovish / Krookodile). Therefore, I'm totally against the Full Pass.

- Secondly, I'd like to mention the few Pokemon that would be penalized from the Baton Pass ban: Umbreon / Magearna / Sylveon / Vaporeon. All these Pokemons have their place in Ubers thanks to Baton Pass (except Magearna, which, without Baton Pass, would still be viable), preventing them from getting trapped by Gothitelle and Dugtrio, while passing a Wish (for the Eeveelutions) to another Pokemon of the team, without risk. As far as Magearna is concerned, its access to Baton Pass allows it to be a good support for Trick Room based teams. By the way, I hope we will see more of this archetype, due to the arrival of Porygon-2 and Magearna with the DLC. So I'm in favor of the Baton Pass Clause so that these Pokemon will remain viable in the tier and that the Trick Room based teams will become viable.

I'm eager to see the opinion of other SS players !

 

[orch]

I think that Baton pass clause is the best move for Ubers tiering.

Firstly, the idea that Baton pass is a skilless strategy is completely wrong. It is a highly intricate play style that requires extensive planning in teambuilder and intricate execution to succeed. Yes, there are some easier baton pass teams to pull off but they have far more counters than the precise and well engineered Baton pass teams. IMO, any posts saying that baton pass is "braindead", skilless, or anything along these lines should be automatically disregarded for being uninformed or being extremely salty.

I don't know much about Baton Pass except for beating them pre-DLC with roar Tyranitar or auto-losing. This is the issue that I have with baton pass that pass stats strategies - it is a very high volatility strategy that increases diversity of Ubers. Even though banning this strategy will decrease the diversity of Ubers, it will increase people's enjoyment with playing this metagame because it will decrease the overall volatility that you have to take in account for the teambuilding back to baseline Ubers volatility experience.

I don't have any numbers, but if people are complaining about having to try to beat a highly diverse and intelligent strategies in top of other existing highly diverse and intelligent strategies. It shows that Ubers tier is becoming too cognitively overbearing for people. This tier isn't meant for only AI to play- people should be able to enjoy the metagame without considering additional millions/billions of possible permutations of Full BP strategies.

I think that cutting out a specific strategy that technically doesn't stop anyone from using any additional pokemon while preserving cognitively tolerable dry pass strategies is the best compromise that allows people to enjoy the SM Ubers metagame.

 

[Ryota Mitarai]

Just want to note that, pre-DLC, I almost always ran a Roar Pokemon (typically Tyranitar), simply cause it was my best way to bop BP teams without building too much around it, and even then, any competent BP team will also have a Hatterene to stop strats like this (Hatterene also happens to learn BP, so it can pass CM boosts as well, though TTar can potentially hit it hard with Stone Edge or something if it's running it). This kind of shows the amount of centralization BP teams have caused on my end, at least.

As for which decision is superior, banning BP completely is already sort of a complex ban by itself (theoritically, we could ban Ninjask and Scolipede, if we wanted to make it less complex, but I am pretty sure we all would disagree with such an option, if it even existed on first place), so in the end, I don't think that banning BP by itself is the better decision, policy-wise, and it's going to be better to just make it so you cannot have Baton Pass and anything that boosts stats on the same set (if I am reading the Baton Pass clause correctly?). I want to add that another Pokemon, in addition to the aforementioned ones in previous posts, that would get knocked down in viability with a complete ban of BP would be Pyukumuku, which can switch in on a set up sweeper and then either force them out and BP, thus gaining momentum, or they stay on the field and you bring in Ditto or something that can handle the opposing set up sweeper.

All in all, both decisions are complex by themselves and a Baton Pass clause policy has less consequences on the metagame, as Baton Pass for the mere purpose of pivoting is essential on a couple of Pokemon. It was fun passing +2 Speed and Attack to Band Dracovish, but I think BP teams cause a bit of a centralization, at least per my experience with them, and even strats like Roar Tyranitar are imperfect against them due to Pokemon like Hatterene making it harder to use them.

 

[Ballfire]

As someone who has played a lot of full pass pre-DLC I agree that baton pass is a fundamentally unfun strategy to face.
There are several reasons for that:

-Games are decided in Preview.
Some teams just lose to baton pass. If you don't have a high damage threat or other answers full pass teams will simply stack defense boosts and sweep. Same applies to the fullpass players: it's nearly impossible to win against SD Sacred Sword Zacian-C, Kyurem-B or Haze Toxapex.

-Games are low in skill expression.
When playing full pass (or ninjask drypass), the only skill involved is playing mind games around sub/protect. Playing full pass is easy, building a viable full pass team is not. Disgusting bp users such as my self express their skill in team builder.

-Baton pass counters are bad
In order to reliably counter full pass, one must use suboptimal sets such as SD Sacred Sword Zacian-C (over CC), Roar Tyranitar and Haze Quagsire. While these moves do have merit against some other teams, they're simply not as good against the rest of the meta as other moves.
Despite full pass's low play rate, players prepare for it because losing to a full pass squad isn't fun.

I'm less experienced with dry pass (Edit: I meant Smashpass) but I find that it's similarly volatile and matchup dependant. In my opinion, the baton pass clause is the best solution as it enables momentum gain for niche Pokémon such as Eevolutions and Hatterene (I suppose Magearna could use it over volt switch if ground types are a concern).

 

[Trikk0tr33t]

It can be annoying to face but fun to use, it does take skill to use these types of teams if you choose. You must come up with ways to deal with roar/whirlwind, ditto if youre not behind a sub will completely ruin you and marshadow unless you can outspeed it and pass to a normal type which isnt really common or it will steal your boosts.

A full chain to me is too risky because if its broken its very hard to make a comeback and depending on who you lose it could just be game over.
I've been using more of a half bp team that grew from mostly testing stuff out. I came up with mew block/bp/cosmic power/bp to trap stuff to set up on but pokemon has changed since 3gen and mean look/block wont keep the opponent trapped once you bp to someone else so i switched to sub to try to block ditto and protect myself from status and leech seed from ferrothorn.

I think bp is a big part of the game and shouldnt be banned, it more fun and fast paced than stalling to me. Most teams I face have ditto and/or marshadow/quagsire or something with haze to try to deal with bp.

 

[Jeck95]

I would like a baton pass clause that prevents passing boosts to teammates. The way baton pass right now I feel like puts a small limit on team building since you need to have some answer to it in case you run into it (stuff like ditto and quagsire are the consistent from what I've seen but you can dynamax to get around ditto and quagsire is only useful depending on the threats on said baton pass team). There are other bp counters mentioned above but as mentioned there, they are suboptimal. Side note, I think teams that are more orientated to just passing speed boosts to slow powerful mons a bunch of times are more dangerous than full pass teams since shutting down a full pass team once usually ends the game right there where speed boost passing team can attempt it multiple times in a single game.

Banning baton pass completely would be fine in my book as well but having a baton pass clause covers the main issues with baton pass currently while also allowing niche pokemon to use baton pass for strictly momentum.

 

[Minority]

Baton Pass doesn't belong in a competitive 6v6 singles tier. The ability to pass stat changes or other game conditions alters the premise of the game since a single Pokemon no longer functions as a discrete element of a team. When you're playing against Baton Pass you aren't playing a 6v6 decision making contest, you're fighting a single Pokemon with 24 moves that can also change its type and ability. Regardless of if you're the Baton Pass user or if you're forced to play against it, the opportunity for interesting choice is dramatically lowered. Baton Pass is at best linear and at worse solved. Either your team has the tools to overcome Baton Pass or it doesn't. It's matchup over play. This is the core reason why Baton Pass is so widely despised; you wanted to play Ubers, but now you're forced to play a game called "stop the chain", and the game sucks.

 

[Ropalme1914]

Full Baton Pass is a matchup reliant thing that doesn't bring anything good to the meta: if you don't have something like multi-hits, Haze, Roar, or some extremely niche or suboptimal stuff like Gigantamax Charizard or Sacred Sword Zacian, you'll probably lose. If you do have, then you'll probably win. There's no testing with the skill of both players here: it's just a test if you brought the right team or not, and even then, sometimes the Haze could be too passive (like Toxapex) to really just make the game drag on without going anywhere. As also mentioned by Ballfire, the only time something really can be decided by plays is the start of the game between Substitute and Protect, as you could set up on those turns or something, but still, that's just a second coin flip.

Of course, you don't need to be full pass, as stuff like ShellPass Polteageist also exist, but they aren't as offensive. However, it can still be pretty dumb due to stuff like offense sometime literally having no chance against +2/+2 Eternatus, Dracovish or similar. They are more manageable and wouldn't be banworthy by itself, but still won't bring much to the tier either at all imo.

Dry Pass, on the other hand, is a good thing. Having defensive pivots avaliable is welcome to hold the big offensive threats like Lunala or Zacian on the tier, which is mainly demonstrated by Umbreon, but still can have some interesting users such as Shedinja. The only thing holding it back I think would be the "purity" of the tier, but seeing how this is much less complex than the Ubers Dynamax Clause (with the possible exception of using Swagger to prevent those things? It's WAY too situational to be of concern I think), probably the clause will be the way to go.

 

[shrang]

BP is getting harder and harder to defend for me. Don't get me wrong, I hate BP as much everyone else, but fundamentally before now I've never found BP to either so oppressing to face or "uncompetitive" to the point that it takes away player autonomy. I don't think "decreasing skill ceiling" (or whatever that's supposed to mean) is a legit reason to ban anything in any tier, let in alone in Ubers where have a uhh, reputation to consider. Evopass was an exception because it was a lot closer to being oppressive because it was not that difficult to pull off at all.
I've always maintained that changing a mindset about playing vs BP has always been the way to counter it rather than finding specific counters. What people need to remember is that on turn 1, BP teams are always at a disadvantage since they are generally 6 mons (that are generally shit in terms of viability) with suboptimal movesets. Normally, they way we play vs a general team is that we would make moves to try and gain an advantage and then execute your game plan. What's different about BP is that they are at a disadvantage initially and only gain an advantage if you let them. This is why conventional play vs BP teams does not work. You need to press the advantage from turn 1 and maintain that advantage - my general advice is send in your most powerful sweeper on turn 1, set up in 1 turn if possible and just start wailing at them. If you succeed, you win, if you fail, you lose. The skill involved is the skill of the BP player who needs to be able to navigate this (which is actually not as easy as it looks on paper).
What's changing in this gen is the fact that BP teams are becoming less and less disadvantaged because there are lots of GOOD Pokemon that can now learn Baton Pass (eg Jirachi, Clefable, Magearna). The fact that Clefable now has Baton Pass (ie BP now has access to Unaware) takes away a huge weapon vs chains (which is immediate set up and attack) which is kind of bad. You'd probably have to run Mold Breaker set up (or Roar) and shit like that which is not ideal.
So I'm not sure at the moment whether chains are now too much I think we need a bit more time to play vs them to be absolutely sure before we ban (so suspect test is ideal). Outside of that, I'm not sure if BP is broken in general -> Smashpass is potentially broken since +2/+2/+2 Eternatus/Dracovish/Dusk Mane are never fun, but with shit like Ditto and Quagsire running around everywhere that it's not as simple as it looks. Otherwise I see no reason why one or even two Pokes in a team can't pass off 1 set of boosts each. I have no qualms about SD/NP/Agility or even Shift Gear/QD being passed, this won't break anything. Doing a blanket ban on BP like we did in gen 7 (especially when it was totally about Evopass) is just lazy, I think we need to be a bit more nuanced (particularly now we have a nuaunced ban on Dynamax too).

 

[Royal1604]

I think i'll repeat what good guys already said but let's go: for me baton pass is clearly an unhealthy thing for the tier. I won't say it's broken because there are some counters like haze/taunt but the result of the game is determined at team preview and you don't want that in the tier. Moreover, with DLC, it has become more easier to BP stats with mons like scolipede, mag, and awesome breakers like volca or dracovish. I think we should put a baton pass clause to have a good UPL. I won't give more details because it will repeat what KyogreF4N SiTuM and Fc04 already said.
This suspect is a good think for the tier, glad to see our voices have been listened.

 

[Ortheore]

Drypass literally isn't worth implementing a nonsense complex ban for. I still find it amazing that people are still willing to indulge a handful of niche uses for a move that has otherwise so consistently and thoroughly proven itself to be broken. BP has no place in singles play, except in gsc where it's never caused any issues

 

[keys]

Just because complex bans are a viable option to pursue in terms of tiering for Ubers when attempting to balance certain aspects of the tier while retaining as much of those elements as possible, that does not mean we should "fall in love" with the idea of complex bans and tier everything in that manner for the sake of it. Not every decision should result in a complex solution and I thoroughly believe that BP falls under the scope of that. When we look at the history of Baton Pass in singles metagames, we (as in Smogon tiers) have time and time again attempted to limit the move by introducing arbitrary complex solutions and those solutions have all unequivocally fallen flat, resulting in the removal of the element in it's entirety after some time in the tiers that have encountered such problem. Attempting to "balance" Baton Pass by introducing these stipulations has never addressed the issue at its core and will most likely not work for SS Ubers, as well as presenting the obvious knowledge burden of another complicated solution for our players.

I'm not entirely sold on doing anything to BP in the first place, but I believe the argument should be between fully removing the move or not touching it at all, with any proposals in between those extremes being undesirable and overall negative. Any attempts to nerf passing to 1 stat or "not speed" or 4 stats (yes I've heard this one already) are extremely arbitrary and do nothing to actually tackle the problematic aspects of BP, resulting in an ineffective and poor line of policy.

Even trying to keep "dry passing" is a hopeless endeavour that adds to the complexity of the rule for a very marginal and niche positive, if any, while not entirely closing up the potential for other problems down the line. What if BP becomes a problem with other "effects" that aren't encompassed by "stat passing" such as Ingrain and moves of that nature and then we have to find another complex solution down the road? I don't feel like the collateral damage of losing out on "drypass" is that much of a drawback to warrant a ridiculously complicated solution that tries to cover all of those while still allowing the move to be used, and if you do in fact decide to ignore those elements then you're leaving that door open for them to become problematic in some capacity which entirely defeats the purpose of this decision.

The benefit to hindsight is the ability to learn from mistakes and make more informed decisions, and implementing millions of stipulations in a desperate attempt to keep Baton Pass around for the nth time would be an enormous failure of our tiering system. As such, I'd like to propose that the options for this potential test be restricted to either a) banning the move in its entirety or b) taking no action at all and keeping the tier as it currently stands.

 

[orch]

What a ridiculous post. Stopping any stat boosts from being passed prevents any possible strategy that relies on stat being passed. No, it isn't impossible to pass a policy that only allows drypassing. It is literally being proposed.

Also, realize that banning baton pass move is a complex ban in itself as well.

 

[Manaphy]

As a fellow member of the tiering council let me post my thoughts:

1.) Baton Pass makes the tier more match-up based. As others have said in this thread already, Baton Pass forces teams to run suboptimal sets on Pokemon for the team to have a chance of beating BP. I realize this is something you could say for a number of Pokemon in the tier; specialized checks for mons isn’t anything out of the ordinary. The thing that separates BP from this is that, unless you have these specialized ways of beating BP, you most likely have no viable counterplay options besides hoping the opponent plays very sub-optimally. I think the tier is already match-up based as it is with all of the Ubers pokemon, dynamax abusers, and so on; BP is even worse than most of these because the game is usually almost entirely decided in the teambuilder instead of the skill of the player in-battle. You can at least try to play around a Zacian or predict your opponent’s Dynamax timing, but with BP you have very few options. Which leads to my next point...

2.) Baton Pass is boring. I realize this is a subjective point, but I think it’s still something important to point out. And this is also not to put down the intricate teambuilding that goes into making a BP team; I’m just talking about the in-battle playstyle here. The playstyle of BP is extremely flowchart-y, meaning that much it is entirely reactive. The nature of Baton Pass means that you will have the advantage on switching, meaning you can switch to a mon with a better matchup immediately. This is why a lot of games with a BP team vs a non-BP team are decided almost immediately, and this is very frustrating to many players. Not only do you have a team archetype that may either 100% win or 100% lose to whatever team you’re bringing, making the game boring from the start, the playstyle is also almost entirely reactive, meaning that one of the biggest competitive aspects of Pokemon, being able to make major reads of your opponent and their playstyle, is rendered null. Personally speaking, whenever I laddered and ran into a BP team, I just forfeit right away; I also know a ton of players who think the entire BP mechanic is garbage, and I don’t think this is a uncommon sentiment among players.

3.) Baton Pass is really good and will only get better when more DLC comes out. At the beginning of SS, BP wasn’t a huge problem as there wasn’t really anything too ridiculous able to abuse it; with the DLC that has already come out BP has gotten a big boost, such as with the release of Magearna, and based of what we know about future DLC, there is little reason to believe that BP won’t get all of the tools that helped make it broken in previous gens, if not only more so with Dynamax and new moves available. You also don’t even need a fully dedicated BP team to abuse the mechanic, as a single Pokemon passing boosts once can be immensely powerful. Ultimately, in the future competitive SS ubers will be played not in what we’re playing now but with all of the DLC released, so I don’t see much problem with getting ahead of the curve here.

Personally speaking, I would like BP to get dealt with very quickly in order to have UPL affected the least. IMO, the best option would be to allow Baton Passing with no boosts. This would allow some things like Umbreon and Pyukumuku to get some momentum from switches, and it also completely deals with the associated problems from BP mentioned above. I could also see some instances where Baton Pass could be useful on something to help escape Dugtrio and Gothitelle.
I think the only viable argument against this would be if you A.) think we want to ban this too fast (based on opinions in this thread and people I know it seems as if the vast majority of players just want this strategy gone ASAP, and with UPL starting imo it should be gone quickly as players will absolutely abuse it otherwise), or B.) are against complex bans in general; in my opinion, I don’t really mind this ban being technically “complex”, since it’s pretty easy to understand and overall harmless; I think this aspect comes down to just how you feel about complex bans in general.
Dream, if you have something more specific to say about the Drypassing solution, I would love to hear it. As it currently stands I only really see theoreticals coming from your post, so if you show me a way for Drypass to still abuse the Baton Pass mechanic, I’ll rethink my position, but otherwise I don’t understand the passion from what you wrote. I’m completely fine with either Drypassing or banning BP completely, but if there is even a marginal benefit to be gained from Drypass being legal, then there’s no reason to not take it imo.

 

[MMII]

This may have already been mentioned but, from what I understood from discord, the proposed Baton Pass clause would introduce new mechanics. Apparently, under this clause, bp would fail if used on the same turn as Swagger. (and presumably Intimidate/Defog?)

Is this worth saving the utility that mons like Umbreon get from dry passing? If that's what folks want, then sure. I just wanted to bring it up so people are aware.

Either way, Baton Pass should go. (in old gens too, imo. but that's for another thread...) Preferably soon; I don't think very many people need the convincing of a full blown suspect test but perhaps I assume too much! It's important to voice your opinion in this thread even if it's redundant.

 

[orch]

We already have new mechanics from the sleep clause. What's the big deal? We're already well past the console adherence purity line. We could go route of automatically losing when you pass stats. I don't mind either implementation.

 

[Jaajgko]

I agree with Manaphy that BP should get banned as quickly as possible, to let the new tier develop in a less volatile environment, to let us focus on potential changes on the dynamax banlist, and to have UPL being as competitive as possible. It seems like the vast majority agrees on its unhealthiness in the tier, so I think a quickban would be the solution here. Also, I don't think debatting over BP clause vs BP ban is very worth it because eeveelutions are pretty niche anw and they stay viable without bp, so it feels easier to outright ban it, otherwise if it doesn't involve much tiering policy discussion and if we really wanna value defensive diversity we can allow dry pass under the condition that it still works with stats drops, and Swagger is a non-issue bc it is extremely situational and doesn't really influences games anw.

 

[Manaphy]

After talking to dream (he edited his post here after lol), it appears he was worried about the possibility of Ingrain/Mean Look being able to be passed. I just assumed this would be part of the initial proposal for drypass, but I guess under the strict definiton of “boost” usually used in Pokemon contexts, you could make the argument that Ingrain/Mean Look aren’t technically included, but I also think you could make the argument that Mean Look/Ingrain is a benefit to you and thus falls under a more general meaning of “boost”. Either way if we did Drypass I don’t think these should be allowed. Perhaps a better term could be used.
I think intimidate and negative stats boosts would not be much of a problem for Drypass; if you want to pass a drawback to your teammate, then go ahead. Maybe there’s some weird Power Trick strategy or something to make use of this, but I can’t think of anything.
Swagger is an interesting case but I don’t think anyone really cares too much about it.

I still don’t think Drypassing is as complex as people make it out to be, but I’m leaning more towards the simple ban-the-move-entirely side now after all these arguments over minute details coming up, but like I said I’m fine going either way as long as BP is gone asap.

 

[Rarycaris]

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.

 

[orch]

I think that there is a major advantage to baton pass clause. It is a clause. It can be amended or adjusted at later date. For example, Hypnosis on Gengar-Mega was banned under Sleep clause.

There are ridiculous people who want to get hung up on the definition of "boost" and push for the most extreme option of banning Baton pass completely. Okay fine, let's get into the weeds.

Firstly, the best thing would be Nayrz clarifying exactly what "boost" means in public so that we can respond to his definition with a clear basis.

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.

This should cover the most problematic aspects of Baton pass which allows the offensive pokemon to get their positive stat boosts quickly with minimal punish.

Yes, it is possible that some random support niche of Baton pass can arise being broken. But, let's be practical here. If someone manage to conjure some black magic with severely nerfed Baton pass, then clause can be amended to ban that specific Baton pass mechanic.