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.