Resource ORAS OU Metagame Discussion

[Seth_]

You lead Talon I hard switch to Thundurus. You lead Zam I make a strategic sac. [...] You don't need "perfect prediction" because Scolipede is almost completely autopilot, and in the small number of prediction cases around 90% of them can be rendered in favor of the Scoli player by speed boosts.

So what's stopping me from making double switch if BP player almost always makes same moves? That's weakness, not strength of this strategy!

Not to mention that SD chomp is much bigger thread to BP than you give it credit.

+2 252 Atk Life Orb Garchomp Dragon Claw vs. 240 HP / 0 Def Mega Heracross: 302-356 (83.6 - 98.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

That's far from snack. Fire fang even can OHKO. All they want to do is have on SD on scoli protect.

Wait, wait wait, hera just strait dies because it doesn't get free mega evoilution! And manaphy?

+2 252 Atk Life Orb Garchomp Dragon Claw vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Manaphy: 339-399 (83.9 - 98.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

I'm not even sure if they run max HP!

 

[zbr]

yay. more slippery slopes of predictions.

cheers to yall. idk why are we discussing about that bp team. when you see a bp team on the opposite end, it's simple. it's either you have a potential play for it or you don't. bp is generally structured to pressure you into making plays that force you to lose more momentum than you normally would if you made the "same" misplay against a non-bp team.

therefore, i don't think we should pull predictions into this. it's already been proven time and time again that even though you may have the outs for it (eg haze, priority, setups and phazers), it's not a surefire victory or even a close to 5050. it just means you have a fall back should they be able to go into their plays or you have a way to temporarily slow them down before they go ham on you.

conclusion? bp is stupidly matchup based and forces you to make a lot of suboptimal plays and alterations to your team that don't necessarily improve the team's game state.

e - we can pull all the calcs we want into this, you know as well as i do that calcs are only observed in a vacuum state and shouldn't be used as a "counterplay" to bp

 

[Seth_]

yay. more slippery slopes of predictions.

Why is this "slippery slope of prediction" when experienced BP player said that scolipede is autopilot? You get one SD and then spam Dragon Claw. You never have to click another move.

Of course baton pass in uncompetitive and should be removed. But there are solid counterplays for this specific team.

 

[Josh]

zbr nice double post noob

So what's stopping me from making double switch if BP player almost always makes same moves? That's weakness, not strength of this strategy!

Not to mention that SD chomp is much bigger thread to BP than you give it credit.

+2 252 Atk Life Orb Garchomp Dragon Claw vs. 240 HP / 0 Def Mega Heracross: 302-356 (83.6 - 98.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

That's far from snack. Fire fang even can OHKO. All they want to do is have on SD on scoli protect.

Wait, wait wait, hera just strait dies because it doesn't get free mega evoilution! And manaphy?

+2 252 Atk Life Orb Garchomp Dragon Claw vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Manaphy: 339-399 (83.9 - 98.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

I'm not even sure if they run max HP!

what's stopping you from making double switch is if you double switch on the bp you switch before they select who to pass to, so they now get a guaranteed safe pass to something that can also potentially set up on you, if you double switch on the sub you gave them a free sub. make up all the scenarios you want, the point is that all of these "50:50s" are in favor of the bp team. not to mention the beauty that is attract, which makes it so you only even get to attempt a 50:50 50% of the time. you need to win the prediction to SD and despite your attitude of "You get one SD and then spam Dragon Claw" it really isn't that easy. if you sd on sub/attract, you fucked yourself. prediction is a 2 way street and should not be used as an argument.

 

[MANNAT]

Why is this "slippery slope of prediction" when experienced BP player said that scolipede is autopilot? You get one SD and then spam Dragon Claw. You never have to click another move.

Of course baton pass in uncompetitive and should be removed. But there are solid counterplays for this specific team.

nigga most bp players arent retarded enough to let you set up and spam dclaw, not to mention that dclaw fails to ohko either of the 2 aformentioned mons, so u scan sack and go into something to revenge kill it lol, not to mention that different players play bp differently, so it's not the same play every time.

 

[Seth_]

zbr nice double post noob

what's stopping you from making double switch is if you double switch on the bp you switch before they select who to pass to, so they now get a guaranteed safe pass to something that can also potentially set up on you, if you double switch on the sub you gave them a free sub. make up all the scenarios you want, the point is that all of these "50:50s" are in favor of the bp team. not to mention the beauty that is attract, which makes it so you only even get to attempt a 50:50 50% of the time. you need to win the prediction to SD and despite your attitude of "You get one SD and then spam Dragon Claw" it really isn't that easy. if you sd on sub/attract, you fucked yourself. prediction is a 2 way street and should not be used as an argument.

Yeah, that's high risk/high reward play. Geting free SD is basicaly play that make turn your side to victory and I see no reason why it should not be put into argument. Even if you SD on sub and they get free swithc to manaphy it's not that bad because I can't imagine if the tail glow on that turn. That would be very risky.

So yeah, SD chomp is something that BP have to worry about.

Since baton pass is so common I'm happy that we can disscus about this strat strenght and weakness or posssoble plays to make.

nigga most bp players arent retarded enough to let you set up and spam dclaw, not to mention that dclaw fails to ohko either of the 2 aformentioned mons, so u scan sack and go into something to revenge kill it lol, not to mention that different players play bp differently, so it's not the same play every time.

+2 252 Atk Life Orb Garchomp Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Manaphy: 425-500 (105.1 - 123.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO

+2 252 Atk Life Orb Garchomp Dragon Claw vs. 240 HP / 4 Def Heracross: 430-507 (119.1 - 140.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO

And check that out nigga: yache chomp

252 SpA Manaphy Ice Beam vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Yache Berry Garchomp: 188-222 (52.6 - 62.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO


DO BP MANAPHY EVEN RUN MAX HP?

 

[bsu]

tbh i wouldn't know because i use neither, but what's the stall vs BP matchup like? I'm rather curious lol

also I'm wondering if after seeing this new wave of BP making the metagame "unfun" again, are we leaning more towards nerfing BP again, or more towards just waiting until Sun and Moon. and if the latter, would smog keep the current BP nerfs, or like has been done in the past, unban/unNerf some things to see how they adapt to new meta?

 

[Norne]

I said this at the start of this and I'll say this again, as annoying as BP is they have to choose in match up reliance, will they focus on removing a threat to the chain, or would they go for quick passes to boost a wallbreaker that got the big boost momentum wise( Thanks God Gothitrap got banned because this not only enabled stall or HO to get rid of "that one pokemon", but in BP it was beyond ridiculous).

Regardless of the situation BP hates neutral stab wallbreakers, it limits what they can bring and can cost them the match if immediate offensive pressure is applied.

Im not going to say they aren't annoying, but they are match up reliant as hell, I'm probably the only guy using stuff like mega Gardevoir or Rhyperior, but BP hates choiced mons and bulky wallbreakers as they can't bring a win con reliably.

 

[TheGreatKoala]

So what would be generally a good and reliable way of beating this strategy or is this strategy perfect so you are not able to counterplay against it ?

There are NO perfect strategies. How many more years do the games have to be out before some people realize that? I can counterplay against it, and other people have against me as well.
Priority/Haze/Eject moves/Eject items/thunder wave/Trick room. It's far from perfect. just because you can't beat it...

I would love have Baton Pass banned once and for all. Weren't there rumors about complete ban of Baton Pass around ?

Oh good, that discussion again. There were rumours, it was a stupid discussion.

Just saw this and thought I'd comment, but boosting alongside Scolipede doesn't work unless you are either a) already boosted when Scoli comes in or b) faster and already in vs. it. Given that Scoli typically runs a bulky spread (fast scoli is dookie srs just run enough to beat MZam at +1 (28 Spe Jolly) and ur set), this basically consists of Zard, Volcarona and Agility/Rock Polish users if you just look at unboosted 'mons. And then this brings with it the issue that no sane player would bring out a Scoli on something which is both currently faster than it and capable of boosting it's speed alongside it. At the end of the day if you don't have something that can take a hit from smth like +1 Zard on a BP team it's not a very good build, and with berries in particular being good on these types of builds (Sitrus Manaphy being a favorite of mine) you are able to come out of these matchups without being in range of weak priority (i.e. not ESpeed/Gale Bird). Not to mention that banking on the Protect turn to boost up leaves you susceptible to people mixing up their rhythm (like you should with Scolipede regardless of whether you run Attract or not) and subbing up as you boost--providing a safe BP to something that can beat it with a free switch-in.

My thinking of boosting alongside it is you might as well. You're going to get the free turn to do it.

 

[Martin]

Like, for what it's worth I have no real issue with BP, like I can win against it and I enjoy being able to autopilot off of low ladder, but I do want to highlight a few things in TheGreatKoala's post.

There are NO perfect strategies. How many more years do the games have to be out before some people realize that? I can counterplay against it, and other people have against me as well.
Priority/Haze/Eject moves/Eject items/thunder wave/Trick room. It's far from perfect. just because you can't beat it...

Haze requires sacrificing a slot for a mostly useless move on a set of Pokémon which are already niche at best barring Quag which still doesn't like sacrificing Toxic for it. Eject items come at the cost of a vital item slot that could be used on a far more useful item than fucking Red Card, Roar gets blocked by Magic Bounce whereas DTail is blocked by Sub, unless you have Prankster have fun not being able to get a T-wave off vs. anything (and this is before considering the potential for a Sub to be up). Trick Room is already niche as fuck and mostly inviable in a 6v6 singles environment.

My thinking of boosting alongside it is you might as well. You're going to get the free turn to do it.

Yeah sure you get a free turn, but unless you can boost your speed by two stages at once and can OHKO everything currently alive on your opponent's team without an offense boost you have to do all of the following:

1. Predict every single use of Sub, Protect and Baton Pass correctly to boost on the correct turns to ensure that the target doesn't get in behind a sub/to prevent the Scolipede user getting to +2 speed higher than you (allowing the attacker to get in with a +1 over you at minimum)
   
2. Bank on you being faster than everything at equal boosts/have priority that can OHKO the entirity of your opponent's team
3. (If male) pray to the hax god(s) himself/herself/verself/xeself/itself/themselves that you don't get screwed over by Attract while they spam Substitute

Whereas the Scoli user just has to guess an attack/setup correctly one time in the entire encounter to get the upper hand, and this is helped further if condition three does not go in favor of the opponent.

My point was that setup doesn't actually help you beat the Scoli user consistently, and it requires a large number of consecutive predictions guesses (cause lets face it "prediction" is just a way of glorifying the word "guess" in terms of Pokémon.) to go your way before you even consider other influences like a potential Attract, and it is ultimately in favor of the Scolipede user.

 

[aybekay]

When you see a baton pass team I'll click x. This strategy is so scum that it shows how broken passing boosts is. I hope the OU leaders will be banning this stupid strategy.

 

[HailFall]

obviously scolipass is beatable but those defending its presence in the tier as not negative need to understand that the thing people are complaining about is the uncompetitive and matchup reliant nature of it. you will never make a consistent speedpass team. the only reason to use it is to cheese your way past opponents that just happen to not have one of the things that basically autowin against it.

 

[Ciele]

When you see a baton pass team I'll click x. This strategy is so scum that it shows how broken passing boosts is. I hope the OU leaders will be banning this stupid strategy.

How will you ever learn to play against it if you just click X any time you see it? I mean, it's obviously going to seem broken to you if you refuse to learn how to beat it. Contrary to popular belief, you only need Haze or whatever to auto-win against it. There's many ways of playing around it with standard teams, just like there is when playing against any other team in existence. The bigger problem seems to be that people are focused on trying to find surefire ways of winning rather than actually trying to outplay it.

Also, there's absolutely nothing wrong with using Baton Pass to win in a competitive game. In fact, the real uncompetitive thing is dismissing others as "cheap" or "scum" because they're actually trying to win. This applies to stall, too.

 

[MANNAT]

When you see a baton pass team I'll click x. This strategy is so scum that it shows how broken passing boosts is. I hope the OU leaders will be banning this stupid strategy.

Even a PU team is gonna be impossible to beat if you click x every time that you face it in battle, and you'll never be able to find out how to beat a team if you don't have practice facing it. At least IMO, baton pass is a more matchup version of HO where you have to make predictions and understand what your opponent's best possible play is at the moment in time. One misstep while using the team vs a good player and you will probably lose either your Scolipede or one of your main boosters, which only puts you into a deep hole. Originally, I thought that BP was broken, but the more and more I played it on ladder, the more I started winning because I knew how to play around the team better. I hope this helped shed some light on why BP isn't as bad as most people say it is and that you should play the games vs BP since it's just another playstyle that's a bit more matchup based than others and heavily relies on prediction. Also stall is considered a "scum" strategy, but similar to BP, stall isn't terrible to beat as long as you have considered it in the teambuilding phase to some extent and have at least done a quick check over your team to make sure that you don't lose to it straight up. Not to mention, theres a lot of MUs that look insanely difficult to win (Blunder Medi VoltTurn vs Weavile stall for example) but can be won if you play well such as predicting well with Keldeo and clicking Scald vs MSab because his Amoong is low and he wants to try and pivot into Chansey and take a water move (oversimplified and doesn't always work, but you get the idea). If anything, Baton Pass actually encourages skillful play because you have to think critically and predict well to beat it just like most teams. This is my opinion on BP and why you shouldn't make statements such as the one above IMO.

 

[aybekay]

Even a PU team is gonna be impossible to beat if you click x every time that you face it in battle, and you'll never be able to find out how to beat a team if you don't have practice facing it. At least IMO, baton pass is a more matchup version of HO where you have to make predictions and understand what your opponent's best possible play is at the moment in time. One misstep while using the team vs a good player and you will probably lose either your Scolipede or one of your main boosters, which only puts you into a deep hole. Originally, I thought that BP was broken, but the more and more I played it on ladder, the more I started winning because I knew how to play around the team better. I hope this helped shed some light on why BP isn't as bad as most people say it is and that you should play the games vs BP since it's just another playstyle that's a bit more matchup based than others and heavily relies on prediction. Also stall is considered a "scum" strategy, but similar to BP, stall isn't terrible to beat as long as you have considered it in the teambuilding phase to some extent and have at least done a quick check over your team to make sure that you don't lose to it straight up. Not to mention, theres a lot of MUs that look insanely difficult to win (Blunder Medi VoltTurn vs Weavile stall for example) but can be won if you play well such as predicting well with Keldeo and clicking Scald vs MSab because his Amoong is low and he wants to try and pivot into Chansey and take a water move (oversimplified and doesn't always work, but you get the idea). If anything, Baton Pass actually encourages skillful play because you have to think critically and predict well to beat it just like most teams. This is my opinion on BP and why you shouldn't make statements such as the one above IMO.

Yeah you are right. I even won against a BP team today or yesterday. Your post encouraged me to play in future against those uncomfortable opponents who use those kind of playstyles.

 

[Of Moose & Men]

Even a PU team is gonna be impossible to beat if you click x every time that you face it in battle, and you'll never be able to find out how to beat a team if you don't have practice facing it. At least IMO, baton pass is a more matchup version of HO where you have to make predictions and understand what your opponent's best possible play is at the moment in time. One misstep while using the team vs a good player and you will probably lose either your Scolipede or one of your main boosters, which only puts you into a deep hole. Originally, I thought that BP was broken, but the more and more I played it on ladder, the more I started winning because I knew how to play around the team better. I hope this helped shed some light on why BP isn't as bad as most people say it is and that you should play the games vs BP since it's just another playstyle that's a bit more matchup based than others and heavily relies on prediction. Also stall is considered a "scum" strategy, but similar to BP, stall isn't terrible to beat as long as you have considered it in the teambuilding phase to some extent and have at least done a quick check over your team to make sure that you don't lose to it straight up. Not to mention, theres a lot of MUs that look insanely difficult to win (Blunder Medi VoltTurn vs Weavile stall for example) but can be won if you play well such as predicting well with Keldeo and clicking Scald vs MSab because his Amoong is low and he wants to try and pivot into Chansey and take a water move (oversimplified and doesn't always work, but you get the idea). If anything, Baton Pass actually encourages skillful play because you have to think critically and predict well to beat it just like most teams. This is my opinion on BP and why you shouldn't make statements such as the one above IMO.

I feel it should also be important to take the user into account as well. Beating BP isn't impossible, no one is saying it is. Yes, you have to outplay it, but the second they outplay you, it's essentially game from there. "Outplay it" has been an argument for years, and you and I both know it holds little to no water. I've said this time and time again, and I'll repeat it. We shouldn't be arguing whether it's broken at this point. We should be arguing whether or not it is healthy for the metagame.

You mention stall, but in reality you can't compare the two. Yes, you can prep for the two, but with a single, competent stallbreaker, you can pull the game easily. When it comes to BP, your "prep" is making the right calls 100% of the time. The second you don't, you hammered the nail in the coffin yourself. Anyone can beat a braindead BP copypaster, but when you put a competent player behind those mons, they're going to be able to pull that win. Prediction goes both ways, just as it did with Aegi, just as it did with Mawile, Lucario, etc. And much like those, you make the wrong call, you risk losing from the jump. Clicking moves in chronological order is not healthy for the game. Simple as that. It hinders teambuilding, and even when you teambuild correctly, it puts 100% of the pressure on the opponent. It's one thing to not prepare for Zard X. It's one thing to not prepare for stall, which has many variations but can still be beat out by the same mons more often than not. It's another to have to prep several mons and still lose because you didn't predict correctly. With that said, you cannot sit here and honestly think "just predict right" is a good argument.

You say it encourages skill, however it only encourages it on one side. The side with the burden of having to make plays or risk losing the game from turn 3. The other person just clicks A then B then C, and then D or E.

Again, that is not, and never will be, healthy for any metagame, much less ORAS.

 

[Ghostbone]

Why do people expect to auto-win vs a team without having to make any predictions?

Yes sometimes you lose to BP because you made the wrong prediction, sometimes you beat BP because you made the right prediction. This applies to literally every game on ladder between 2 relatively competitive teams. It comes down to prediction. For some reason people in this thread have the mentality that they should be able to never lose to baton pass. A move isn't broken just because you can lose to a team that uses that move, lmao.

As for BP being "matchup based", it's only matchup based in the sense that BP auto-loses some matchups. Most teams don't auto-lose to baton pass. Stall can be given the exact same criticism, which can auto lose matchups if they don't have the right answer to a certain offensive mon, and stall can even auto win games against teams that don't consider it in the teambuilding phase. But most of the time, a competitive team has a reasonable winrate against stall (even if disadvantaged) and if they make the right decisions they'll win. Scolipass teams are no different.

Also, people are acting like as soon as scolipede gets a substitute up it's game over, which is ridiculous. Maybe you end up losing a mon while you break the substitute, but heracross can easily be revenge killed by pinsir or talonflame, and certainly doesnt like taking intimidates and rocky helmet damage from lando when forced to use close combat. There's a lot of answers to a +3 manaphy (venusaur, av tangrowth, unaware clefable) as well as manaphy actually needing a turn to set up, so against something strong like mega medicham, you're really not getting much done even if scolipede gets a free substitute. Espeon itself is very easy to deal with considering its complete lack of physical bulk and on top of requiring speed boosts from scolipede, it requires its own calm mind boosts to actually do anything. So a team that can just roar/whirlwind out the threatening sweepers and has any answer to espeon will have a very easy time.

 

[Of Moose & Men]

Why do people expect to auto-win vs a team without having to make any predictions?

Yes sometimes you lose to BP because you made the wrong prediction, sometimes you beat BP because you made the right prediction. This applies to literally every game on ladder between 2 relatively competitive teams. It comes down to prediction. For some reason people in this thread have the mentality that they should be able to never lose to baton pass. A move isn't broken just because you can lose to a team that uses that move, lmao.

As for BP being "matchup based", it's only matchup based in the sense that BP auto-loses some matchups. Most teams don't auto-lose to baton pass. Stall can be given the exact same criticism, which can auto lose matchups if they don't have the right answer to a certain offensive mon, and stall can even auto win games against teams that don't consider it in the teambuilding phase. But most of the time, a competitive team has a reasonable winrate against stall (even if disadvantaged) and if they make the right decisions they'll win. Scolipass teams are no different.

Also, people are acting like as soon as scolipede gets a substitute up it's game over, which is ridiculous. Maybe you end up losing a mon while you break the substitute, but heracross can easily be revenge killed by pinsir or talonflame, and certainly doesnt like taking intimidates and rocky helmet damage from lando when forced to use close combat. There's a lot of answers to a +3 manaphy (venusaur, av tangrowth, unaware clefable) as well as manaphy actually needing a turn to set up, so against something strong like mega medicham, you're really not getting much done even if scolipede gets a free substitute. Espeon itself is very easy to deal with considering its complete lack of physical bulk and on top of requiring speed boosts from scolipede, it requires its own calm mind boosts to actually do anything. So a team that can just roar/whirlwind out the threatening sweepers and has any answer to espeon will have a very easy time.

You didn't read my post at all did you?

Stop thinking something needs to be overtly "broken" to be dealt with. It's a mindset that has run rampant through this forum for years, and it really does need to stop being regurgitated. Aegislash was not "broken", STag was not "broken", Swagger was not "broken", they were however, unhealthy. They put a restraint on not only the opponent, but encouraged braindead gameplay. That isn't healthy. Period. That is what we should be discussing.

 

[Ghostbone]

You didn't read my post at all did you?

Stop thinking something needs to be overtly "broken" to be dealt with. It's a mindset that has run rampant through this forum for years, and it really does need to stop being regurgitated. Aegislash was not "broken", STag was not "broken", Swagger was not "broken", they were however, unhealthy. They put a restraint on not only the opponent, but encouraged braindead gameplay. That isn't healthy. Period. That is what we should be discussing.

"Unhealthy" being whatever you decide you don't like I assume.

Swagger is pure RNG, Aegislash has no counters, shadow tag bypasses one of the main mechanics off the game.

Baton pass is nothing like any of these things.

I only used the word broken once, and you can replace it with unhealthy if you'd like, literally nothing changes. But the fact that you only singled out one word I used rather than actually replying to the points made shows that you don't really have an argument.

 

[Martin]

"Unhealthy" being whatever you decide you don't like I assume.

Swagger is pure RNG, Aegislash has no counters, shadow tag bypasses one of the main mechanics off the game.

Baton pass is nothing like any of these things.

I only used the word broken once, and you can replace it with unhealthy if you'd like, literally nothing changes. But the fact that you only singled out one word I used rather than actually replying to the points made shows that you don't really have an argument.

Like, this is just me being knitpicky (and fwiw I have no issue with BP), but that wasn't the reason that Aegislash was banned. It basically turned the meta into "use Aegislash and beat opposing Aegislash" and had a bad habit of forcing a huge number of 50:50s with King's Shield+Stance Change. It reached a point where you actively had to search for reasons to not use this thing, and that is why it got banned. Also, the Shadow Tag thing only happened because of the scope of Gothitelle rather than for the Tag mechanic as a whole. If the logic was Tag's ability to trap on it's own you could make the same argument that Arena Trap and Magnet Pull are problematic (this is a discussion for another day, but tl;dr they aren't of Tag's scope), but the simply lack the same scope as Gothitelle had and as such it was Tag rather than trapping as a whole that was looked into.

Like, I don't disagree with you that BP isn't a problem, but yeah as far as I'm aware that was the reasoning for those two.

 

[Of Moose & Men]

"Unhealthy" being whatever you decide you don't like I assume.

Swagger is pure RNG, Aegislash has no counters, shadow tag bypasses one of the main mechanics off the game.

Baton pass is nothing like any of these things.

I only used the word broken once, and you can replace it with unhealthy if you'd like, literally nothing changes. But the fact that you only singled out one word I used rather than actually replying to the points made shows that you don't really have an argument.

Had you read my post, which you very clearly didn't, you would know what I meant by unhealthy. I don't even play the god damn game anymore lol, I don't care one way or the other. But had you even for a second read my post, you would understand how and why I view it as "Unhealthy".

Martin. Explained everything else for me.

Also, I "singled it out" because that was the entirety of your post. Defending rhe fact it isn't "broken". Broken and unhealthy do not always go hand in hand. You can have one without the other.

 

[Seth_]

I think that it can be proven that baton pass is unhealthy for metagame.

Let's start with: what's healthy metagame? I think that is when:
-It is possible to create team that have even matchup with most of playstyles/team designs (such teams are latter refered as "good teams"
-there are many possible "good teams"
-in battle between two people who have good teams person with more skill wins

Problem with baton pass is that it's team heavily based on matchup. Many teams which used to be good teams lose to batton pass in team preview. Even if it isn't too hard to make team somewhat prepared for baton pass it limits teambuilding.

Another thing wrong with baton pass is how it's playing even matchups. BP teams are very "stiff" in terms how they are going to play. You basically always end up with same plays. You can play 5, 6 BP games at once. It takes very little brain cells.

When matchup is even BP players usually try to hax their opponent. Most popular 4th move on scoilpede is attract and this move is as far from "competetive" as you can get. Moreover they try to get miss and so on pass free sub.

Yeah, baton pass isn't broken but I think it would be much better without it.

 

[Tressed]

All this BP talk is giving me (insert disease here), so I'm just gonna dump a bunch of sets that have been really good to me lately.

Garchomp (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Rough Skin
EVs: 8 HP / 180 Atk / 68 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Outrage / Stealth Rock
- Draco Meteor
- Earthquake
- Fire Blast

For the longest time I've been running Lum SD Garchomp as a rocker due to a fear of Mega Sableye, but I've only recently started running LO Chomp again and I've kinda forgotten how powerful this thing is. Lando-T is all over the place atm, so Draco Meteor Garchomp has been just awesome to take advantage of that. It's actually been a huge help in winning hazard wars because of this, since most people are running defensive Lando-T as their rocker. If you have can remove the rocks later, they'll stay off the field, as Lando usually won't have enough health to actually take another attack. Also does a really nice job in pressuring Skarmory, Rotom-W, Ferrothorn, Zapdos, Clefable, and all that jazz. I've been running this with PUP Mega Lopunny and that pair makes it super easy to pressure stuff down, and there's probably a billion other things that this pairs nicely with so get creative.

Also suggesting that you stay away from TankChomp atm. I know it's been a while since TankChomp has been meta but the whole environment is super hostile to it rn.

Aerodactyl @ Aerodactylite
Ability: Unnerve
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stone Edge
- Aerial Ace
- Ice Fang
- Fire Fang

Bad against defensive teams but this thing slaughters offense playstyles. Outrunning Mega Lopunny is sweet, dumping on birdspam is sweeter, and Aerodactyl actually does ok against some of the latest trends, ie. Zapdos, Tangrowth. Aqua Tail is pretty outdated at this point. It was a lot better when Hippowdon was around, but now everything it hits gets hit harder by Ice Fang (barring Excadrill) or already gets hit by one of its other moves. This set feels like dead weight against a lot of the stall teams out there, so having something to take care of them is basically a necessity if you're gonna go out on the ladder with this.

Noivern (F) @ Choice Specs
Ability: Infiltrator
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Hurricane
- Flamethrower
- Switcheroo

[16:08] #paper dreams: when will ppl realise tht the true counter to scolipass
[16:08] #paper dreams: is female specs infiltrator noivern
[16:08] #paper dreams: get with the metagame ppl

Made a joke team with this thing and Noivern actually ended up pulling its weight in non-BP matchups, so here you go. Dragon / Flying is actually kind of nice in that there's a fair number of mons that you'd normally switch into Hurricane that don't take Draco Meteor that well, and vice versa, so you can force some fun 50/50s whenever this thing comes in.

 

[Norne]

Thanks for preaching about mixed LO Garchomp, I prefer mixed SD lo Garchomp with more spatk invested, but honestly any Garchomp that shits on Rotom w, Lando T and Tangrowth in this Metagame is a godsend.

I'm partial towards aerodactyl as I really feel it needs taunt and aqua tail to work, but my sense of what needs to be run is outdated anyways.

I can't say if Noivern is good, there are some things working against him, namely his ability to take neutral hits well.

 

[ckw]

1) MixChomp i feel is an absolute beast since it can wear down mons that can later be taken advantage off by the team's respectable settup sweeper.
2) Unfort, Mega Aero has a lot of problems getting kills for me(Unless its pursuit) , it is still somewhat viable but i have lost hope for it(SOmeone make this mon look broken).
3) A Noivern set like that looks as if it should always be paired by a trapper like Dugtrio since Heatran is gonna be the switchin for days. In my opinion putting u-turn over Flamethrower/Switcheroo would be better since its the one thing it can do better than Latios apart from its great Speed Tier and always keep Duggy as a partner to trap its counters and KO.