Would it be a viable option to ban Iron Defense/Cotton Guard/Geomancy combined with baton pass? I feel like this could potentially be an option to minimize legitimate sets injured but still stop baton pass teams from being a thing. If the magic bounce Pokemon don't have increased defenses it shouldn't be be as cancerous. The only options to boost defenses would be cosmic power, bulk up, amnesia, and calm mind. If any of these became problems couldn't we give them the same treatment? While this would be a complex ban, I feel like the legitimate applications of baton pass are valuable enough to warrant putting extra work in to keep the move itself, but cripple baton pass teams.
I kind of doubt it. You are falling into the same trap that the folks who came up with BP clause fell into: You are assuming that Scolipass and geopass are the only broken BP teams atm and that by nerfing them, no other broken BP teams will arise. This is simply horrible logic to go by. Instead, what we need is a set of standards by which we can judge broken baton passers so that when broken BP teams arise again (and they probably will, much like how broken sweepers get released every single generation), we are capable of identifying the broken member of the team and banning it.
The heart of the problem seems to be HerbPass. power herb and mental herb are what push Smeargle and Scolipede over in most cases, since Mental Herb is what allows Scolipede to both boost its defense and pass so reliably, and power herb is what makes geopass smeargle not a laughable piece of shit. Less importantly but still definitely in the spirit of what I'm talking about, White Herb allows Gorebyss and Huntail to bypass the drawbacks of Shell Smash when passing.
There's no reasonable yet definitive nerf to the BP playstyle that isn't a complex ban, but when all you have is a scalpel, banning HerbPass (probably not white herb, but definitely the other two) seems like the most elegant way to nip it in the tuminescent hate-on BP players have for class and style bud.
There really isn't anything wrong with mental herb, white herb or power herb though. Hawlucha for example is a perfectly balanced mon that uses power herb very well.
The most reasonable nerf is to ban the broken passers.
The only problem I have is whether or not we can constitute BP as a major problem in OU.. I'm not seeing players shooting up the ladder because they have a scolipede on their team (idk, because he's BL hinting his usage?) it's not like past BP teams that we're literally running haze quagsire as a method of countering.. now it's pretty much just a gimmick and scolipede just so happens to be a good contender for the gimmick. Hell, after we ban scolipede, are we going to start bitching about ninjask next? Cause we've been through how many BP related suspects, quick bans, (I remember even after the suspect test, we randomly ignored the vote and test entirely and just limited BP even more so) and we're still complaining about something nerfed.
Theoretically, we ban things to attempt to create a balanced metagame.. if something is overdominant, overcentralizing, uncompetitive, or overwhelming for the tier, we take action. This describes the early stages of BP when it pretty much was the following..
Overdominant: People shot up the ladder like nothing and it was common to see a BP team every few games.
Overcentralizing: People ran haze greninja and quagsire upper on the ladder as a means to counter.
Uncompetitive: BP was very uncompetitive in that games were pretty much decided at team preview. If you lacked the specific counter (haze) you know you lost.
Overwhelming: Most teams on balanced, stall, and HO suffered and lacks appropriate answers to fully built BP team.
In this metagame.. we cannot necessarily say BP is a problem.. we can only say the certain BP users are.. however.
Is scolipede overdominant?: No, It's BL, it's usage is very poor and I don't see scolipede being the reason teams shoot up the ladder like in the past.
Is scolipede overcentralizing?: No, who says "I run this pokemon just for scolipede?" other than extremely desperate players. and again.. he's BL.
Is scolipede uncompetitive?: This is a hard one to answer as the definition of "uncompetitive" is rather difficult to grasp. Scolipede doesn't necessarily take skill out of the game, there is no specific RNG involved and the user has to be very cautious with their plays making predictions. There are 50 / 50 mind games with protect vs. ID on switch vs. BP for momentum.. but there are plenty of those elsewhere. This is hard for me to explain.. so I'll just say I don't believe he is but he's pretty.. BL on being uncompetitive (pun intended).
Is scolipede overwhelming?: To a small degree yes... but technically on his own, no. It's the sweeper receiving the boost.. this one is a little tricky to understand, but whether it's scolipede, ninjask, venomoth, whatever, the boost they make and receive don't make them threatening (bar moth) but the receiver they're giving the boost to.. They're not pokemon you can just slap on any team either, they all have poor synergy with other pokemon in the tier. They require the team to be built to support them, when it could instead be built to support the sweeper, capable of sweeping/lategame cleaning on it's own without the passer, causing a major opportunity cost when shut down.
Smeargle you can say the same.. but I always found smeargle to just be broken in general with it's movepool. It can literally do anything with it's versatility, and I'm not saying ban is because it gets every move.. I'm saying ban it because it can fill many support roles for a team. It can tweet it's set to take counters, checks, or potential shutdowns by surprise such as gastro acid to ignore magic bounce and setup hazards, magic coat/mental herb to screw taunt, dark void over spore to surprise grass types, it's just the idea that it can completely screw opponents with mind games that bothers me... however just like scolipede, it's not some overdominating threat, it's not overcentralizing, however it is indeed overwhelming not in a BP sense but as a supporter like deoxys.
This is an excellent post, but I think it's overly broad. It can be applied to pretty much any potentially broken mon. We already have standards for evaluating various broken mons with the excellent
portrait of an uber Policy Review topic. I have already argued for Scolipede's (and Smeargle's) brokenness under the
Support Characteristic, which I quoted directly from the linked topic.
However, BP teams, due to their synergy heavy nature, are difficult to analyze properly. Therefore, I would like to propose an
extension of the support characteristic to make it easier to identify broken baton passers.
All Baton Passers have 2 defining characteristics, whether it be dry pass vaporeon, BP ninjask or geopass smeargle. Those two characteristics are the
reliability of the pass, meaning how easily can the BPer in question pull off a BP / how difficult is it to stop the BPer from using BP, and the
magnitude of the pass, or how devastating the sweeper that receives the pass is.
So, let's analyze a few BPers just to see how this standard holds up.
Example 1:
Dry Pass Vaporeon @ Leftovers
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpA
Bold Nature
- Baton Pass
- Wish
- Roar
- Scald
Reliability of Pass: Vap is actually pretty bulky, especially by BPer standards. It's very difficult to OHKO, meaning to stop it from BPing, you'll need to taunt it or hit it with a fairly powerful SE attack. However, it's also very slow, meaning that it will probably have to take a hit to pass, making it unlikely to be able to pass more then once during a game. Furthermore, the only thing it has to discourage opposing setup sweepers is roar, meaning that if something tries to setup in front of vap before she passes, she either needs to be able to take a hit before roaring it out or BP to something that can check it (and still probably take a hit).
Magnitude of Pass: Not much tbh. You might be able to use BP to get a weakened mon in for free to recieve a wish pass, but that's pretty much the end of it. You might also be able to nab some free momentum by BPing on a switch or by BPing into a faster mon that can check the opposing mon. Overall, the effect is very small.
So on one end of the spectrum, we have a mon that can fairly reliably pull off a pass once or twice during a match, but the result of the pass is very, very small. You would be hard pressed to argue that this mon is broken.
Now let's look at a mon on the other end of the spectrum:
Example 2:
Geopass Smeargle @ Power Herb
Ability: Own Tempo
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
- Spore/Taunt/Magic Coat
- Geomancy
- Baton Pass
- Cotton Guard
Reliability of Pass: Actually very poor. As it has been noted by virtually everyone familiar with Geopass, Smeargle is pretty much incapable of setting up on his own power barring a written invitation (like a non-twave chansey or tauntless m-sable for instance). However, he's not entirely helpless. Things that would normally stop smeargle cold like taunt-thundy or roartran can be stopped by being spored or taunted on the switch. After forcing a switch with spore/taunt, he can nullify priority abusers with cotton guard and special mons with geomancy. Once he forces a swap, he's actually pretty reliable, but on his own Smeargle cannot force anything out, meaning that he needs significant team support to get him that forced swap for that vital free turn of setup.
Magnitude of Pass: Positively devastating. At minimum(ie: given 1 turn of setup), he will grant a sweeper with +2 speed, +2 special attack, and +2 special defense (aka a geomancy). This alone is frequently enough to clean out an entire team. However, every additional turn he is not forced to pass, he can boost his defense by 3 stages, easily outstripping any physical setup sweeper. By adding +3 defense to the equation, the sweeper goes from "powerful, but killable with priority" to "pretty much invincible, hope you get a crit or have sash-endeavor on your team". Give him even 2 turns of setup and the game is for all intents and purposes over.
What Smeargle shows us is that an excessively large payoff can easily make up for poor to mediocre reliability. When the payoff for passing successfully is for all intents and purposes "win the game", then teams will be made to take advantage of that win con.
Example 3:
Quickpass Scolipede @ Mental Herb
Ability: Speed Boost
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Serious Nature
- Baton Pass
- Protect
- Iron Defense
- Substitute
Reliability of Pass: Scolipede is a tricky one to analyze because he has so many different ways to boost. He can Protect(+1 speed), Iron Defense(+1 speed, +2 defense) or Subs(+1 speed, subs). He can protect-pass in front of pretty much anything except for Talonflame, a handful of scarfers(like scarfnape), phazers, and a few opposing speed boosters(like RP lando-I). He can setup ID in front of an impressive array of physical attackers, including Adamant Garchomp, Lando-T, Azumaril, Scizor and M-Scizor, and Gyara to name a few. He has a very difficult time setting up subs prior to some ID boosts, but if he gets ahead in the boost wars he can easily find some time to sneak in a subs in front of a physical attacking opponent. He cannot setup subs or ID in front of most special attackers without a fair bit of team support. Note that taunt, even prankster taunt, will fail to prevent him from passing out due to mental herb.
Magnitude of Pass: Once again it depends on the type of boosting he gets away with. If he is only able to protect pass, he not only gives his opponent a free turn while protecting, but when he passes out, the recipient takes a free hit in exchange for +1 speed. +1 speed is nice, but you are not sweeping any games with it any time soon. An ID pass is much more powerful however. It gives the recipient both speed and extra physical bulk. Assuming that the recipient can beat whatever scared Scoli out (not always a given), he will have speed to bypass fast offensive checks like scarf lando, mega diancie, and m-lopunny while at the same time giving him a great deal of priority resistance thanks to the ID. In fact, at even +2 defense, only the most powerful super effective priority hits will even dent the sweeper. However, the stats Scolipede grants are not offensive, meaning that the recipient will either need respectable base power (ie: m-gard, m-medi, or m-zard-x) or the ability to setup further (ie: espeon, manaphy, or m-zard-x), which will, of course, take one or more additional turns. If he manages to work a subs into his pass, it basically means at minimum, that the recipient will get in for free. As with any sub-sweeper, the longer the subs remains unbroken, the more devastating it is. Given that Scolipede's boosts are primarily defensive, he actually synergyzes well with subs. It's also worth noting that many sweepers do not have an efficient means of boosting their defenses and/or speed, but are very good at boosting their power, making the boosts Scolipede provides much more valuable.
TL;DR the longer Scoli gets to setup, the more effective his passes are, and it's pretty difficult to prevent him from setting up. Just how difficult is a key factor to whether or not he's broken.
This is my first attempt at something like this, so there's probably room for improvement (most notably I struggled quite a bit trying to describe Scoli's power under these standards, despite my extensive experience building teams around him and using them), but I think it's a valid start.
