XY OU Suspect Process, Round 3 - BATON PASS [READ POST #590]

[Tactical]

Oh come on now, comparing sableye to trevenant? Come ooooonn
Sableye has priority recover, priority wisp, and priority taunt.
They may both have sub par stats and a ghost typing, but guess what sableye has that makes him 10x better?
MOTHERFUCKING PRIORITY!!!!!!!!!!

Caps lock, swearing, and excessive punctuation do not do much to improve a point. Sableye also doesn't resist ground and it can't regain 50% of its health passively the turn it burns something.

At min? harvest is a 50% chance to recover your berry, so theoretically, you could just curse and never even get your berry back. Which is what makes trevenant sorta suck. Also, who said you have to attack to beat baton pass? A prankster taunt is a MUCH more consistent and reliable way to cripple baton pass at basically any step of the way, and there's no reason to use trevenant on stall when sableye exists basically (in terms of stopping baton pass anyway)

Priority Taunt fails when they swap Espeon in for a turn. Curse is the only thing that is unpreventable and, unfortunately, Sableye does not get it. And even if you never recover your berry, you still have 125% hp for that match, allowing for three curses with minimal danger to yourself.

Mr. mime can baton pass in as you curse, and then encore you into curse. You will then use curse again and kill yourself if you dont' activate sitrus, and even if you do, you're encored, so you keep using curse and KEEP cutting your hp in half. The point IS to make you switch out, and when you do you're weakened because you had to switch out lest you keep cutting your hp in half.

What is bad about him taking you out of play? If you performed a curse then you're set, it's not like Trevenant has to be in play to maintain it and Encore certainly doesn't keep it from happening. Likewise, even if they swap Mr. Mime in every time you bring in Trev he's still a day late and a dollar short as there is not much he can do to stop Curse being applied and destroying the current chain to be rid of it. I'm really unsure as to why you think Encore does anything to this setup. Trevenant doesn't want to stay in play after it does its job and being "forced" out was something it was going to do anyway on its next turn.

Also, this so called "pressure on the BP player" is pretty hard to maintain when you're using a stall team.

Seismic Toss tends to do more after the baton pass player starts accumulating boosts. It will always break the sub on everything but Vapoeron, who can only boost defense and has no recovery itself outside of leftovers. It can pressure better than most can with the addition to heavy status damage that follows the chain and can't be prevented by Sub, Protect, or Magic Bounce.

First off: Why is ttar switching into trevenant.
Second:
252+ Atk Life Orb Mold Breaker Excadrill Iron Head vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Trevenant: 165-195 (44.1 - 52.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
Hardly spin blocking :I
If stall wants a spin blocker, I'd like to think sableye or gourgeist-s is a pretty good place to start, but I can gaurantee you (especially after the above calc) that no decent stall player will use trevenant as a spinblocker.

What is wrong with that damage calc? Even with Excadrill going balls to the wall with 252+ Adamant Life Orb it still only gets trevenant down to 73% at most, allowing it to setup a sub to torment the opposing team with or go straight to a burn if Excadrill wants to keep at it. As said before, unfortunately Sableye is hard countered in its BP stopping ability by just having Espeon in play and takes super effective damage from Sylveon.

Mantyke can switch into keldeo too, and then proceed to scald burn or toxic the switch-in. We gotta get out there and use mantyke man its op

I'm not quite sure what point this is trying to make? It sure can.

The incredibly few matchups it DOES miraculously win in are quite easy to cover, and by no means is trevenant the only pokemon to be able to check the things it does. In fact, the things it does check are shut down by almost any given stall ever.

No argument here, however Trev functions better against BP while also covering those matchups it does have, letting you allocate those resources on your team to other threats. Just because he is there doesn't mean you have to make him redundant. I wouldn't exactly suggest putting him and Sableye on the same team.

 

[Ragnarock]

Baton Passing Chains... Really needs to get off of the ladder. However, I don't believe the entire move itself should be banned. My vote is Forbid the use of the move Baton Pass on more than 3 Pokémon on the same team (complex ban).

I'll state my reasons why:

First off, having 6 pokemon to run a baton passing chain provides an aspect where players both mediocre or advance have to bring some sort of baton passing "counter" on their team while still trying to enjoy laddering in the OU tier. People are now bringing unnecessary stuff on the ladder that could rlly hurt their team (unless it's a taunt thundy or gardevoir). Counters could be random crap like:

Scarf Chandelure w/ Inflitrator w/ clear smog
Haze Greninja
Haze Gengar
Doom Desire Jirachi
Heart Swap Focus Sash Manaphy or Smeargle


Don't get me wrong, these sets might be fun to use, but for mons like Greninja and Gengar really depending on their final movepool slot could really benefit more of the team rather than Haze itself ONLY FOR BATON PASS!

Not to mention using a Baton Pass team doesn't require any kind of thought process for a player to easily reach "Number 1 for mouths." I'm my opinion, I don't think that's what laddering is all about. If you want to make number 1 or even top 10, I believe you have to work on your teams the way that provides strategies, a couple gimmicks, and good knowledge about the game instead of spamming Scoipedes and Bulky Espeons everywhere to ensure you don't get the win unless you hax for crits or have one of the gimmick sets i mentioned above.

It's not the move Baton Pass that's broken, it's the Baton Pass Chain Teams that are incredibly broken.

Having Baton on one or two mons is fine, that way people can actually still enjoy using good sets like Baton Pass Celebi to prevent Pursuit trapping Ttars or Goths. I have a fren who uses Wish/Protect/Baton Pass Sylveon to ensure he gets a wish passed safely to a predicted protect switch to a mon of his choosing w/o taking any unnecessary damage.

That is my opinion on Baton Pass. Hopefully is helped cleared stuff up. R.I.P. Deniss. I never liked you nor your team anyway nor do I believe you should be "number 1 for mouths" Hue hue, what a joke.

Anyways, thx frens :]

 

[Srn]

Caps lock, swearing, and excessive punctuation do not do much to improve a point. Sableye also doesn't resist ground and it can't regain 50% of its health passively the turn it burns something.

There's only a 50% chance to get the berry in the first place, and you also have to be under 25% health to activate your second berry. So it's pretty situational and unreliable. Also, as we established earlier, trevenant is not bulky, and against standard HO it won't really get the chance to effectively spread burns. Meanwhile, sableye has priority and can has priority reliable recovery. I don't care if its passive, but if its reliable, it's automatically better. You really can't rely on trevenant to be healthy, and you want consistency above all else in this haxy as fuck game.

Priority Taunt fails when they swap Espeon in for a turn. Curse is the only thing that is unpreventable and, unfortunately, Sableye does not get it. And even if you never recover your berry, you still have 125% hp for that match, allowing for three curses with minimal danger to yourself.

When they swap in espeon, they can't even touch you lol. You can just spam foul play until they switch out and then taunt the switch-in and beat that pokemon down. Besides, its pretty unrealistic to think that BP will just sit back and let itself be cursed 3 times, no doubt it will damage you first, probably with sylveon hyper voice or something.

What is bad about him taking you out of play? If you performed a curse then you're set, it's not like Trevenant has to be in play to maintain it and Encore certainly doesn't keep it from happening. Likewise, even if they swap Mr. Mime in every time you bring in Trev he's still a day late and a dollar short as there is not much he can do to stop Curse being applied and destroying the current chain to be rid of it. I'm really unsure as to why you think Encore does anything to this setup. Trevenant doesn't want to stay in play after it does its job and being "forced" out was something it was going to do anyway on its next turn.

Baton pass can just restart the chain lol. Meanwhile, you're left at below 50% health and die if you curse again, and when you do baotn pass can just restart the chain once more because stall teams cannot apply offensive pressure. And by that last sentence, do you mean that you would stay in with trevenant when you were encored into curse against baton pass? Because you're basically sacking your win con if you do so.

Seismic Toss tends to do more after the baton pass player starts accumulating boosts. It will always break the sub on everything but Vapoeron, who can only boost defense and has no recovery itself outside of leftovers. It can pressure better than most can with the addition to heavy status damage that follows the chain and can't be prevented by Sub, Protect, or Magic Bounce.

Seismic toss's damage is constant hello. Also, smeargle can effortlessly set ingrain on stall and, if needed, scolipede can stall your seismic tosses out with sub/protect, and then after 14 turns or so you can switch out into anything else and start subbing again, and rinse and repeat. So seismic toss doesnt' really help that much, it just gets pp stalled with help from ingrain. You actually need a powerful attack to threaten baton pass lol.

What is wrong with that damage calc? Even with Excadrill going balls to the wall with 252+ Adamant Life Orb it still only gets trevenant down to 73% at most, allowing it to setup a sub to torment the opposing team with or go straight to a burn if Excadrill wants to keep at it. As said before, unfortunately Sableye is hard countered in its BP stopping ability by just having Espeon in play and takes super effective damage from Sylveon.

Are you telling me that trevenant will always be running maximum defense? Because i'd like to think i'd dump some speed into trevenant. Also, if you can't take the spinblocker's most powerful common attack, it's not spinblocking. Also, if trevenant has a free switch-in to exca (it won't when it's "spinblocking") why would exca stay in lol. EVEN if the exca player decides to stay in, you have to be above 75% health to even live one hit and get the burn off, and that's not even factoring in the flinch chance lol.
Sableye isn't really "hard countered" by espeon either:
0- Atk Sableye Foul Play vs. +2 200 HP / 56 Def Espeon: 74-90 (23 - 28%) -- 3.8% chance to 4HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
Even after an iron defense that's a solid chance to break subs, and its not like espeon can hurt you in the mean time.

I'm not quite sure what point this is trying to make? It sure can.

smh
The point i'm trying to make is that trevenant switching into keldeo is incredibly irrelevant, a shit load of things can switch into keldeo pretty easily. It does not mean they are good in the slightest.

No argument here, however Trev functions better against BP while also covering those matchups it does have, letting you allocate those resources on your team to other threats. Just because he is there doesn't mean you have to make him redundant. I wouldn't exactly suggest putting him and Sableye on the same team.

No no i don't think you get what i mean. what i mean is that any basic stall build, minus any fillers and shit, already counters whatever trevnant checks. Any basic stall core, like say venutran, already beats breloom, keldeo, and any other decent threat trevenant hopes to touch. Trevenant's role will ALWAYS be redundant in any stall decent stall team, so you don't have to "allocate those resources on your team to other threats" in the first place. If you wanted to cover other threats then you're better off not wasting a moveslot on trevenant. This isn't even to mention that by covering other threats, the pokemon you use in stall naturally check anything trevenant checks.
For example: I'm using a sp. def gyara to counter landorus, and even though I'm not using it for that purpose, it shuts down keldeo too.
Really, there's no way to justify trevenant's existence on a stall team lol.

 

[Tactical]

There's only a 50% chance to get the berry in the first place, and you also have to be under 25% health to activate your second berry. So it's pretty situational and unreliable. Also, as we established earlier, trevenant is not bulky, and against standard HO it won't really get the chance to effectively spread burns.

Not against Hyper Offense, no. It's not made to stand up against consecutive banded attacks, either, unless they actually let you get a burn off. As for the berry, the first one you get is guaranteed, when each turn after that being 50%. Once it recoups itself you hold onto it, it doesn't go away, meaning if you did burn them or the like and they switch out and you pull your berry when you have 60% health or so you just have it stocked for the future. Having a 50% chance to go from 15% hp to 65% is pretty significant. Protect turns help you smooth out your average as well.

When they swap in espeon, they can't even touch you lol. You can just spam foul play until they switch out and then taunt the switch-in and beat that pokemon down. Besides, its pretty unrealistic to think that BP will just sit back and let itself be cursed 3 times, no doubt it will damage you first, probably with sylveon hyper voice or something.

When they swap in Espeon you've just taunted yourself, shutting out your counter until you take him out and back in, or giving them free time to swap to Scoliopede to setup an Iron Defense and a speed boost before you can do anything about it.

Baton pass can just restart the chain lol. Meanwhile, you're left at below 50% health and die if you curse again, and when you do baotn pass can just restart the chain once more because stall teams cannot apply offensive pressure. And by that last sentence, do you mean that you would stay in with trevenant when you were encored into curse against baton pass? Because you're basically sacking your win con if you do so.

I think you need to slow down and comprehend the things I'm typing. I don't care if I'm encored by Mr. Mime. I don't keep Trevenant in after he Curses once. He comes in on a target that can not hurt him like Scoliopede, Smeargle, or Vaporeon and sets up a curse in their face, then he leaves to Chansey who spams seismic toss. Encore does nothing. Likewise, they can only "just restart the chain" so many times before their pokemon are worn down. Most of them are just packing leftovers and eating themselves alive to spam substitutes. Seeing a chain try to start more than twice is rare, by my account. Then again my build applys a lot more pressure than just taunting them so they have less to work with for future chain restarts.

Seismic toss's damage is constant hello. Also, smeargle can effortlessly set ingrain on stall and, if needed, scolipede can stall your seismic tosses out with sub/protect, and then after 14 turns or so you can switch out into anything else and start subbing again, and rinse and repeat. So seismic toss doesnt' really help that much, it just gets pp stalled with help from ingrain. You actually need a powerful attack to threaten baton pass lol.

Seismic Toss' damage is consistent. That is why it is good in relation to other attacks that get weaker and eventually cant break subs as the BP team acquires boosts. Scoliopede is a free swapin for Trevenant and if Smeargle does setup an ingrain then the BP just loses, period.

Are you telling me that trevenant will always be running maximum defense? Because i'd like to think i'd dump some speed into trevenant. Also, if you can't take the spinblocker's most powerful common attack, it's not spinblocking. Also, if trevenant has a free switch-in to exca (it won't when it's "spinblocking") why would exca stay in lol. EVEN if the exca player decides to stay in, you have to be above 75% health to even live one hit and get the burn off, and that's not even factoring in the flinch chance lol.

If Excadrill does swap out, as you said, then it is a free substitute, as I said, which can be a pain to deal with depending on your opponent's team composition and options. At worst, even if it isn't a sub, it's a leechseed or burn on the switch and a turn to protect to recoup the berry with that residual healing. It isn't hard to keep Trev in the 75%~90% hp range on his own.

Sableye isn't really "hard countered" by espeon either:
0- Atk Sableye Foul Play vs. +2 200 HP / 56 Def Espeon: 74-90 (23 - 28%) -- 3.8% chance to 4HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
Even after an iron defense that's a solid chance to break subs, and its not like espeon can hurt you in the mean time.

After you've taunted yourself they can get all of the defense boosts they like if you keep sableye in to maintain pressure on Espeon and they BP out to Scolio or Veporeon in response. Worst case scenario they just bring in Sylveon who Sableye does next to nothing to and likely dies trying to Taunt or is, at minimum, forced out letting sylveon setup a sub and start calm minding.

The point i'm trying to make is that trevenant switching into keldeo is incredibly irrelevant, a shit load of things can switch into keldeo pretty easily. It does not mean they are good in the slightest.

The point I'm trying to make is that Trevenant can work against a variety of threats that his team would then not have to take into consideration. Freeing up that Mega-Venu slot for Mega-Sableye come December is going to be nice, no?

No no i don't think you get what i mean. what i mean is that any basic stall build, minus any fillers and shit, already counters whatever trevnant checks. Any basic stall core, like say venutran, already beats breloom, keldeo, and any other decent threat trevenant hopes to touch. Trevenant's role will ALWAYS be redundant in any stall decent stall team

This is true of any stall core consisting of Venusaur, but not all of them do. If you are running Venu I would not suggest running Trev specifically for that redundancy. If you are not running Venu, then there are options there.

 

[Slayer95]

Freeing up that Mega-Venu slot for Mega-Sableye come December is going to be nice, no?

Not to cherry-pick your arguments (which I partially support), but what happens once ORSA is released will be dealth with later. We still have an XY Metagame to fix.

By the way, in December we will start over, right? (except with the notable exceptions of Swagger and Endless Battle clauses probably)

 

[haunter]

We're still missing 20 votes. If you qualified for voting, then hurry up and go cast your vote. The voting phase ends in approximately 2 days.

 

[Tactical]

Not to cherry-pick your arguments (which I partially support), but what happens once ORSA is released will be dealth with later. We still have an XY Metagame to fix.

By the way, in December we will start over, right? (except with the notable exceptions of Swagger and Endless Battle clauses probably)

I hope a few things are retained. I don't think we really need three months to decide "yup, Mega Gengar is still busted" when nothing fundamental changes. Though the base principal of my comment still stands. It is beneficial to free up your mega-slot if you can.

 

[Halcyon.]

Nothing will get reset with the new games. It never does. The only thing that might happen is a significant metagame change to warrant retesting already banned Pokemon, but we don't just reset because a new game comes out. We didn't do that with BW2.

 

[Anty]

I hope a few things are retained. I don't think we really need three months to decide "yup, Mega Gengar is still busted" when nothing fundamental changes. Though the base principal of my comment still stands. It is beneficial to free up your mega-slot if you can.

Have you not yet realised your arguments are stupid and you use gimmicks. TREVENANT IS NOT GOOD, THERE IS A REASON ITS NOT ON THE VIABILITY RANKINGS. Stop saying you can use shitty gimmicks to stop baton pass, they wont work well against other teams. Its like saying 'swagger is not broken cuz oblivios and ground type'. Gimmicks dont work that well against what you are trying to counter - and your not always going to be playing a bp team. If you dont want to use up a mega slot for a bulky grass type, use chesnaught or ferrothorn. Here is the viablility rankings: http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/xy-ou-viability-ranking-thread-v2.3502428/

I may have sounded rude, but your ignorance is so blatant it is slapping me in the face right now

 

[Tactical]

I may have sounded rude, but your ignorance is so blatant it is slapping me in the face right now

I wasn't suggesting Trevenant was "good", I was suggesting it was passable and works better against BP than most. In my experience he works fine against other teams. Not as well as something else could in his place, but he works better against BP than those other options would as well. That is called a tradeoff.

 

[Anty]

I wasn't suggesting Trevenant was "good", I was suggesting it was passable and works better against BP than most. In my experience he works fine against other teams. Not as well as something else could in his place, but he works better against BP than those other options would as well. That is called a tradeoff.

That is not a trade off. A trade off could be swapping something like slowbro with quagsire, both decent bulky viable (i feel that word keeps appearing) water types and both are B+ in viability ranks. Swapping A+ venasaur who can wall large portions of the meta, to trevenant, who MAY be useful against one playstyle is not a trade off.

Currently you havent really shown evidence that trev works vs bp, maybe if you show some replays it could convince people that it works, and that you have experience with the meta

 

[Tactical]

Currently you havent really shown evidence that trev works vs bp, maybe if you show some replays it could convince people that it works, and that you have experience with the meta

I'm heading out for work right now, but if someone respectable on the forum would like to play a BP set later tonight I would be more than happy to do some sets against it to verify viability of my proposed Trevenant set. Would you be willing?

 

[Tactical]

No one said trevanant was bad against bp

see

Currently you havent really shown evidence that trev works vs bp

Anyway, I'm home now if one wishes to try some games for a proof of concept.

 

[Of Moose & Men]

we said it was bad against everything else in the meta. .

This.

We've gone over this numerous times. Carrying off the wall mons in order to stop a playstyle you will rarely ever see proves it is over centralizing the meta.

You're proving our point with this. Whether you realize it or not.

 

[Tactical]

We've gone over this numerous times. Carrying off the wall mons in order to stop a playstyle you will rarely ever see proves it is over centralizing the meta.

I don't quite think you understand what "over centralizing" means. It would be over centralizing if it had one or two counters, and only one or two counters, that everyone had to use to not lose terribly on the ladder. Mega-Khangaskhan was terribly over centralizing because its number of viable counters were extremely few resulting in a lot of the same team compositions being forced to be ran to deal with it.

Your options being obscure, and I know UU mons are way off the wall and out there to suggest, are not over centralizing as long as they are still varied for multiple builds of team construction to remain viable without them being copy pastes of each other. As long as that is avoided then there are no over centralizing issues, you're just using one move or one pokemon to cover a threat just like you do everything else on your team, UU or no.

Over centralizing it is not.

 

[Anty]

I don't quite think you understand what "over centralizing" means. It would be over centralizing if it had one or two counters, and only one or two counters, that everyone had to use to not lose terribly on the ladder. Mega-Khangaskhan was terribly over centralizing because its number of viable counters were extremely few resulting in a lot of the same team compositions being forced to be ran to deal with it.

Your options being obscure, and I know UU mons are way off the wall and out there to suggest, are not over centralizing as long as they are still varied for multiple builds of team construction to remain viable without them being copy pastes of each other. As long as that is avoided then there are no over centralizing issues, you're just using one move or one pokemon to cover a threat just like you do everything else on your team, UU or no.

Over centralizing it is not.

Maybe if that uu mon was viable. BUT TREVENANT ISNT ON THE OU VIABLILITY RANKINGS, IT IS USELESS OUTSIDE OF PLAYING BP TEAMS. i hope you can see it, i put it in caps and bold for you. edit: if it isnt on the viability rankings it isnt viable. If it isnt viable it is shit/outclassed

And bp is over centralising, it is an auto win vs decent teams and playstyles. Players have to fit in checks which usually arent helpful (haze quagsire, trevenant) and even then, they arent auto win vs bp - haze quagsire can get warn down on switches or hit hard by sylveon hypervoice.

you're just using one move or one pokemon to cover a threat just like you do everything else on your team

First of all, you need more than one counter. The replay about a month ago showed th no.1 losing to a bp team despite having haze quagy and clear smog amoo. Freeing up one pokemon spot isnt easy and can fuck up a team.

If you have ever played vs bp, you should know that one move doesnt beat it. Your stubbornness and ignorance has made this thread turn from decent arguments, to shitty trevenant. Currently every other post is by you, and the others are countering your shitty arguments, have you not noticed? (i have mentioned i dislike being rude, but this has gone on long enough)

 

[Tactical]

BUT TREVENANT ISNT ON THE OU VIABLILITY RANKINGS, IT IS USELESS OUTSIDE OF PLAYING BP TEAMS.

Have you considered the possibility that something is considered useless until a use is found for it? To think that the Viability Rankings are all that will ever be is a bit silly when there are still ongoing discussions about new potential sets for just about every pokemon. You don't need a list of names to tell you what you can and can't use to innovate.

And bp is over centralising, it is an auto win vs decent teams and playstyles.

If Baton Pass is an auto-win against your team then your team isn't decent. It is not answering a known threat in the metagame and deserves to lose just as much as if it were unprepared versus anything else you may encounter. If a stall team runs into Tailglow Manaphy and doesn't have the one counter stall has to that thing then that is the Stall player's fault because he does have available options and did not utilize them, not Manaphy's fault for being broken.

First of all, you need more than one counter. The replay about a month ago showed th no.1 losing to a bp team despite having haze quagy and clear smog amoo. Freeing up one pokemon spot isnt easy and can fuck up a team.

I'm assuming the no. 1 in question was a stall player based on the two pokemon cited, and thus lacked sufficient pressure to keep the subs down after he erased the BP player's boosts. Once again, a fault of the team, not BP. If I am mistaken on his composition, feel free to correct me.

If you have ever played vs bp, you should know that one move doesnt beat it. Your stubbornness and ignorance has made this thread turn from decent arguments, to shitty trevenant.

I know one move doesn't beat it. My suggestion is Curse and Seismic Toss pressure for stall teams to sufficiently hamper the BP player, not just Curse which, in itself, is easy enough to work around just by switching and restarting the chain. Think about your options, there is no miracle pill for BP but it is more than manageable.

Currently every other post is by you, and the others are countering your shitty arguments, have you not noticed?

I also notice that near every post for the pro-ban argument, regardless of quality, has been liked by one individual. I do not judge the merits of an argument on how easy they are to bandwagon.

(i have mentioned i dislike being rude, but this has gone on long enough)

If you dislike being rude then do not be rude, it is not a difficult task to keep discussion civil. Judging by the salt your side tends to fling it may be a bit telling that the air tightness of your argument is not the reason people dislike speaking to you.

 

[Liarliarpantsonfire]

you need more than one counter. Freeing up one pokemon spot isnt easy and can fuck up a team.

It would be rather convenient if you could beat an entire team of 6 with a single pokemon now, wouldn't it? Maybe we should start considering Baton Pass chains as teams, not as individual pokemon. In any other suspect it would be fair to say that having to rely on multiple pokemon to beat a certain threat indicates brokenness. But Baton Pass chains consist of 6 pokemon, and you have 6 pokemon of your own available to combat them.

I'm personally against nerfing playstyles as a whole because it leaves the door wide open for other playstyle suspects. Next thing people will start to complain about Stall, or Rain teams (which are not uncommon high up the ladder). If it's blatantly broken (e.g. Drizzle + Swift Swim in 5th gen) then yes, but Baton Pass teams seem to be nothing more than an annoying playstyle to face, hence so many people complaining about it and exaggerating it's strengths in the hope of not having to deal with it any longer. I've used plenty of Baton Pass starting in 4th gen up to now and I can say that it's good, but not as consistent as people claim in this thread. Some wins are easy, some games are hopeless due to stuff like Prankster Taunt or crits (which seem to be ever more prevalent the second you start using a BP team). I can also say that 10-15% of my wins using BP come from instant forfeits before the match starts, which says more about the mentality of the playerbase than about Baton Pass teams themselves.

 

[malister04]

BP teams are so annoying, damn its freaking great the metagame of it, worst will be if your opponent is someone like stinkki shark or dEnissss .

 

[Kairyu_Gen1]

It would be rather convenient if you could beat an entire team of 6 with a single pokemon now, wouldn't it? Maybe we should start considering Baton Pass chains as teams, not as individual pokemon. In any other suspect it would be fair to say that having to rely on multiple pokemon to beat a certain threat indicates brokenness. But Baton Pass chains consist of 6 pokemon, and you have 6 pokemon of your own available to combat them.

I'm personally against nerfing playstyles as a whole because it leaves the door wide open for other playstyle suspects. Next thing people will start to complain about Stall, or Rain teams (which are not uncommon high up the ladder). If it's blatantly broken (e.g. Drizzle + Swift Swim in 5th gen) then yes, but Baton Pass teams seem to be nothing more than an annoying playstyle to face, hence so many people complaining about it and exaggerating it's strengths in the hope of not having to deal with it any longer. I've used plenty of Baton Pass starting in 4th gen up to now and I can say that it's good, but not as consistent as people claim in this thread. Some wins are easy, some games are hopeless due to stuff like Prankster Taunt or crits (which seem to be ever more prevalent the second you start using a BP team). I can also say that 10-15% of my wins using BP come from instant forfeits before the match starts, which says more about the mentality of the playerbase than about Baton Pass teams themselves.

You just highlighted the problem, it's so match up based it really shouldn't be tolerated. Sure all playing styles have weaknesses and strengths, but none have such "easy" wins or "hopeless" match ups.

Plus, you just used a slippery slope fallacy that is definitely not evidence for keeping BP around. If a playing style was OP, then people would complain regardless of the decision. Heck, I already complain about how boring stall teams are to fight sometimes, but I never PM a council member or anything because I know that it adds to the competitive nature of the game, something Baton Pass simply does not do in any way.

My final point should probably be ignored, but I feel the need to remind people that pokemon is a GAME! If something makes the community as a whole enjoy it less, then why shouldn't we ban it?

 

[Tactical]

BP teams are so annoying, damn its freaking great the metagame of it, worst will be if your opponent is someone like stinkki shark or dEnissss .

"It's super annoying" is not a valid reason to ban something.

You just highlighted the problem, it's so match up based it really shouldn't be tolerated. Sure all playing styles have weaknesses and strengths, but none have such "easy" wins or "hopeless" match ups.

Option #2 should reduce the matchup disparity and give other teams more options, or make their current options more effective to counter BP since they will have less redundancy to burn through on the BP team.

Plus, you just used a slippery slope fallacy that is definitely not evidence for keeping BP around. If a playing style was OP, then people would complain regardless of the decision. Heck, I already complain about how boring stall teams are to fight sometimes, but I never PM a council member or anything because I know that it adds to the competitive nature of the game, something Baton Pass simply does not do in any way.

"Does not do in any way" is another statement that should not exist in this context. BP is a very competitive build of a team set with competing against as many potential threats to itself as possible. Even with the execution implimented in its creation it is not perfect. I would go so far as to concur with a previous poster's point in that Baton Pass is not anti-competitive as it is anti-meta and people are refusing to change that metagame it was designed to beat, instead insisting it should just be removed instead.

My final point should probably be ignored, but I feel the need to remind people that pokemon is a GAME! If something makes the community as a whole enjoy it less, then why shouldn't we ban it?

This is why I am in support of #2. It is the greatest compromise, I feel. As nice as it would be for people to dig in their heels and try to beat BP seriously, I'm more of a realist than that and know people would much prefer to complain and leave than persevere and excel, thus we are where we are now.

 

[Jukain]

It would be rather convenient if you could beat an entire team of 6 with a single pokemon now, wouldn't it? Maybe we should start considering Baton Pass chains as teams, not as individual pokemon. In any other suspect it would be fair to say that having to rely on multiple pokemon to beat a certain threat indicates brokenness. But Baton Pass chains consist of 6 pokemon, and you have 6 pokemon of your own available to combat them.

I'm personally against nerfing playstyles as a whole because it leaves the door wide open for other playstyle suspects. Next thing people will start to complain about Stall, or Rain teams (which are not uncommon high up the ladder). If it's blatantly broken (e.g. Drizzle + Swift Swim in 5th gen) then yes, but Baton Pass teams seem to be nothing more than an annoying playstyle to face, hence so many people complaining about it and exaggerating it's strengths in the hope of not having to deal with it any longer. I've used plenty of Baton Pass starting in 4th gen up to now and I can say that it's good, but not as consistent as people claim in this thread. Some wins are easy, some games are hopeless due to stuff like Prankster Taunt or crits (which seem to be ever more prevalent the second you start using a BP team). I can also say that 10-15% of my wins using BP come from instant forfeits before the match starts, which says more about the mentality of the playerbase than about Baton Pass teams themselves.

First let me address that Baton Pass is a team of 6 Pokemon. It is not a playstyle; it is literally one team with 6 defined Pokemon, defined EV spreads, defined movesets, defined abilities, and defined items. Therefore I don't think that the slippery slope argument makes any sense here, as no other playstyle has achieved this level of perfection. There will never be a perfect stall, balanced, or offensive team, and I have five generations plus part of this one of proof to back this up. If anyone were to bring up a ban on stall or rain in this generation, in any context, they would be laughed at. This is not the case for Baton Pass because Baton Pass is an entirely different case than either rain or stall.

I won't say that no one is arguing that one requiring more than one countermeasure for Baton Pass on a team is a ludicrous option, because they are, and I'm going to come right out and say that that's the wrong mindset. However, the issue becomes that in a battle, only one of these checks/counters is relevant. When you switch out to something, you have forfeited your momentum and basically lost because now the opponent is probably behind a Substitute, and can boost past whatever your threat is, and you have lost. So you might as well only carry one counter, because there's no point as multiple isn't getting you anywhere. I also want to bring up stall. In a Baton Pass matchup, stall is entirely invalidated. It is ludicrous to expect a stall team to carry a Curse Trevenant or Haze Quagsire. For one, stall needs all six of its members to handle the metagame as it is. It can hardly afford to run a Baton Pass counter. Trevenant is flatly an abysmal Pokemon in this metagame. If a player is forced to use an obscure/lower-tier counter to deal with something, then in any suspect test that should be counted as a point against it, not for it. So now we have one thing, Haze Quagsire. So now you have forced every single stall team to carry a Quagsire, and you are forcing every single Quagsire to forfeit an important moveslot for a move that is redundant with its ability outside of dealing with Baton Pass, which it barely even beats. Don't you think this is slightly ridiculous?

Furthermore, Baton Pass is against the competitive aspect of the game, which is a game where generally, the more skillful player should win using their skill and knowledge of the game. BP violates the skill piece of this. Maybe you'll have to win a couple 50/50s here and again, or maybe you'll have to use [insert formula here] to bypass some threat -- that is not skill. I don't call 'Baton Pass out to threat and boost' or 'Baton Pass out to Vaporeon and Roar' or 'sac something and restart the chain' skill. You cannot deny that Baton Pass is a linear and generally easy-to-play; this is a fact. This violates the point that Pokemon should involve the more skillful player winning using skill. If you're going to call this just a philosophy/my viewpoint on things, then I encourage you to read this:

Skill
The metagame should require knowledge and practice to become an expert player and to achieve consistent success at the highest levels of play.

This characteristic addresses how the metagame is played, and how success is defined and rewarded. While it can be difficult to truly determine who is "the best" at any given time or in any given competition -- the overall metagame should cultivate a perception (if not reality) that more skilled players will experience greater success than lesser skilled players.

All in all, Baton Pass is not befitting of a metagame based on skill.

 

[Anty]

It would be rather convenient if you could beat an entire team of 6 with a single pokemon now, wouldn't it? Maybe we should start considering Baton Pass chains as teams, not as individual pokemon. In any other suspect it would be fair to say that having to rely on multiple pokemon to beat a certain threat indicates brokenness. But Baton Pass chains consist of 6 pokemon, and you have 6 pokemon of your own available to combat them.

I'm personally against nerfing playstyles as a whole because it leaves the door wide open for other playstyle suspects. Next thing people will start to complain about Stall, or Rain teams (which are not uncommon high up the ladder). If it's blatantly broken (e.g. Drizzle + Swift Swim in 5th gen) then yes, but Baton Pass teams seem to be nothing more than an annoying playstyle to face, hence so many people complaining about it and exaggerating it's strengths in the hope of not having to deal with it any longer. I've used plenty of Baton Pass starting in 4th gen up to now and I can say that it's good, but not as consistent as people claim in this thread. Some wins are easy, some games are hopeless due to stuff like Prankster Taunt or crits (which seem to be ever more prevalent the second you start using a BP team). I can also say that 10-15% of my wins using BP come from instant forfeits before the match starts, which says more about the mentality of the playerbase than about Baton Pass teams themselves.

Im pretty sure you just repeated what i said:

you need more than one counter.

. You also missed that i said how you need multiple pokemon to beat a specific team of six (which is what bp is). Usually you can easily counter a given team of six, but it is stupidly with bp as well as being able to hit the other 90%(or whatever the % is) of the meta

Bp is broken because it requires less skill to beat a player with more skill, it also requires gimmick/less viable mons/sets to beat (eg trevenant or haze quagsire). Drizzle swim is scary and very under rated imo but nerfing baton pass wont make it any better.

Have you considered the possibility that something is considered useless until a use is found for it? To think that the Viability Rankings are all that will ever be is a bit silly when there are still ongoing discussions about new potential sets for just about every pokemon. You don't need a list of names to tell you what you can and can't use to innovate. So trevenant being useful against a specific team, but trash against every other makes it viable?

If Baton Pass is an auto-win against your team then your team isn't decent. i was talking about before bp was a majour threat. It is not answering a known threat in the metagame and deserves to lose just as much as if it were unprepared versus anything else you may encounter. If a stall team runs into Tailglow Manaphy and doesn't have the one counter stall has to that thing then that is the Stall player's fault because he does have available options and did not utilize them, not Manaphy's fault for being broken. Well manaphy has a lot of VIABLE counters and checks, most stall teams will be running chansey/blissey, however most standard teams dont want to run a specific check, such as trevenant especcially because it is shit

I'm assuming the no. 1 in question was a stall player based on the two pokemon cited, and thus lacked sufficient pressure to keep the subs down after he erased the BP player's boosts. Once again, a fault of the team, not BP. If I am mistaken on his composition, feel free to correct me. The team peaked 1, i doubt it was a shit team

I know one move doesn't beat it. My suggestion is Curse unviable and shit - only works vs one playstyle and Seismic Toss doesnt break vaps sub pressure for stall teams to sufficiently hamper the BP player, not just Curse which, in itself, is easy enough to work around just by switching and restarting the chain so you just invalidated your argument and your reason for running trev. Think about your options, there is no miracle pill for BP but it is more than manageable.

I also notice that near every post for the pro-ban argument, regardless of quality, has been liked by one individual. I do not judge the merits of an argument on how easy they are to bandwagon.

If you dislike being rude then do not be rude you clearly dont dislike being an ignorant idiot, it is not a difficult task to keep discussion civil. Judging by the salt your side tends to fling it may be a bit telling that the air tightness of your argument is not the reason people dislike speaking to you Have you not seen the amount of hate your posts have got?.

my replies are in bold

This will be my final post as it is killing me how stupid and stubborn you are. If i havent already spelt it out for you here is the definition of 'viable':
capable of working successfully; feasible.

 

[Kairyu_Gen1]

"Does not do in any way" is another statement that should not exist in this context. BP is a very competitive build of a team set with competing against as many potential threats to itself as possible. Even with the execution implimented in its creation it is not perfect. I would go so far as to concur with a previous poster's point in that Baton Pass is not anti-competitive as it is anti-meta and people are refusing to change that metagame it was designed to beat, instead insisting it should just be removed instead.

You're mixing up "competitive" and "broken" or "viable". Competitive is that thing that makes people compete for wins. Baton Pass turns it more into a game of "Rock Paper Scissors", which is the exact opposite of what we want.

And it's not that people refuse to change their teams to fit Baton Pass in, it's that they can't. There are limited ways to avoid auto losing to baton pass that are not outright inferior against your standard teams. Since standard teams are more common, a lot of people choose to take a loss here and there in order to not compromise their ability to keep up with everyone else.

 

[malister04]

I would adore any idea of having the posibility to ban somehow all BP teams from OU , considering that it'd have a huge impact of how users would prepare their teams by not pullin taunt, roar, haze, etc ...people will however but not that much. Im now thinking that banning BPs team wouldnt be considered by many ppl ...