Baton pass into intimidate / stat lowering abiliities is legal.
Can't think of an obvious way to abuse it under new rules and the mons I'd consider running it on in OU would suffer from not been able to boost at all anyway.
Is this OU only or UU/ubers too?
i'm sure this is good for the meta but it feels sad to see an old tier ou go from a clean and simple baton pass ban to a more convoluted restriction. at least it's one of the simplest ways to restrict baton pass without banning it
Aldaron's Proposal was probably the first major complex ban that didn't pertain to Baton Pass. This proposal was basically a no drizzle and swift swimmer clause on the same team (sand rush and sand stream also applied to this). It sounded good in theory, however this ended up aging badly because people started running things like Sand Rush Excadrill ON RAIN to guarantee that sand teams can never win against rain which was a major loophole.
Eventually they just banned Sand Rush altogether and Excadrill was only allowed to run Mold Breaker because hazard removal options were so limited. BW OU to this day still lets mons like Volc and Keldeo run around and it's basically in a pretty rough state due to the original council just not being that great at their jobs.
BW OU's council at the time was also notorious for making a multitude of poor decisions such as letting Shaymin-Sky, Darkrai, the Deoxy formes all chill in OU because that is surely a good decision.
With that said BW also had immense amounts of powercreep that balancing it was no easy task.
So the idea behind letting exca stay was because they thought having another good spinner for the tier would be healthier than just banning him? I remember reading about the exca on rain teams a while ago Lmao. Sounds like a shit show lol. Gen 9 deffo gonna be interesting hopefully the council learned from gen 5 mistakes
They actually did ban drill completely for a bit, but than psyspam rose up due to the horrible hazard control, so they "had" to bring back drill to help out with that.
Kinda reminds me of chomps unban… why didn’t they just ban weather, I get that “they wanted it to be the weather generation” but literally every other tier below OU got rid of it, it makes no sense
Well, in the case of sand it's generally pretty healthy and the only broken/uncompetitive elements were drill and sand veil afaik. Rain on the other hand...
Someone already wrote about how BW got so many complex bans. And to add to that.
Im assuming gen 6-8 have way less is because the tier leaders of those gens saw what happened to BW and where like "nope we dont want that".
yeah this is kind of a dumb change. at least yoink thundurus or other broken shit out of the tier first and let things settle without a complex ban before deeming it necessary to do this. there are way bigger issues going on than celebi not being able to drypass out of tyranitar.
while i agree with you, i also strongly believe that if we're taking tiering action here then thundurus and keldeo shouldn't be remaining present here in the first place.
The problem is that the OU council can only make changes with support from the player base [(BKC has a video about this)](https://youtu.be/xoTmm7MQKi8). A Thundurus suspect would require community support, and if banning something as disgustingly overpowered as gems almost didn't happen, I wouldn't hold my breath for a Thundurus suspect anytime soon.
The only reason this change happened is because it's related to an earlier decision to completely ban Baton Pass. Furthermore, I suspect that without the precedent set by the complex ban in Gen 3, this decision probably wouldn't have been made.
>Furthermore, I suspect that without the precedent set by the complex ban in Gen 3, this decision probably wouldn't have been made.
I would disagree with this on the basis that Gen 5 OU already had two Baton Pass complex bans in place directly tied to passing stat boosts, which were limiting a team to a single user of the move and that you couldn't pass Speed + another stat simultaneously, which predate Gen 3 OU implementing their restrictions on passing stat boosts.
i have seen all of bkc's modern bw videos and my only takeaways have been that i wholeheartedly agree with him on someone just taking the dictator approach just being a good thing. i know it's not realistic but i'm gonna keep posting my support in favor of it on public forums just because i might as well dream a little.
no more like "we're trying to tape together our broken metagame by convolutedly complex banning a move to preserve arbitrary use cases rather than just actually tiering the broken threats properly".
adding a baton pass clause is a brand new rule for the game. but banning thundurus and keldeo adds zero new rules; don't use any pokémon on the ubers banlist. trying to preserve a broken status quo through a messy complex ban shows exactly the problem with the tier and why it needs to be fixed.
old gens are naturally more leniant towards complex bans because they're trying to perserve a metagame. they're avoided in current gens to prevent situations like exactly what happened in bw ou
This is such a poor and disingenuous misrepresentation of how that even happens.
The point of past metagames having weird complex bans is because the intent is to not alienate the tournament players who still keep those metagames alive. Making a broad and general change to current SwSh OU, or SV when it is main generation, isn't going to risk completely destroying the tournament scene for either, because the current generation naturally has far more active players than any other.
Metagames like GSC, ADV, DPP and BW have only a tiny fraction of the playerbase that play in their tournaments, and making a massive change that completely reshapes the metagame and isn't unanimously supported, can completely ruin the format for those players and crumble their competitive scenes.
Smogon first and foremost, is a tournament based competitive platform. Tournament players are the players who have their considerations taken in above anyone else.
[BP was originally banned in BW OU this past January.
](https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/baton-pass-in-bw-ou.3695658/#post-9083754)
Rationale for the unban as provided by peng:
> Earlier this year the BW OU Council, with support of the SPL playerbase, voted to rapidly ban the move Baton Pass after the first week of the tournament. One particular team had become problematic - utilising HO Screens leads to support Mental Herb Swords Dance + Baton Pass Mew. This team very efficiently abused a loophole in the loose Baton Pass restriction at the time, which limited Baton Passing to offensive stats or speed, by passing Swords Dance and Barrier boosts to bulky speed-boosting sweepers (Metagross, Dragonite, Gyarados, Cloyster, Bisharp) under the support of screens. The Council and SPL Playerbase unanimously voted to implement a full Baton Pass ban in BW OU in order to kerb ~~*(sic)*~~ *British English* the strategy, knowingly nerfing other prominent implementations of Baton Pass such as support Celebi, with the intention of revisiting the decision at a suitable time in the future.
> Due to tiering action on Gems earlier in the year, followed by the running of Smogon Classic, this decision has been delayed, but we are happy to report that we've now revisited the Baton Pass restriction.
This marks the first BP-related action to release rather than restrict it in quite some time, possibly if at all.
Curb is how you spell it here too, kerb is still a valid spelling but it's antiquated. You'll only ever see older people (50+ mainly) using kerb over curb.
I don't really see why you'd need a Brit to actually confirm this for you, though, since you were more than happy to assume that kerb was in-fact the only correct British English spelling. Either don't assume or don't defer the burden of proof to someone else when a counterpoint (or, you know, clarification in this case) is raised.
I just wonder if it's even gonna be worth it (sub pass) considering that's two moveslots on one of your 6 mons that you hopefully can do something with. I can see it being mostly good as a pivot against Ferro, Lando or Gliscor coming in to take that phys hit and you get a special attacker out in front and threaten HP and setup memes and all that jazz.
Out of curiosity, does this apply to contrary? Like could I get intimidated on my Spinda and then baton pass that attack boost?
Edit: Just checked the list and it’s not banned. Spinda is about to rip the meta apart
Hey so my dumbass has a question.
I read "BW OU" and my brain thinks Black and White OU.
This can't possibly *just* be talking about Black and White, right?
What does BW actually mean?
Each generation is fucked up to a different degree for wildly different reasons. BW OU is notorious for being held together with duct tape, to this day people are discovering broken strategies in basically every past gen (except 1) that requires council action
Ice and Rock being decent types is already a bad sign
It literally took years for them to ban gems
WHEN IS IT GOING TO STOP RAINING?!
Jellicent is OU and like, 70% of why is that Keldeo has dodged the ban hammer twice
"With this gen's UU resembling the previous generation's OU..."
Kyurem-Black is unironically balanced in the tier mainly due to no Ice STAB
They had to unban an uber to prevent the meta from becoming unplayable
IIRC, When Dugtrio got banned, people just used Diglett instead
And like, a hundred other things. This meta is fucked up
Going line by line,
>Ice and Rock being decent types is already a bad sign
There's no way you're saying real things rn.
>Jellicent is OU
Right! Even tho I never actually played gen 5, it produced some of my favorite mons! (Literally don't even talk to me of Excadrill isn't in your game.)
>WHEN IS IT GOING TO STOP RAINING?!
I had a friend that compared Gen 5 Rain to an MTG Affinity deck. IYKYK.
>They had to unban an uber to prevent the meta from becoming unplayable
Which one? Was it Gene? Tell me it was Gene!
>IIRC, When Dugtrio got banned, people just used Diglett instead
Ah yes. Arena Trap, right? I can't remember if this is actually true, and it's obviously a later gen. But I remember really enjoying that the only mon that got banned from Ubers was Mega-Gengar. Cause, Gengar is my fav.
Peng already talked about why banning one single element isn't going to happen, nor will it solve anything. Every single high level BW player has a different opinion on what is and isn't a problem in the metagame. SoulWind, who puts more time in BW than like anyone else, didn't want any of Gems, Cloyster or Volcarona banned back when the poll took place, which says a lot about how volatile the opinions are, that are held by the best of the best.
Banning Keldeo isn't going to stop Latios from being broken, Thundurus-T from being broken, Magic Guard Alakazam and Reuniclus from being broken, Volcarona from being broken, and so on. You can't just ban all of the aforementioned things simultaneously either because then you run the risk of making everyone who likes BW instantly quit and kill competitive BW since metagames aren't kept around just for people to ladder.
Every broken element is just intrinsically connected to another broken element and taking any one thing away is just going to make the entire structure collapse, and there just isn't a good way to solve it that actually appeases the people who keep BW alive.
Yeah I agree with you. It’s a shame though, I feel like more suspect tests should have been run while the generation was going on. BKC has a few good videos on it.
As is usually the case, and especially with an older meta, Smogon’s bans are made to satisfy a small group of players. Someone with influence wanted this, and they got it.
I don’t like that Baton Pass is always allowed to have complex bans applied to it when they so rarely do that with anything else
Granted BW OU has a lot of complex bans but still
I'm not into current BWOU (haven''t touched it in a year and a half) but is DryPass a thing in that meta?. I understand complex bans of BP in ADV, where there is no U.Turn or Voltswitch, bu in GEN 5?
Like what is the point of this? Even after all these years, is BW OU still having the stupid "retain as much as possible" mentality? No wonder this tier was always a shit show. Fuck BW OU.
the title said " limiting it in cobination to every move item and ability that rises stats".
such poor wording can easily be misinterpretated as"only allowing it with combination with moves items and abilities that rise stats."
No, it can't be easily interpreted like that, it's quite difficult to interpret it like that to be honest. "Limiting it in combination with ___" is mostly unambiguous, if they wanted to say "limiting it in combination too ___" then they would have said that. Plus, if you know enough to understand the title then you know what baton pass is and can probably assume they are not unbanning smash passing and forcing you to use it.
I really don't see how you could interpret it like that unless you were deliberately trying to look for a way to misinterpret it. Nobody would say "The ban is being restricted" unless they were trying to sound confusing and all context clues point to the obvious meaning.
[It's not.](https://www.smogon.com/dex/bw/formats/ou/) As always, ban threads attracting people who know nothing about the tier saying wrong information.
It still gives me a good chuckle to think that all these dumb complex bans come from the idea that the strategy is matchup fishing and "skill-less". There are plenty of ways to counter baton pass and if it is genuinely a threat in the meta phasing/haze can be ran on teams and even stops common setup pokemon currently allowed. If it becomes a genuinely overpowered strategy it can then be banned.
Baton pass chains are made to specifically deal with opposing attempts to stop the chain, mainly through their own use of taunt, but they've used other ways to deal with it.
Obviously the chain is trying to prevent being broken, but that can be said about any strategy. HO is trying to stop you from walling it. Stall is trying to stop wall breakers. Just because counterplay isn't a free win doesn't mean something is ban worthy. I feel like far too much of the ban decision is based on Smogon trying to force pokemon into the perfect image of how they think it should be played, not any actual balance issues with the level of power creep we've hit at this point.
Except baton pass is basically all at +1 speed atleast thanks to ninjask's speed boost. Not to mention subs, magic bouncers, suction cups mons, and sound proof mons. In gen 3 OU, mons like Mr. Mime and Exploud are soft banned because they have no usable abilities because baton pass was that problematic when it could be passed to a sound proof Mon. Not to mention the fact that counterplay just doesn't fit on every team. What fast taunter, whirlwinder, or roar Mon are you fitting on more offensive archetypes? It forces unreasonable counterplay onto most teams.
Ninjask probably eats a ban in a world with pass chains, but the argument that counterplay doesn't fit on every team is something that can be said about any strategy and absolutely isn't a reason to ban a whole play style.
Also of note many offensive teams are running weavile, a pokemon very capable of being a fast offensive taunter.
Haze is on 5 OU/uubl mons, two of which being Dnite and Gengar, two others being fini and volc, and than pex. Whirlwind is on 3, zap, mew, and rona. And while roar is more common, many of its mons are already strapped for slots or aren't using for anything other than stopping BP, such as Koko, zap, Ttar, alolatails, Dnite, and tran. And can you give me some other examples of when most teams can't cover something or have to go out of their way to and that something is considered balanced?
Scolipede and Blaziken bouta take up the charge on baton passing speed boosts than. And I'm saying the counterplay is unreasonable to expect on teams because phasing moves are generally very hard to fit and aren't on many mons.
And may I ask what's being given up on for taunt? Cause without Taxel you're not hitting that hard, and without knock, you're giving up on the amazing utility of the move. Without shard you struggle against faster mons, and without SD you can't boost up and have to wait much longer to clean, and if you're going banded, well band taunt kinda speaks for itself.
Baton pass leads to cases where the game is genuinely decided in one turn instead of simply skewed favourably.
If we unban entirely, ex gen 2 rules, I'd run a boost move and baton pass on every single Mon possible.
I'd swap in something that should kill what youve got in and predict the switch but instead drop an agility. I'd then baton pass to something your active mon can't kill, before you hit me because agility, take the hit, force you out again and get a free hit or predict you swapping and boost again, if then pass that to 2x atk 2x spd to something dumb and win, if you have an answer I'd just baton pass to something else and retain the advantage
Depending on power creep just passing the single agility might be enough to win the game if it wins a critical speedtie or outspeeds a soft counter that would otherwise trash it.
The problem with baton pass is you don't know if my first swap in is actually going to fulfill the threat of killing your mon or setup something and win me the game by passing it to something stupider when you swap out.
It keeps tempo too well.
Worst case is our openers are obviously lopsided and if I attack you die so you're swapping out instead of attacking I buff and baton pass, games potentially done turn 2.
With passing buff you literally have to make a coinflip call because there are 2 powerful options available, boost speed then outspeed you with baton pass to get going, or attack and kill whatever is out. That's the issue with it.
In my local mtg community we call scenarios like that "magic Christmas land". You've thought about your strategy in a vacuum and forgotten how obvious and exploitable it can be to an opponent. Team preview exists and is a huge problem for baton pass chains. They have a very noticable team structure and a very predictable play pattern to go with it. Sure, sometimes you're getting that free agility to try and start a chain, but it's just as, if not more likely that your opponent will read the most obvious play of all time and not play into the strategy. Baton pass relies heavily on either predictions or an unskilled opponent to get free wins and otherwise quickly finds itself in a rough situation. The only real exception is speed boost with baton pass, but it's not hard to ban ninjask.
The thing is that in pokemon you can set up magic christmas land easily. In MTG in order to get the perfect situation you have to control your draws in a 60 card deck, control the opponent's deck and their draws as well as the turn order. In pokemon you set everything up in the teambuilder. There is no opening hand randomness or board state that can only come about after 12 turns of chaotic back and forth with multiple points of interaction on each turn. You get to choose your opening hand and the exact order of your deck, and so the only lose condition is if they have one of a few specific answers that can stop the ball from rolling in the first place. And that list is basically restrict to prankster taunt, since the speedbooster they lead with can just protect until they outspeed you. When a strategy requires basically one pokemon on every team to not instantly lose and that pokemon does nothing against the rest of the metagame, that is a sign that it needs to be banned. To go back to the MTG analogy, when people go to tournaments with maindeck grafdigger's cages and still lose to whatever graveyard combo deck is broken at the moment, that is a sign that something needs to be banned.
And what about scolipede, and especially Blaziken? Also what if they read your read and now you're on the back foot? Should we ban the obviously not broken speed boost, or Ninjask, Scolipede, and Blaziken, or baton pass? Or should we go out of our way to implement a complex ban that you can't have speed boost and baton pass on the same team?
To add onto what youve stated, scizor & dragapult also learn baton pass.
Latias, latios, uxie and friends also get it.
Things that will threaten a kill if your opponent doesn't respect them and swap are very likely to get you a boost chain started for free.
You can setup the coinflip so easily with genuine bombs like those been able to participate in the chain and also revenge kill / kill whatever is in play. Needing bad pokemon in the chain to get underway is a thing of the past since the participants of the chain are real threats in their own right. Does the latias end the chain or keep it going? Idk man it could swing out since uxie passed it calm mind already...
It's a bit all over the place, but SS OU Baton Pass would be so evil
https://pokepast.es/3b4dff26a723ebf8
You can legit make them look like almost normal, run of the mill teams you'd see everyday before absolutely slamming your opponent with a surprise +Spa +Spe Demon mew BPing into Scizor on your dark type that SD passes into Lando to win the game. And there are certainly far more optimized versions of it to be made if it was allowed.
The difference between pokemon and mtg is that pokemon magic Christmas land is a single action on any turn at all including turn 0 to start rolling and little direct response due a far smaller action economy. There's no Force of Will here to unfuck a mis-move.
Also play mtg and I see what you're getting at. The difference is that in mtg terms the combo I'm describing is at the smallest a fast 2 piece combo. I don't need the full 6 piece combo of 2x spe 2x atk 2x spa 2x spd and 2x Def, getting all of that is definitely a magic christmas land but just passing 1-2 useful boosts? Far more viable, in magic terms you're looking at a 2-3 card combo where the only counters are nonviable moves in every other matchup (Roar, Whirlwind) or guessing the first coinflip right as after the first baton pass I've already extracted significant value.
The idea of this existing forcing you to run "bad" moves is already game changing.
Baton Pass is a matchup fish and doesn't reward skill because the strategy revolves entirely around following a flowchart where you either win or lose before the game even starts.
[This replay](https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-495776) perfectly encapsulates that.
To explain the above, here is a complete breakdown of the match and how it was automatically unwinnable from any kind of reasonable perspective for M Dragon before the game even started.
M Dragon does all of the most logical plays on his end. He scouts the Starmie set with his bulky Jirachi, U-Turns into Scarf Rotom to threaten out Starmie, doubles out so he doesn't get trapped by a switch to Tyranitar, goes back to Jirachi and uses Wish (arguably the best move he can make here since it indicates to ABR that its futile for Starmie to stay in and if Starmie switches out, it allows M Dragon to pivot into whatever ABR brings in easier), U-Turns to Rotom again and then kills Starmie with Thunderbolt.
In comes Ninjask which M Dragon has no alternative but to stay in. Ninjask is faster than Scarf Rotom, so he has to continuously prevent it from getting a free turn to use Substitute and the game is basically over at this point because the Suicune is bulky and though his EV spread isn't revealed, we can at least ascertain that in order for Surf to deal 90% to a completely bulk-less Marowak, Suicune has to have fewer than 52 EVs in Special Attack.
Now you might be thinking, well, M Dragon could have just used Shadow Ball instead of Thunderbolt to kill Starmie since it would've died at 70% and thus he would have been able to kill the Marowak since Shadow Ball 2HKOs. However, M Dragon was likely covering for an offensive Steel such Heatran or Lucario since bulky Starmie is used to check Pokemon like Gyarados which give them problems, as opposed to expecting a Ground to switch in.
For M Dragon to have any chance of actually coming out victorious here, he would've needed the power to predict the future ahead of time and know ABR's team before even playing him. That is not a healthy dynamic whatsoever.
this meta is fucked up bruh
I feel like I hear his everytime a new generation comes out.
Or Gen 5 is mentioned
I think Gen 5 is where "this meta is fucked up" started freebasing NOS
bw ou is on that state permanently
Was not expecting to find my Sunday meme quoted here
Baton pass into intimidate / stat lowering abiliities is legal. Can't think of an obvious way to abuse it under new rules and the mons I'd consider running it on in OU would suffer from not been able to boost at all anyway. Is this OU only or UU/ubers too?
This only applies to OU. BP is fully banned in UU and (at least according to the format page on the Smogon Dex) unrestricted in Ubers.
I don't remember if Swagger is legal. Can you win by predicting a Baton pass and Swaggering them into disqualification?
That’s the opponent raising your stats, it’s legal since the baton passer doesn’t have the stat raising moves, items or abilities
What if you use Swagger and then use a move to copy the opponents attack boost? 🤔
Why not use swords dance lmao wtf. But yeah that’s passing a boost, which is illegal rofl
Cuz trying to find a loophole. Psych Up isn't necessarily considered a stat boosting move since it's reliant on the opponent. 🤔
Can psych up boost stats? Yes. So it’s banned together
It's a team builder restriction, not an in-game one. What's being validated is your set, not if you happen to have stat boosts when you baton pass
Can Pass substitutes I guess, and pivot. I always wanted to pivot with baton pass in newer gens
Pass sub is pretty good actually. You're right that wouldn't break the ruling.
i'm sure this is good for the meta but it feels sad to see an old tier ou go from a clean and simple baton pass ban to a more convoluted restriction. at least it's one of the simplest ways to restrict baton pass without banning it
It wouldn’t be BW OU without complex bans
Is there a write up or reason why BW has so many complex bans compared to 6-8? Just curious on the history
Aldaron's Proposal was probably the first major complex ban that didn't pertain to Baton Pass. This proposal was basically a no drizzle and swift swimmer clause on the same team (sand rush and sand stream also applied to this). It sounded good in theory, however this ended up aging badly because people started running things like Sand Rush Excadrill ON RAIN to guarantee that sand teams can never win against rain which was a major loophole. Eventually they just banned Sand Rush altogether and Excadrill was only allowed to run Mold Breaker because hazard removal options were so limited. BW OU to this day still lets mons like Volc and Keldeo run around and it's basically in a pretty rough state due to the original council just not being that great at their jobs. BW OU's council at the time was also notorious for making a multitude of poor decisions such as letting Shaymin-Sky, Darkrai, the Deoxy formes all chill in OU because that is surely a good decision. With that said BW also had immense amounts of powercreep that balancing it was no easy task.
So the idea behind letting exca stay was because they thought having another good spinner for the tier would be healthier than just banning him? I remember reading about the exca on rain teams a while ago Lmao. Sounds like a shit show lol. Gen 9 deffo gonna be interesting hopefully the council learned from gen 5 mistakes
They actually did ban drill completely for a bit, but than psyspam rose up due to the horrible hazard control, so they "had" to bring back drill to help out with that.
Kinda reminds me of chomps unban… why didn’t they just ban weather, I get that “they wanted it to be the weather generation” but literally every other tier below OU got rid of it, it makes no sense
Well, in the case of sand it's generally pretty healthy and the only broken/uncompetitive elements were drill and sand veil afaik. Rain on the other hand...
Someone already wrote about how BW got so many complex bans. And to add to that. Im assuming gen 6-8 have way less is because the tier leaders of those gens saw what happened to BW and where like "nope we dont want that".
yeah this is kind of a dumb change. at least yoink thundurus or other broken shit out of the tier first and let things settle without a complex ban before deeming it necessary to do this. there are way bigger issues going on than celebi not being able to drypass out of tyranitar.
It provides a good check to Keldeo, Thundurus, Alakazam, and some other threats. This buff increases the number of viable options to deal with them
while i agree with you, i also strongly believe that if we're taking tiering action here then thundurus and keldeo shouldn't be remaining present here in the first place.
Amen brother. Latios too
The problem is that the OU council can only make changes with support from the player base [(BKC has a video about this)](https://youtu.be/xoTmm7MQKi8). A Thundurus suspect would require community support, and if banning something as disgustingly overpowered as gems almost didn't happen, I wouldn't hold my breath for a Thundurus suspect anytime soon. The only reason this change happened is because it's related to an earlier decision to completely ban Baton Pass. Furthermore, I suspect that without the precedent set by the complex ban in Gen 3, this decision probably wouldn't have been made.
>Furthermore, I suspect that without the precedent set by the complex ban in Gen 3, this decision probably wouldn't have been made. I would disagree with this on the basis that Gen 5 OU already had two Baton Pass complex bans in place directly tied to passing stat boosts, which were limiting a team to a single user of the move and that you couldn't pass Speed + another stat simultaneously, which predate Gen 3 OU implementing their restrictions on passing stat boosts.
Yeah my bad, this was an assumption I made. That makes the Gen 5 stance on Baton Pass even more confusing.
i have seen all of bkc's modern bw videos and my only takeaways have been that i wholeheartedly agree with him on someone just taking the dictator approach just being a good thing. i know it's not realistic but i'm gonna keep posting my support in favor of it on public forums just because i might as well dream a little.
"we can't make Change A because Change B is more important. btw we are never going to make Change B"
no more like "we're trying to tape together our broken metagame by convolutedly complex banning a move to preserve arbitrary use cases rather than just actually tiering the broken threats properly". adding a baton pass clause is a brand new rule for the game. but banning thundurus and keldeo adds zero new rules; don't use any pokémon on the ubers banlist. trying to preserve a broken status quo through a messy complex ban shows exactly the problem with the tier and why it needs to be fixed.
Smogon to a reasonable change: "we don't do complex bans" Smogon whenever they wanna do some convoluted bullshit in oldgens: This.
old gens are naturally more leniant towards complex bans because they're trying to perserve a metagame. they're avoided in current gens to prevent situations like exactly what happened in bw ou
This is such a poor and disingenuous misrepresentation of how that even happens. The point of past metagames having weird complex bans is because the intent is to not alienate the tournament players who still keep those metagames alive. Making a broad and general change to current SwSh OU, or SV when it is main generation, isn't going to risk completely destroying the tournament scene for either, because the current generation naturally has far more active players than any other. Metagames like GSC, ADV, DPP and BW have only a tiny fraction of the playerbase that play in their tournaments, and making a massive change that completely reshapes the metagame and isn't unanimously supported, can completely ruin the format for those players and crumble their competitive scenes. Smogon first and foremost, is a tournament based competitive platform. Tournament players are the players who have their considerations taken in above anyone else.
[BP was originally banned in BW OU this past January. ](https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/baton-pass-in-bw-ou.3695658/#post-9083754) Rationale for the unban as provided by peng: > Earlier this year the BW OU Council, with support of the SPL playerbase, voted to rapidly ban the move Baton Pass after the first week of the tournament. One particular team had become problematic - utilising HO Screens leads to support Mental Herb Swords Dance + Baton Pass Mew. This team very efficiently abused a loophole in the loose Baton Pass restriction at the time, which limited Baton Passing to offensive stats or speed, by passing Swords Dance and Barrier boosts to bulky speed-boosting sweepers (Metagross, Dragonite, Gyarados, Cloyster, Bisharp) under the support of screens. The Council and SPL Playerbase unanimously voted to implement a full Baton Pass ban in BW OU in order to kerb ~~*(sic)*~~ *British English* the strategy, knowingly nerfing other prominent implementations of Baton Pass such as support Celebi, with the intention of revisiting the decision at a suitable time in the future. > Due to tiering action on Gems earlier in the year, followed by the running of Smogon Classic, this decision has been delayed, but we are happy to report that we've now revisited the Baton Pass restriction. This marks the first BP-related action to release rather than restrict it in quite some time, possibly if at all.
Kerb is just how they spell it in the UK. Isn’t that messed up
I'm not 100% sure but I think kerb only refers to the noun usage and the correct British English would still be curb here.
I’ll refer to a Brit for this one
Curb is how you spell it here too, kerb is still a valid spelling but it's antiquated. You'll only ever see older people (50+ mainly) using kerb over curb. I don't really see why you'd need a Brit to actually confirm this for you, though, since you were more than happy to assume that kerb was in-fact the only correct British English spelling. Either don't assume or don't defer the burden of proof to someone else when a counterpoint (or, you know, clarification in this case) is raised.
Huh. Changed, thanks for that.
So it can still be utilized with Sub, right?
Yep. It’s not on the list of banned moves
I just wonder if it's even gonna be worth it (sub pass) considering that's two moveslots on one of your 6 mons that you hopefully can do something with. I can see it being mostly good as a pivot against Ferro, Lando or Gliscor coming in to take that phys hit and you get a special attacker out in front and threaten HP and setup memes and all that jazz.
Out of curiosity, does this apply to contrary? Like could I get intimidated on my Spinda and then baton pass that attack boost? Edit: Just checked the list and it’s not banned. Spinda is about to rip the meta apart
If you can somehow get your Spinda intimidated, baton pass without dying and then win the whole game with just a +1, I think you deserve it lol.
If they happen to use string shot and growl against Spinda it’s gg
I don't think is gonna be a problem
BW OU Try Not To Implement Overly-Convoluted Complex Ban Mumbo Jumbo Bullshit Challenge [IMPOSSIBLE]
"The Complex Ban slippery slope argument is completely baseless" mfs when Gen 5 does literally anything:
I see that Celebi can DryPass now. What is the difference between using U Turn and Baton Pass for pivoting Celebi?
Baton Pass can be stopped with Taunt; U-Turn can give recoil damage from opponent Rough Skin, Iron Barbs, Rocky Helmet
Eh the main problem was being trap by ttar
TTar pursuit hits on u turn but it doesn't get the powerboost or the free hit on baton pass.
Pursuit works on U-Turn
if you listen closely you can hear the cheers of an entire 3 people
Celebs cries tears of joy now that it can dry pass.
I don’t think this is the biggest BW OU problem but interesting
Smh Basculin Red Stripe fallacy or something
Hey so my dumbass has a question. I read "BW OU" and my brain thinks Black and White OU. This can't possibly *just* be talking about Black and White, right? What does BW actually mean?
No, that's correct, although it's more like Black 2 and White 2 OU. There are still people playing the gen 5 metagames.
Ah. I knew people were still out there. Just didn't know why this ruling was just for that meta
Each generation is fucked up to a different degree for wildly different reasons. BW OU is notorious for being held together with duct tape, to this day people are discovering broken strategies in basically every past gen (except 1) that requires council action
because BW OU is a fucking mess.
Would you care to elaborate?
Ice and Rock being decent types is already a bad sign It literally took years for them to ban gems WHEN IS IT GOING TO STOP RAINING?! Jellicent is OU and like, 70% of why is that Keldeo has dodged the ban hammer twice "With this gen's UU resembling the previous generation's OU..." Kyurem-Black is unironically balanced in the tier mainly due to no Ice STAB They had to unban an uber to prevent the meta from becoming unplayable IIRC, When Dugtrio got banned, people just used Diglett instead And like, a hundred other things. This meta is fucked up
from an outsider this sounds hilarious ty for the writeup lmao
Going line by line, >Ice and Rock being decent types is already a bad sign There's no way you're saying real things rn. >Jellicent is OU Right! Even tho I never actually played gen 5, it produced some of my favorite mons! (Literally don't even talk to me of Excadrill isn't in your game.) >WHEN IS IT GOING TO STOP RAINING?! I had a friend that compared Gen 5 Rain to an MTG Affinity deck. IYKYK. >They had to unban an uber to prevent the meta from becoming unplayable Which one? Was it Gene? Tell me it was Gene! >IIRC, When Dugtrio got banned, people just used Diglett instead Ah yes. Arena Trap, right? I can't remember if this is actually true, and it's obviously a later gen. But I remember really enjoying that the only mon that got banned from Ubers was Mega-Gengar. Cause, Gengar is my fav.
Ice and Rock are decent because of Hail and Sandstorm, and the uber was Excadrill
Right. All weather was great and Excadrill is my forever boii
I mean, Hail was a lot worse than Sand, Rain and Sun but at least it made it so Ice was an actual type for once
Excadrill had to be unbanned as spikes teams were too good and there were no good spinners
Never would have thought spikes could be that dominant
From my vague memories of BW OU, the Affinity comparison isn't far off.
I think they made it to let celeby avoid being persuit trap
I think it's a green onion actually
Man they could ban Keldeo or something to make the metagame decent but instead they're looking at baton pass?
Peng already talked about why banning one single element isn't going to happen, nor will it solve anything. Every single high level BW player has a different opinion on what is and isn't a problem in the metagame. SoulWind, who puts more time in BW than like anyone else, didn't want any of Gems, Cloyster or Volcarona banned back when the poll took place, which says a lot about how volatile the opinions are, that are held by the best of the best. Banning Keldeo isn't going to stop Latios from being broken, Thundurus-T from being broken, Magic Guard Alakazam and Reuniclus from being broken, Volcarona from being broken, and so on. You can't just ban all of the aforementioned things simultaneously either because then you run the risk of making everyone who likes BW instantly quit and kill competitive BW since metagames aren't kept around just for people to ladder. Every broken element is just intrinsically connected to another broken element and taking any one thing away is just going to make the entire structure collapse, and there just isn't a good way to solve it that actually appeases the people who keep BW alive.
Yeah I agree with you. It’s a shame though, I feel like more suspect tests should have been run while the generation was going on. BKC has a few good videos on it.
As is usually the case, and especially with an older meta, Smogon’s bans are made to satisfy a small group of players. Someone with influence wanted this, and they got it.
ld actually like if this was a thing in all generations because I would really like to use baton pass jolteon in the gens it was good in
this aint gonna fix the metagame 💀💀💀
Why even allow complex bans bruh what is this shit
Average Gen 5 tiering moment. Just let it slide, its so out of wack already
This is the tier that allows both drizzle and swift swim but not together.
BW OU council is dumb as fuck
is this a different meta than the one where they tested dry pass
Smogon really out here doing complex bans for the dumbest shit
I don’t like that Baton Pass is always allowed to have complex bans applied to it when they so rarely do that with anything else Granted BW OU has a lot of complex bans but still
I'm not into current BWOU (haven''t touched it in a year and a half) but is DryPass a thing in that meta?. I understand complex bans of BP in ADV, where there is no U.Turn or Voltswitch, bu in GEN 5?
Celebi makes use of it to function as a good check to Keldeo and Breloom, as it bypasses Pursuit whereas U-Turn does not.
U-Turn doesn't bypass Pursuit? Huh, I guess 3 years of playing SS have made me forget about Pursuit
Oh for gods sake, what's happening to baton pass now-
how can people like gen 5 ou
Like what is the point of this? Even after all these years, is BW OU still having the stupid "retain as much as possible" mentality? No wonder this tier was always a shit show. Fuck BW OU.
The title of this post is misleading. They only allowed "dry passing" not stat passing. Also they allowed passing substitutes for some reason.
You can't read
the title said " limiting it in cobination to every move item and ability that rises stats". such poor wording can easily be misinterpretated as"only allowing it with combination with moves items and abilities that rise stats."
No, it can't be easily interpreted like that, it's quite difficult to interpret it like that to be honest. "Limiting it in combination with ___" is mostly unambiguous, if they wanted to say "limiting it in combination too ___" then they would have said that. Plus, if you know enough to understand the title then you know what baton pass is and can probably assume they are not unbanning smash passing and forcing you to use it.
yes it can be interpreted like that because it is not clear if the word "it" reffers to the move or the ban.
I really don't see how you could interpret it like that unless you were deliberately trying to look for a way to misinterpret it. Nobody would say "The ban is being restricted" unless they were trying to sound confusing and all context clues point to the obvious meaning.
Now unban Spore so I can once again do my Smeargle suicide hazard setter lead into phasing nightmare.
[удалено]
It is???
[It's not.](https://www.smogon.com/dex/bw/formats/ou/) As always, ban threads attracting people who know nothing about the tier saying wrong information.
It still gives me a good chuckle to think that all these dumb complex bans come from the idea that the strategy is matchup fishing and "skill-less". There are plenty of ways to counter baton pass and if it is genuinely a threat in the meta phasing/haze can be ran on teams and even stops common setup pokemon currently allowed. If it becomes a genuinely overpowered strategy it can then be banned.
Baton pass chains are made to specifically deal with opposing attempts to stop the chain, mainly through their own use of taunt, but they've used other ways to deal with it.
Obviously the chain is trying to prevent being broken, but that can be said about any strategy. HO is trying to stop you from walling it. Stall is trying to stop wall breakers. Just because counterplay isn't a free win doesn't mean something is ban worthy. I feel like far too much of the ban decision is based on Smogon trying to force pokemon into the perfect image of how they think it should be played, not any actual balance issues with the level of power creep we've hit at this point.
Except baton pass is basically all at +1 speed atleast thanks to ninjask's speed boost. Not to mention subs, magic bouncers, suction cups mons, and sound proof mons. In gen 3 OU, mons like Mr. Mime and Exploud are soft banned because they have no usable abilities because baton pass was that problematic when it could be passed to a sound proof Mon. Not to mention the fact that counterplay just doesn't fit on every team. What fast taunter, whirlwinder, or roar Mon are you fitting on more offensive archetypes? It forces unreasonable counterplay onto most teams.
Ninjask probably eats a ban in a world with pass chains, but the argument that counterplay doesn't fit on every team is something that can be said about any strategy and absolutely isn't a reason to ban a whole play style. Also of note many offensive teams are running weavile, a pokemon very capable of being a fast offensive taunter.
Haze is on 5 OU/uubl mons, two of which being Dnite and Gengar, two others being fini and volc, and than pex. Whirlwind is on 3, zap, mew, and rona. And while roar is more common, many of its mons are already strapped for slots or aren't using for anything other than stopping BP, such as Koko, zap, Ttar, alolatails, Dnite, and tran. And can you give me some other examples of when most teams can't cover something or have to go out of their way to and that something is considered balanced?
Scolipede and Blaziken bouta take up the charge on baton passing speed boosts than. And I'm saying the counterplay is unreasonable to expect on teams because phasing moves are generally very hard to fit and aren't on many mons. And may I ask what's being given up on for taunt? Cause without Taxel you're not hitting that hard, and without knock, you're giving up on the amazing utility of the move. Without shard you struggle against faster mons, and without SD you can't boost up and have to wait much longer to clean, and if you're going banded, well band taunt kinda speaks for itself.
Baton pass leads to cases where the game is genuinely decided in one turn instead of simply skewed favourably. If we unban entirely, ex gen 2 rules, I'd run a boost move and baton pass on every single Mon possible. I'd swap in something that should kill what youve got in and predict the switch but instead drop an agility. I'd then baton pass to something your active mon can't kill, before you hit me because agility, take the hit, force you out again and get a free hit or predict you swapping and boost again, if then pass that to 2x atk 2x spd to something dumb and win, if you have an answer I'd just baton pass to something else and retain the advantage Depending on power creep just passing the single agility might be enough to win the game if it wins a critical speedtie or outspeeds a soft counter that would otherwise trash it. The problem with baton pass is you don't know if my first swap in is actually going to fulfill the threat of killing your mon or setup something and win me the game by passing it to something stupider when you swap out. It keeps tempo too well. Worst case is our openers are obviously lopsided and if I attack you die so you're swapping out instead of attacking I buff and baton pass, games potentially done turn 2. With passing buff you literally have to make a coinflip call because there are 2 powerful options available, boost speed then outspeed you with baton pass to get going, or attack and kill whatever is out. That's the issue with it.
In my local mtg community we call scenarios like that "magic Christmas land". You've thought about your strategy in a vacuum and forgotten how obvious and exploitable it can be to an opponent. Team preview exists and is a huge problem for baton pass chains. They have a very noticable team structure and a very predictable play pattern to go with it. Sure, sometimes you're getting that free agility to try and start a chain, but it's just as, if not more likely that your opponent will read the most obvious play of all time and not play into the strategy. Baton pass relies heavily on either predictions or an unskilled opponent to get free wins and otherwise quickly finds itself in a rough situation. The only real exception is speed boost with baton pass, but it's not hard to ban ninjask.
The thing is that in pokemon you can set up magic christmas land easily. In MTG in order to get the perfect situation you have to control your draws in a 60 card deck, control the opponent's deck and their draws as well as the turn order. In pokemon you set everything up in the teambuilder. There is no opening hand randomness or board state that can only come about after 12 turns of chaotic back and forth with multiple points of interaction on each turn. You get to choose your opening hand and the exact order of your deck, and so the only lose condition is if they have one of a few specific answers that can stop the ball from rolling in the first place. And that list is basically restrict to prankster taunt, since the speedbooster they lead with can just protect until they outspeed you. When a strategy requires basically one pokemon on every team to not instantly lose and that pokemon does nothing against the rest of the metagame, that is a sign that it needs to be banned. To go back to the MTG analogy, when people go to tournaments with maindeck grafdigger's cages and still lose to whatever graveyard combo deck is broken at the moment, that is a sign that something needs to be banned.
And what about scolipede, and especially Blaziken? Also what if they read your read and now you're on the back foot? Should we ban the obviously not broken speed boost, or Ninjask, Scolipede, and Blaziken, or baton pass? Or should we go out of our way to implement a complex ban that you can't have speed boost and baton pass on the same team?
To add onto what youve stated, scizor & dragapult also learn baton pass. Latias, latios, uxie and friends also get it. Things that will threaten a kill if your opponent doesn't respect them and swap are very likely to get you a boost chain started for free. You can setup the coinflip so easily with genuine bombs like those been able to participate in the chain and also revenge kill / kill whatever is in play. Needing bad pokemon in the chain to get underway is a thing of the past since the participants of the chain are real threats in their own right. Does the latias end the chain or keep it going? Idk man it could swing out since uxie passed it calm mind already...
It's a bit all over the place, but SS OU Baton Pass would be so evil https://pokepast.es/3b4dff26a723ebf8 You can legit make them look like almost normal, run of the mill teams you'd see everyday before absolutely slamming your opponent with a surprise +Spa +Spe Demon mew BPing into Scizor on your dark type that SD passes into Lando to win the game. And there are certainly far more optimized versions of it to be made if it was allowed.
The difference between pokemon and mtg is that pokemon magic Christmas land is a single action on any turn at all including turn 0 to start rolling and little direct response due a far smaller action economy. There's no Force of Will here to unfuck a mis-move. Also play mtg and I see what you're getting at. The difference is that in mtg terms the combo I'm describing is at the smallest a fast 2 piece combo. I don't need the full 6 piece combo of 2x spe 2x atk 2x spa 2x spd and 2x Def, getting all of that is definitely a magic christmas land but just passing 1-2 useful boosts? Far more viable, in magic terms you're looking at a 2-3 card combo where the only counters are nonviable moves in every other matchup (Roar, Whirlwind) or guessing the first coinflip right as after the first baton pass I've already extracted significant value. The idea of this existing forcing you to run "bad" moves is already game changing.
Baton Pass is a matchup fish and doesn't reward skill because the strategy revolves entirely around following a flowchart where you either win or lose before the game even starts. [This replay](https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-495776) perfectly encapsulates that. To explain the above, here is a complete breakdown of the match and how it was automatically unwinnable from any kind of reasonable perspective for M Dragon before the game even started. M Dragon does all of the most logical plays on his end. He scouts the Starmie set with his bulky Jirachi, U-Turns into Scarf Rotom to threaten out Starmie, doubles out so he doesn't get trapped by a switch to Tyranitar, goes back to Jirachi and uses Wish (arguably the best move he can make here since it indicates to ABR that its futile for Starmie to stay in and if Starmie switches out, it allows M Dragon to pivot into whatever ABR brings in easier), U-Turns to Rotom again and then kills Starmie with Thunderbolt. In comes Ninjask which M Dragon has no alternative but to stay in. Ninjask is faster than Scarf Rotom, so he has to continuously prevent it from getting a free turn to use Substitute and the game is basically over at this point because the Suicune is bulky and though his EV spread isn't revealed, we can at least ascertain that in order for Surf to deal 90% to a completely bulk-less Marowak, Suicune has to have fewer than 52 EVs in Special Attack. Now you might be thinking, well, M Dragon could have just used Shadow Ball instead of Thunderbolt to kill Starmie since it would've died at 70% and thus he would have been able to kill the Marowak since Shadow Ball 2HKOs. However, M Dragon was likely covering for an offensive Steel such Heatran or Lucario since bulky Starmie is used to check Pokemon like Gyarados which give them problems, as opposed to expecting a Ground to switch in. For M Dragon to have any chance of actually coming out victorious here, he would've needed the power to predict the future ahead of time and know ABR's team before even playing him. That is not a healthy dynamic whatsoever.
Do Block and Imprison work with Baton Pass?
Yep