That being said, I’m absolutely voting to ban Ally Switch. It’s a cheap move that is unhealthy for the tier. Pokémon games can easily be swayed in one turn, and being able to completely surprise your opponent and swap the positions of your Pokémon can be a game changer. The move distribution is so large that if you attempt to play optimally and factor in the odds that perhaps the opposing Mew (or Cresselia, or Dragapult, or Metagross, or Porygon2, or Tapu Lele, or Lati twins, etc.) is running ally switch, then you end up making a lot of suboptimal plays to try to play around this possibility. Once Ally Switch is revealed, then it can often turn into a cat and mouse game of trying to predict whether ally switch is chosen this turn. It’s just unhealthy in a game where proper positioning is supposed to be rewarded.
You can't be playing optimally by making suboptimal plays at the same time. As mentioned in my post, there generally isn't an option available which perfectly covers all the opponent's possible sets and plays (i.e. an "
optimal" play), you can't always cover everything, there is nothing unique about Ally Switch in that regard, it's a drop in the ocean of possible moves someone could reveal and be a game changer. I also really do not get the distribution argument, in practical terms you're looking at one, maybe two possible users per team (though it's generally pretty clear which if any would be running it, Genesect hardly counts), so how is wide distribution being argued as a point here? One possible user per team is the lowest non-zero amount you can have (you
could have a lower distribution where there's a larger amount of teams with zero possible users, but that's irrelevant to how it affects games where it is a possibility).
The "
cat and mouse game" of predicting what your opponent will do
is a central part of the game. There's predictions every single game, of whether you think your opponent clicks Fake Out or U-turns on an anticipated switch, Protects or attacks, switches or stays in, finishes off a Pokemon with an attack that covers switches A and B or one that covers switches C and D, targets Pokemon X or Y, uses the revealed Taunt or not (or tries to use Trick Room/etcetera against it), redirects or doesn't, and so on. Some plays are more or less prediction-reliant than others, and so the risk / reward of them also varies greatly, but it is the fundamental nature of a simultaneous turn game that you do not know for certain what your opponent is doing and must play with what you predict them to do in mind. Someone might prefer a game where that isn't the case (e.g. Chess), but that is what Pokemon is, you can't argue something is "
unhealthy" just for being part of that. If there were no "
cat and mouse" element to Pokemon it would be a completely different game. Ally Switch also does not mean positioning isn't rewarded, the user needs to position correctly for it to be good, while the opponent can position to make it bad; this applies to everything, but it's especially true in the case of Ally Switch due to its low floor.
I’m glad that many of you have brought up Follow Me, as yes Ally Switch is a worse version of Follow Me. Both moves are used by one Pokémon to protect its ally, both are negated by spread moves, fake out, etc. and both are passive, as Yoda correctly mentioned above. Ally Switch is a worse version, because of course Follow Me redirects all attacks, however you can target the user of Ally Switch and hit the other target. The thing about the comparison though is that Follow Me is SUCH a powerful move that
A) if any good Pokémon gets Follow Me, it’s banned (Jirachi)
B) if a Pokémon learns Follow Me, it ALWAYS runs that move.
Blastoise, Indeedee-f, Clefairy, Mr. Mime, Togekiss, even Magmar etc. all have no role and would never be seen if they didn’t learn the move Follow Me. So Ally Switch can be viewed as a slightly inferior Follow Me, but then is super well distributed, and learned by great Pokémon (Mew, Metagross, Dragapult, Cresselia, Genesect, Porygon2, etc.)
So the question is whether or not you believe the distribution of Ally Switch to outweigh the fact that it’s a slightly worse version of Follow Me, which I believe it absolutely does. Whenever I see one of the handful of Pokémon that learn Follow Me, I KNOW it is running that move, and can play optimally around it. So many of the Pokémon that learn Ally Switch are popular Pokémon that have valuable sets that don’t include Ally Switch, which means they can disguise it well, leading to Ally Switch drastically altering games when they do run it. That’s why I consider it a cheap, unhealthy trick that should be banned.
Ally Switch is not just "
slightly" inferior to Follow Me, as this example shows. Follow Me took a good Pokemon and pushed it to being banworthy, and is a move that, without, several Pokemon would lose their viability completely. Compare this to Ally Switch, would any Pokemon step down in viability without access to it? It's very difficult to argue yes to that. You could say "oh but those Pokemon were already good though", but it's not like Ally Switch has given new life to anything either, for example Chansey is still only fringe viable and Shedinja is still not a thing. As covered above I don't think the distribution is really an argument either, so the conclusion here is that Ally Switch is a MUCH worse Follow Me, and that's a move which isn't banned.
On the point of KNOWING that a Pokemon has Follow Me, that's not
completely true, but regardless, that would be a result of it being one of the strongest moves and the Pokemon which have it lacking another viable set (which can be the case because of how strong Follow Me alone is). That's the exception rather than the norm when it comes to moves though, Fake Out, Tailwind, and Trick Room are the only moves I would put in the same category (which is again because of how strong they are). As has been said multiple times before, there will ALWAYS be lesser used ("
cheap") moves which when revealed can turn the tide of the game, Ally Switch is not unique. Teambuilding is a major part of the game, why is it "
unhealthy" that someone can get an advantage from utilising a less used move?
Wow i gotta say i am not impressed with the anti ban posts, to me ally switch is clearly fundamentally uncompetitive. What makes it so uncompetitive is the lack of counterplay. Ally switch is often compared to as an unreliable follow me, but what makes it far more potent (although unreliable) is that it switches both slots instead of redirecting both to one. Partnering mons often resist each others weaknesses so both mons can easily live the swapped hits, while a follow me redirector will rarely be healthy after redirecting 2 hits. This makes predicting the first ally switch before reveal extremely risky (basically a throw) if they do not have/use ally switch, and of course every turn after a revealed ally switch there is the potential 50/50s. It's true not every turn ally switch can force the 50/50 but it happens often enough when partnering mons shield each other’s weaknesses.
Are we seriously arguing that Ally Switch is more potent than Follow Me now? Follow Me is the far stronger move, every Ally Switch Pokemon wishes it had Follow Me instead. Sure there's sometimes the plus of swapping into double resists but that's far from the norm and hardly makes up for its massive drawbacks.
Ally switch is most potent on its first use so players often save the reveal for a critical moment to grab a huge advantage, and then ideally can win off the gained momentum, but can also fall back to clicking it again in 50/50 scenarios when needed. A move that robs a turn and then can get best value by never clicking it again (when the opponent overpredicts the ally switch) is clearly very unhealthy. This leads to a degenerate “weighted” 50/50 where it's better for the ally switch player not to click ally which means the opponent should target normally but that makes it better for the ally switch player to click ally which makes it better for the opponent to predict ally switch which restarts the circular logic.
Getting the "
best value" when you don't click the move but the opponent plays around anyways it straight up applies to Follow Me, among other moves like Wide Guard and Taunt too, they are support moves which have the sole function of making the opponent (not) use certain moves and targets, so obviously it's better to click another move if the mere threat of the move is already fulfilling its purpose. Fake Out is similar too, if you can get your opponent to Protect / switch because of it without actually clicking it (e.g. using U-turn instead) that's also the "
unhealthy" scenario described which is a perfectly normal part of the game.
There are 2 weak counterplays to a revealed ally switch:
1 is to target normally to “force” the opponent to click ally switch but whenever you really need to hit the right target, it becomes a 50/50.
2 is to double target a slot so that you get good damage regardless of which you hit, but again, whenever you really need to hit the right target, it becomes a 50/50.
The counterplay point is completely disingenious here, Ally Switch has the same counterplay as Follow Me but you can also target around it too as has been covered before, it's not just '
and then everything becomes a 50/50 anyways' which is straight up untrue.