Maybe I missed something but this isnt clear to me at all. At the very least the BW rule would solve the ADV issues.
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Baton Pass v12
- Thread starter ABR
- Start date
Hello, I am posting this on the behalf of nchmax
=====================================================
As someone who primarily plays ADV and has limited knowledge of most other tiers, I don’t feel it would be fair for me to speak on behalf of other gens regarding BP. As far as ADV goes, I have a lot of thoughts on what should be done and I want to put them out there as comprehensively as I can.
Why are we Even Having This Discussion Again in the First Place?
Presumably everyone has seen Hclat’s match vs Marcop at this point where he demonstrated in tour exactly what most people who frequent the ADV ladder have been saying for quite a while now, ADV baton pass chains in their current form are wildly uncompetitive. With the recent 1700 toppings of two separate bp chains and the style’s arrival in tours, the chain issue can’t be ignored anymore. That being said, just because there's (relative) consensus of a problem doesn’t mean that there's consensus on a solution. Given that the last “solution” clearly didn’t work, I want to go through and examine the major options I’ve heard discussed for dealing with the bp chain problem in hopes that we won’t put the bandaid next to the injury again.
What makes Modern BP Chains so uncompetitive?
Before I get into the proposed solutions, I want to explain exactly why I find baton pass chains to be so degenerate in the current meta. Baton pass chains aren’t unbeatable. Quite a lot of already meta teams have legitimate, oftentimes unbeatable counterplay to BP chains meaning that these sort of teams arguably aren’t even all that consistent. Counterplay to modern BP chains exclusively consists of:
1 / 2 are usually seen on defensive teams, 3 / 4 on offensive teams and BP Chains can do very little to stop any of them. If you have one of these first 4 choices on your team, you’ve beaten baton pass before turn 1. If you have the 5th, you at least get to play. If you don’t have any of these, you’ve lost before making your first move. As not every otherwise viable meta team will have one of these options, Baton Pass Chains are the ultimate match-up fish. You win or lose in the teambuilder against a large portion of the meta. Marcop’s team vs HClat was a great example of this sort of team.
I believe Baton Pass Chains are an issue in ADV because they successfully matchup fish too many standard ADV teams which, like sand veil before it, can lead to a tour coin toss by the “worse” player.
What Can be Done About it?
I think the previous BP nerf failed to fix the problem because it went at it the wrong way. The previous clause tried to reduce the consistency of baton pass chains in hopes that people would be too afraid to bring it. I think the better approach is to remove the elements that allow the style to win on turn 0. While matchup fishing can never be removed entirely from mons, I’d argue that a baton pass clause will be successful when the BP player’s odds of running into a team without counterplay is no greater than other blatant matchup fish teams.
Option 1: Hard Baton Pass Ban
Would it work?: Clearly, yes. If the move is entirely gone, every team has exactly as much counterplay vs chains as is necessary.
Should it be done?: Absolutely not. Unlike in other gens, Baton pass is an integral part of the ADV meta. Every gen that has hard banned baton pass has the benefit of alternative momentum saving switch moves (U-turn, Volt Switch, Teleport in gen 8). ADV does not. Of the 41 games that have been played for SPL so far, baton pass has shown up in at least 21 of them. Of these 21, 20 were non-problematic. Clearly BP has ingrained itself deeply in the ADV meta and removing it would cause drastic changes.
Option 2: Dry pass only
Would it work?: Yes. Chains can’t accrue boosts if you can’t pass them.
Should it be done?: No. Of those 21 games where baton pass showed up, 11 of them involved the passing of stats / substitute (roughly even split between stats and sub). Baton pass isn’t just a fixture of the ADV metagame due to its momentum properties, clearly stat passing is a legitimate part of the meta as well. In addition, while dry passing can fit on anything, outside of the context of BP chains stat passing is mostly used on offense. As offense as a playstyle relies on uncertainty and a sort of schrodingers box of possible threats to function, a dry pass only clause would have a detrimental effect on the viability of even the offensive teams that don’t rely on stat passing themselves.
Option 3: Further decrease the # of allowed mons with BP
Would it work?: Probably not. Placing the limit at 2 still allows for the combo of ninjask + mime. This makes the current anti-bp strats even better then they already are and makes the cheeky tactics a little better but since mime can run BP + Barrier + CM + Encore all on the same set, it can role compress vaporeon’s role onto itself. BP can still matchup fish stall pretty well.
Placing the limit at 1 could perhaps work, but doing so still leaves open ninjask + exploud/octillery/cradily as the ultimate way to punish fat teams with dug / a banded mon with eq. Maybe dedicated 2 teamslots too that would be viable, maybe not. We don’t really know at this point.
Should it be done?: No. Lowering the current clause to 2 doesn’t fix the core issue. Lowering it to 1 may or may not be effective, but many ADV teams naturally already have two mon’s with baton pass on them leading to some pretty harsh spillover effects of this change on the meta. Less teams naturally have 3 BP mons in the current meta but at least a few do and who’s to say more won’t in the future? Why restrict team building and future creativity with an ineffective solution?
Option 4: Restrict what can be passed (ie BW clause, limit 2 boosts passed, no speed passing, ect.)
Would it work?: Maybe? A harsh enough combination of restrictions could
Should it be done?: Probably not. Speed pass ban alone allows for mime to still run its shenanigans against hard stall since it's naturally fairly fast and soundproof + def/spdef boosting + pass is really strong if your team can’t rush it down fast enough. BW clause has the same issues of 1 BP mon per team raised above. Even if that part was removed, there's still the same issue with speed pass. Limiting the number of boosts possible to pass raises issues as well. CM or SD pass celebi is a very legitimate wincon for a lot of teams vs bulkier builds and limiting its breaking power isn’t particularly desirable unless absolutely necessary.
Perhaps a less compelling argument to some then it might be to me, but I also want to point out the inherent issue of complex bans like these. All of these clauses ban actions you can take while playing the game rather than banning the options you can bring. An option banned in the teambuilder can never cause you to lose a game from lack of knowledge or understanding the same way a ban on ingame actions can. Not all players on the ADV ladder are here to play hardcore competitive so “new player friendliness” of clauses is still relevant. I think that there needs to be an incredibly strong justification to ban in game actions (ie the game being unplayable without a sleep clause) and no real alternative option.
Option 5: Ban Mr. Mime (or ban soundproof + baton pass)
Would it work?: Yes. At the very least a mime ban is a necessary part of any BP chain solution.
Most matchups that BP chains auto win against lose explicitly because of Mr. Mime. ADV is full of phasing, it's a huge part of the metagame. Unfortunately, by far the most widely distributed phasing move is roar. The ability to BP to Mime whenever a mon who uses roar comes in is so powerful because it can be done on reaction. Unless the mon with roar can 2hko mime, and most on stallier teams cannot, there’s absolutely no room to outplay. Vs offense, Mime’s access to encore prevents attempts to set up along with it on reaction, meaning if they got to Mime unscathed, you’ve already lost. By removing mime from Baton Pass chains, the chain player is forced to actually engage the opponent and stop playing solitaire.
Banning mime adds:
To the above list of ways to beat baton pass which goes a long way towards reducing the number of teams that auto lose to it.
I find banning Mime preferable to complex banning soundproof + BP. While they both essentially accomplish the same thing, I believe a hard mime ban to be much more consistent with current tiering philosophy. It turns out the combination of soundproof + encore + baton pass on a mon is uncompetitive. I think we should treat it like we treat all other combinations of broken traits on a mon. Fishious Rend + Strong Jaw + Stab was uncompetitive on Dracovish. We banned the fish, not the fish from using Fishious rend.
Any mon can be balanced if you start banning moves. I think you need a very compelling reason to do so (ie smeargle) that Mr Mime's complete absence from the ADV metagame outside of BP suggests isn’t here.
Option 6: Ban Ninjask (or ban speed boost + baton pass)
Would it work?: Yes, but not if its the only change.
Ninjask is unique in that it lets you boost speed t1 risk free vs every mon in the game. It's also the safest and most effective way to restart a chain. In conjunction with Mime, this lets you start a pass vs a huge portion of leads in the game. If jask is banned, however, it will just be replaced by agili pass zapdos as long as Mime is around. This will increase the amount of mons that can successfully use counterplay option 3 but it won't add any new counterplay options to the table.
Should it be done? Probably.
Banning jask would drastically decrease the number of offensive teams that auto lose to BP chains. Ninjask’s main anti offense tool is to spam sub into inaccurate moves and fish for a miss. Vs non tar leads, odds are heavily in its favor that it gets one. This tactic only works, however, because speed boost allows jask to build the chain at the same time sub is being clicked. No other mon can do this and rushing baton pass chains down would be much more viable if this wasn’t an option.
Banning Ninjask adds:
To the above list of ways to beat BP Chains. With these 9 tactics on the table, I would argue that practically every standard team that isn’t itself also a matchup fish has a reasonable way to beat baton pass chains. These are the tactics that most teams use to beat set up sweepers in general, if a team doesn’t have at least one of them it's just not a very good team in the first place.
The above argument for Mime ban > soundproof + BP ban applies here as well
Perhaps banning Mime alone could be enough, we’ve never seen what a Mimeless metagame looks like to know for sure. In the interest of time, however, I’d just say to hell with it and throw Jask out while we have the chance.
Final Thoughts:
The only other aspects I can think of that may still be problematic after a potential Mime + Jask ban would be:
Mean look pass: Still undecided on this. It’s a bit annoying but it takes multiple turns of setup to pull off and many teams can beat it fairly simply by playing smart.
Hypno / Absol: Taunt + CM + BP could maybe cause issues. It can’t switch in on roar itself though making it far inferior to Mime in so many ways.
Unphasable receivers: Undecided on these as well. I tentatively think that in a Ninjask/Mimeless world theres no way to accrue enough boosts fast enough to make these anything more than worse versions of the receivers that can be phased. Maybe I’m wrong though.
TLDR: Banning Mr. Mime + Ninjask most effectively solves the Baton Pass chain problem while also having the least negative impact on the rest of the meta.
=====================================================
As someone who primarily plays ADV and has limited knowledge of most other tiers, I don’t feel it would be fair for me to speak on behalf of other gens regarding BP. As far as ADV goes, I have a lot of thoughts on what should be done and I want to put them out there as comprehensively as I can.
Why are we Even Having This Discussion Again in the First Place?
Presumably everyone has seen Hclat’s match vs Marcop at this point where he demonstrated in tour exactly what most people who frequent the ADV ladder have been saying for quite a while now, ADV baton pass chains in their current form are wildly uncompetitive. With the recent 1700 toppings of two separate bp chains and the style’s arrival in tours, the chain issue can’t be ignored anymore. That being said, just because there's (relative) consensus of a problem doesn’t mean that there's consensus on a solution. Given that the last “solution” clearly didn’t work, I want to go through and examine the major options I’ve heard discussed for dealing with the bp chain problem in hopes that we won’t put the bandaid next to the injury again.
What makes Modern BP Chains so uncompetitive?
Before I get into the proposed solutions, I want to explain exactly why I find baton pass chains to be so degenerate in the current meta. Baton pass chains aren’t unbeatable. Quite a lot of already meta teams have legitimate, oftentimes unbeatable counterplay to BP chains meaning that these sort of teams arguably aren’t even all that consistent. Counterplay to modern BP chains exclusively consists of:
- Use Perish Song (generally limited to celebi. Relevant enough in the meta in a non BP context to be considered though)
- Use a Non-Roar Phazer
- Spam a really strong attack into ninjask/speed lead
- Abuse TTar sand to limit substitutes and rush the team down
- Make Cheeky reads (encore setup / timely booms / roar on “offbeat mons” ect.)
1 / 2 are usually seen on defensive teams, 3 / 4 on offensive teams and BP Chains can do very little to stop any of them. If you have one of these first 4 choices on your team, you’ve beaten baton pass before turn 1. If you have the 5th, you at least get to play. If you don’t have any of these, you’ve lost before making your first move. As not every otherwise viable meta team will have one of these options, Baton Pass Chains are the ultimate match-up fish. You win or lose in the teambuilder against a large portion of the meta. Marcop’s team vs HClat was a great example of this sort of team.
I believe Baton Pass Chains are an issue in ADV because they successfully matchup fish too many standard ADV teams which, like sand veil before it, can lead to a tour coin toss by the “worse” player.
What Can be Done About it?
I think the previous BP nerf failed to fix the problem because it went at it the wrong way. The previous clause tried to reduce the consistency of baton pass chains in hopes that people would be too afraid to bring it. I think the better approach is to remove the elements that allow the style to win on turn 0. While matchup fishing can never be removed entirely from mons, I’d argue that a baton pass clause will be successful when the BP player’s odds of running into a team without counterplay is no greater than other blatant matchup fish teams.
Option 1: Hard Baton Pass Ban
Would it work?: Clearly, yes. If the move is entirely gone, every team has exactly as much counterplay vs chains as is necessary.
Should it be done?: Absolutely not. Unlike in other gens, Baton pass is an integral part of the ADV meta. Every gen that has hard banned baton pass has the benefit of alternative momentum saving switch moves (U-turn, Volt Switch, Teleport in gen 8). ADV does not. Of the 41 games that have been played for SPL so far, baton pass has shown up in at least 21 of them. Of these 21, 20 were non-problematic. Clearly BP has ingrained itself deeply in the ADV meta and removing it would cause drastic changes.
Option 2: Dry pass only
Would it work?: Yes. Chains can’t accrue boosts if you can’t pass them.
Should it be done?: No. Of those 21 games where baton pass showed up, 11 of them involved the passing of stats / substitute (roughly even split between stats and sub). Baton pass isn’t just a fixture of the ADV metagame due to its momentum properties, clearly stat passing is a legitimate part of the meta as well. In addition, while dry passing can fit on anything, outside of the context of BP chains stat passing is mostly used on offense. As offense as a playstyle relies on uncertainty and a sort of schrodingers box of possible threats to function, a dry pass only clause would have a detrimental effect on the viability of even the offensive teams that don’t rely on stat passing themselves.
Option 3: Further decrease the # of allowed mons with BP
Would it work?: Probably not. Placing the limit at 2 still allows for the combo of ninjask + mime. This makes the current anti-bp strats even better then they already are and makes the cheeky tactics a little better but since mime can run BP + Barrier + CM + Encore all on the same set, it can role compress vaporeon’s role onto itself. BP can still matchup fish stall pretty well.
Placing the limit at 1 could perhaps work, but doing so still leaves open ninjask + exploud/octillery/cradily as the ultimate way to punish fat teams with dug / a banded mon with eq. Maybe dedicated 2 teamslots too that would be viable, maybe not. We don’t really know at this point.
Should it be done?: No. Lowering the current clause to 2 doesn’t fix the core issue. Lowering it to 1 may or may not be effective, but many ADV teams naturally already have two mon’s with baton pass on them leading to some pretty harsh spillover effects of this change on the meta. Less teams naturally have 3 BP mons in the current meta but at least a few do and who’s to say more won’t in the future? Why restrict team building and future creativity with an ineffective solution?
Option 4: Restrict what can be passed (ie BW clause, limit 2 boosts passed, no speed passing, ect.)
Would it work?: Maybe? A harsh enough combination of restrictions could
Should it be done?: Probably not. Speed pass ban alone allows for mime to still run its shenanigans against hard stall since it's naturally fairly fast and soundproof + def/spdef boosting + pass is really strong if your team can’t rush it down fast enough. BW clause has the same issues of 1 BP mon per team raised above. Even if that part was removed, there's still the same issue with speed pass. Limiting the number of boosts possible to pass raises issues as well. CM or SD pass celebi is a very legitimate wincon for a lot of teams vs bulkier builds and limiting its breaking power isn’t particularly desirable unless absolutely necessary.
Perhaps a less compelling argument to some then it might be to me, but I also want to point out the inherent issue of complex bans like these. All of these clauses ban actions you can take while playing the game rather than banning the options you can bring. An option banned in the teambuilder can never cause you to lose a game from lack of knowledge or understanding the same way a ban on ingame actions can. Not all players on the ADV ladder are here to play hardcore competitive so “new player friendliness” of clauses is still relevant. I think that there needs to be an incredibly strong justification to ban in game actions (ie the game being unplayable without a sleep clause) and no real alternative option.
Option 5: Ban Mr. Mime (or ban soundproof + baton pass)
Would it work?: Yes. At the very least a mime ban is a necessary part of any BP chain solution.
Most matchups that BP chains auto win against lose explicitly because of Mr. Mime. ADV is full of phasing, it's a huge part of the metagame. Unfortunately, by far the most widely distributed phasing move is roar. The ability to BP to Mime whenever a mon who uses roar comes in is so powerful because it can be done on reaction. Unless the mon with roar can 2hko mime, and most on stallier teams cannot, there’s absolutely no room to outplay. Vs offense, Mime’s access to encore prevents attempts to set up along with it on reaction, meaning if they got to Mime unscathed, you’ve already lost. By removing mime from Baton Pass chains, the chain player is forced to actually engage the opponent and stop playing solitaire.
Banning mime adds:
- Have a roar user
- Have a taunt user (Encore allowed Mime to bullshit through taunt frequently)
To the above list of ways to beat baton pass which goes a long way towards reducing the number of teams that auto lose to it.
I find banning Mime preferable to complex banning soundproof + BP. While they both essentially accomplish the same thing, I believe a hard mime ban to be much more consistent with current tiering philosophy. It turns out the combination of soundproof + encore + baton pass on a mon is uncompetitive. I think we should treat it like we treat all other combinations of broken traits on a mon. Fishious Rend + Strong Jaw + Stab was uncompetitive on Dracovish. We banned the fish, not the fish from using Fishious rend.
Any mon can be balanced if you start banning moves. I think you need a very compelling reason to do so (ie smeargle) that Mr Mime's complete absence from the ADV metagame outside of BP suggests isn’t here.
Option 6: Ban Ninjask (or ban speed boost + baton pass)
Would it work?: Yes, but not if its the only change.
Ninjask is unique in that it lets you boost speed t1 risk free vs every mon in the game. It's also the safest and most effective way to restart a chain. In conjunction with Mime, this lets you start a pass vs a huge portion of leads in the game. If jask is banned, however, it will just be replaced by agili pass zapdos as long as Mime is around. This will increase the amount of mons that can successfully use counterplay option 3 but it won't add any new counterplay options to the table.
Should it be done? Probably.
Banning jask would drastically decrease the number of offensive teams that auto lose to BP chains. Ninjask’s main anti offense tool is to spam sub into inaccurate moves and fish for a miss. Vs non tar leads, odds are heavily in its favor that it gets one. This tactic only works, however, because speed boost allows jask to build the chain at the same time sub is being clicked. No other mon can do this and rushing baton pass chains down would be much more viable if this wasn’t an option.
Banning Ninjask adds:
- Force the lead out with an OHKO to prevent the start of the chain
- Status on the forced Baton Pass to cripple the receiver
To the above list of ways to beat BP Chains. With these 9 tactics on the table, I would argue that practically every standard team that isn’t itself also a matchup fish has a reasonable way to beat baton pass chains. These are the tactics that most teams use to beat set up sweepers in general, if a team doesn’t have at least one of them it's just not a very good team in the first place.
The above argument for Mime ban > soundproof + BP ban applies here as well
Perhaps banning Mime alone could be enough, we’ve never seen what a Mimeless metagame looks like to know for sure. In the interest of time, however, I’d just say to hell with it and throw Jask out while we have the chance.
Final Thoughts:
The only other aspects I can think of that may still be problematic after a potential Mime + Jask ban would be:
Mean look pass: Still undecided on this. It’s a bit annoying but it takes multiple turns of setup to pull off and many teams can beat it fairly simply by playing smart.
Hypno / Absol: Taunt + CM + BP could maybe cause issues. It can’t switch in on roar itself though making it far inferior to Mime in so many ways.
Unphasable receivers: Undecided on these as well. I tentatively think that in a Ninjask/Mimeless world theres no way to accrue enough boosts fast enough to make these anything more than worse versions of the receivers that can be phased. Maybe I’m wrong though.
TLDR: Banning Mr. Mime + Ninjask most effectively solves the Baton Pass chain problem while also having the least negative impact on the rest of the meta.
ADV OU Baton Pass - Extension of the current restrictions
After many debates held in a Policy Review thread, on Discord servers and within the ADV Council, we have come to a decision regarding Baton Pass in ADV OU.
Even though Baton Pass is already limited in ADV OU, it is clear that the current measures are not enough to accomplish the goals we had in mind when we voted for them. Ever since then, new Baton Pass teams surfaced and proved to be effective, especially on the ladder. At the time the Policy Review thread was made, 2 accounts in the Top 5 of the ladder were solely using Baton Pass teams. It also saw its first usage in a SPL game, which is admittedly what prompted those discussions to happen.
What needs to be mentioned about Baton Pass, is that the move holds a big importance in the metagame that is ADV OU. It is often featured on popular sets and is a vital part of strategies that are not deemed problematic by the majority of players. Actually, we could even mention that ADV OU is genuinely seen as a healthy and fun tier to play for pretty much its entire playerbase and spectators alike. The reason why I'm mentioning that is that it we took that fact into account for the solution the ADV Council decided to pursue, and the course of actions we will follow.
We had many options to deal with this, most of them highlighted in this post written by nchmax. Considering what was said earlier, that ADV OU is very much appreciated as is, one of our most important goals is to avoid altering the fabric of the tier as much as possible. The least invasive option that we felt would deal with the issue the best was to ban Mr. Mime. We feel that Mr. Mime is the reason why the current problematic Baton Pass teams are succeeding, being quite suffocating for its potential counterplay between its passive immunity to Roar and access to Encore, Calm Mind, Taunt, Substitute, Thunder Wave, and others.
To elaborate briefly, "Ban Mr. Mime" is our preferred option because it is a low impact simple ban and likely to be effective with regards to the recent BP problem. Smogon tiering policy favors simple bans over complex bans when the simple bans are low impact. That gave us three primary options: Ban Mr. Mime, Ban Soundproof, and Ban Baton Pass. Of these we feel like Ban Mr. Mime is an ideal option. Ban Mr. Mime has essentially no impact on the tier because Mr. Mime has never held a recognized metagame niche beyond Baton Pass style teams. By comparison, Ban Soundproof would result in additional, unnecessary impact (e.g. Exploud), and Ban Baton Pass would be a significant alteration to both the current and historical fabric of the tier. Moreover, we believe that Ban Mr. Mime is likely to be effective for solving the problem because teams can now reasonably rely on Roar as counterplay to Baton Pass chains. Therefore, our preferred choice is to Ban Mr. Mime.
We want to note that we have considered the many other options that were mentioned in forum BP threads and on Discord, but ultimately we do not believe those should be pursued at this time. For example, we talked about taking some action regarding Ninjask or Suction Cups in addition to Mr. Mime. However, we are doubtful that uncompetitive BP strategies can survive our proposed Mr. Mime ban. Roar should provide plenty of counterplay to Baton Pass to the point where winning with it looks like recognized and accepted strategies (e.g. BP Zapdos + BP Celebi) and losing to it looks like the the fault of the loser (e.g. the loser neglected to bring a Roar user, didn't preserve their Roar user until the BP threat was eliminated, etc). With that said, we are conscious of the fact that Baton Pass can develop in unforeseeable ways, so we are open to taking further action if and when the situation calls for it. If you disagree with this analysis and believe additional measures beyond Ban Mr. Mime are necessary, we welcome you to post in this thread with a concise explanation.
Just to be clear, this is a proposition. We reckon many options were mentioned in this thread, and it is ultimately the one we prefer at the moment. However, we would like to see if there is any dissent for it by mentioning it here first. If there is no dissent, or we come to an agreement, we would like to make this official by Sunday the 21st of March.
We also feel like this issue doesn't warrant a Suspect Test and can be handled via a QuickBan because firstly, it already follows the logic and the result of the previous Suspect Test on the issue, and we noticed that an overwhelming majority of players and discussion holders wanted something to be done.
It is important to note that by following this route, we reckon some form of new Baton Pass teams could emerge. Although we expect them to be worse and less consistent than their current iterations, we reserve the right to further revisit Baton Pass upon short notice if we esteem that it is needed.
TL;DR: we're proposing to ban MrMime from ADV OU
After many debates held in a Policy Review thread, on Discord servers and within the ADV Council, we have come to a decision regarding Baton Pass in ADV OU.
Even though Baton Pass is already limited in ADV OU, it is clear that the current measures are not enough to accomplish the goals we had in mind when we voted for them. Ever since then, new Baton Pass teams surfaced and proved to be effective, especially on the ladder. At the time the Policy Review thread was made, 2 accounts in the Top 5 of the ladder were solely using Baton Pass teams. It also saw its first usage in a SPL game, which is admittedly what prompted those discussions to happen.
What needs to be mentioned about Baton Pass, is that the move holds a big importance in the metagame that is ADV OU. It is often featured on popular sets and is a vital part of strategies that are not deemed problematic by the majority of players. Actually, we could even mention that ADV OU is genuinely seen as a healthy and fun tier to play for pretty much its entire playerbase and spectators alike. The reason why I'm mentioning that is that it we took that fact into account for the solution the ADV Council decided to pursue, and the course of actions we will follow.
We had many options to deal with this, most of them highlighted in this post written by nchmax. Considering what was said earlier, that ADV OU is very much appreciated as is, one of our most important goals is to avoid altering the fabric of the tier as much as possible. The least invasive option that we felt would deal with the issue the best was to ban Mr. Mime. We feel that Mr. Mime is the reason why the current problematic Baton Pass teams are succeeding, being quite suffocating for its potential counterplay between its passive immunity to Roar and access to Encore, Calm Mind, Taunt, Substitute, Thunder Wave, and others.
To elaborate briefly, "Ban Mr. Mime" is our preferred option because it is a low impact simple ban and likely to be effective with regards to the recent BP problem. Smogon tiering policy favors simple bans over complex bans when the simple bans are low impact. That gave us three primary options: Ban Mr. Mime, Ban Soundproof, and Ban Baton Pass. Of these we feel like Ban Mr. Mime is an ideal option. Ban Mr. Mime has essentially no impact on the tier because Mr. Mime has never held a recognized metagame niche beyond Baton Pass style teams. By comparison, Ban Soundproof would result in additional, unnecessary impact (e.g. Exploud), and Ban Baton Pass would be a significant alteration to both the current and historical fabric of the tier. Moreover, we believe that Ban Mr. Mime is likely to be effective for solving the problem because teams can now reasonably rely on Roar as counterplay to Baton Pass chains. Therefore, our preferred choice is to Ban Mr. Mime.
We want to note that we have considered the many other options that were mentioned in forum BP threads and on Discord, but ultimately we do not believe those should be pursued at this time. For example, we talked about taking some action regarding Ninjask or Suction Cups in addition to Mr. Mime. However, we are doubtful that uncompetitive BP strategies can survive our proposed Mr. Mime ban. Roar should provide plenty of counterplay to Baton Pass to the point where winning with it looks like recognized and accepted strategies (e.g. BP Zapdos + BP Celebi) and losing to it looks like the the fault of the loser (e.g. the loser neglected to bring a Roar user, didn't preserve their Roar user until the BP threat was eliminated, etc). With that said, we are conscious of the fact that Baton Pass can develop in unforeseeable ways, so we are open to taking further action if and when the situation calls for it. If you disagree with this analysis and believe additional measures beyond Ban Mr. Mime are necessary, we welcome you to post in this thread with a concise explanation.
Just to be clear, this is a proposition. We reckon many options were mentioned in this thread, and it is ultimately the one we prefer at the moment. However, we would like to see if there is any dissent for it by mentioning it here first. If there is no dissent, or we come to an agreement, we would like to make this official by Sunday the 21st of March.
We also feel like this issue doesn't warrant a Suspect Test and can be handled via a QuickBan because firstly, it already follows the logic and the result of the previous Suspect Test on the issue, and we noticed that an overwhelming majority of players and discussion holders wanted something to be done.
It is important to note that by following this route, we reckon some form of new Baton Pass teams could emerge. Although we expect them to be worse and less consistent than their current iterations, we reserve the right to further revisit Baton Pass upon short notice if we esteem that it is needed.
TL;DR: we're proposing to ban MrMime from ADV OU
lol.
How does ninjask hold togather the fabric of the tier?
This isn't gsc, a structurally sound team doesn't need a phaser.
All the arguments for mime are adjacent to the ones for banning jask. Don't dig this decision at all.
https://pokepast.es/ceae5429cfe034cc
Go nuts everyone, you can do luna over sol/and octi over exploud, make it CM cele.
Make it max ninjask for mixmence fire too.
Bulk out exploud more too if you want.
Maro-Gross obv
How does ninjask hold togather the fabric of the tier?
This isn't gsc, a structurally sound team doesn't need a phaser.
All the arguments for mime are adjacent to the ones for banning jask. Don't dig this decision at all.
https://pokepast.es/ceae5429cfe034cc
Go nuts everyone, you can do luna over sol/and octi over exploud, make it CM cele.
Make it max ninjask for mixmence fire too.
Bulk out exploud more too if you want.
Maro-Gross obv
exploud being listed as additional unnecessary impact is interesting considering it has 0 use on any non full pass teams, i'm pretty sure last i saw it was on bd pass actually
correct me if i'm wrong: none of the soundproof/suction cups mons have any actual use in the tier outside of bp(barring people's devil's advocating for arguments sake)
we also already have somewhat of a complex ban: bp's banned on smeargle - so why not go the extra step and remove soundproof/suction cups when used on teams with bp?
admittedly pretty messy, but seems more complete, banning mime takes care of like 99.99% of the issue but might as well kill totally fringe options too, just so people don't spend time fleshing those builds out again. just my personal take
correct me if i'm wrong: none of the soundproof/suction cups mons have any actual use in the tier outside of bp(barring people's devil's advocating for arguments sake)
we also already have somewhat of a complex ban: bp's banned on smeargle - so why not go the extra step and remove soundproof/suction cups when used on teams with bp?
admittedly pretty messy, but seems more complete, banning mime takes care of like 99.99% of the issue but might as well kill totally fringe options too, just so people don't spend time fleshing those builds out again. just my personal take
Smogon tiering policy and the ADV Council favors Simple Bans over Complex Bans. Simple bans are Pokemon, Moves, and Abilities. Accordingly that leaves us three initial options: Ban Mr. Mime, Ban Soundproof/SuctionCups, and Ban Baton Pass. Until a site-wide policy against Baton Pass is initiated, ADV Council does not want to Ban Baton Pass in ADV OU, so we're taking that option off the table from the outset. That leaves us with "Ban Mr. Mime" and "Ban Soundproof." If both of these options are effective, which should we prefer? Admittedly this is a bit of splitting hairs, but we prefer Ban Mr. Mime for two primary reasons.
The first reason is that we view Mr. Mime as the crux of the problem, and "Ban Mr. Mime" directly targets that crux. Mr. Mime facilitates the overwhelming and uncompetitive accumulation of Stat Boosts. The inability to phase the ultimate receiver (Octillery, Exploud, Cradily) is almost never the difference between a Deserved Win and a Deserved Loss. In other words, we don't really see Octillery with one or two boosts as "uncompetitive" or "broken" even if you cannot Roar it out. And beyond that, we don't see Octillery with a couple boosts as much different than a "legit receiver" like Zapdos, Celebi, or Vaporeon with a couple boosts. So essentially, "Ban Mr. Mime" is a more direct way of tackling the actual problem (Mr. Mime), whereas "Ban Soundproof" is comparatively more indirect.
The second reason is that "Ban Mr. Mime" results in less collateral damage to the tier. Both "Ban Mr. Mime" and "Ban Soundproof" achieve the goal of eliminating Mr. Mime from teams that incorporate Baton Pass. But "Ban Soundproof" (and Suction Cups) would result in extra collateral damage in the sense that Exploud, Cradily, and Octillery would now be on the Uber Tier List in addition to Mr. Mime, which is something we see as undesirable. Ultimately, you may say that "it doesn't matter" because "soundproof/suction cups mons have any actual use in the tier outside of bp" which is fine, but it's really just a judgment call. Our judgment is that we prefer the option that is effective and results in fewer bans, which is "Ban Mr. Mime."
Like you say, "Ban Soundproof/SuctionCups" might be a superior option if it indeed catches a possibility of an extra 0.01% of fringe uncompetitive BP options. We've had Astamatitos actually testing No-Mime Baton Pass teams on the ladder, and the results were not looking very promising for the continuing viability of BP. If you can actually build an uncompetitive Baton Pass-based team without Mr. Mime and provide replays to substantiate your point, that would be very helpful for us in approaching the BP problem. We admit that there are better Baton Pass minds out there than me, Asta, UD, Roro, and M Dragon, but for now we just don't see uncompetitive Baton Pass teams surviving this Mr. Mime ban.
We are avoiding the complex ban because there's no compelling reason to complex ban in this situation. In the Smeargle decision, we thought it was compelling to preserve the Smeargle Spikes Offense style of teams, which is why we chose a complex ban over the simple option to "Ban Smeargle." However, here there is no compelling reason to justify a complex ban on Soundproof/Suction Cups and Baton Pass on other members of the same team.
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As announced a few days ago, Mr.Mime is now banned from ADV OU.
Marty Kris if you could implement it whenever you have the time, thank you!
As a reminder, we will closely monitor the state of Baton Pass going forward, both in tournament play and on the ladder, as we expect new but less powerful variants of the playstyle to be tested. If needed, we will revisit the issue.
Cheers everyone!
Marty Kris if you could implement it whenever you have the time, thank you!
As a reminder, we will closely monitor the state of Baton Pass going forward, both in tournament play and on the ladder, as we expect new but less powerful variants of the playstyle to be tested. If needed, we will revisit the issue.
Cheers everyone!