[Mechanics Discussion] Baton Pass

[DoubleJ]

So is it time to reintroduce baton pass?

Do we limit it to one pokemon per team as a complex ban? I feel this is the best route and can help to improve diversity of game play in many ways.

[NikhilR]

Dunno man, smeargle kinda makes it broken af. Spore+Bdrum+baton pass to Aero. 

 

Scizor would see a lot more action in OU but that would just involve a lot of trapping because people will pair scizor with magneton to take out skarmory, while the opponent might also carry magneton to take out hp fire scizors.

 

It would change the game a lot, but then after a while, it'll become standard and you'll be seeing haze / surf / protect / wish vaporeons everywhere too. Let's not forget that things like Jolteon would have a very easy time sub passing to dugtrio and take out p2 with a lot more ease. This way Jolteon can always sub and pass to a counter to get the advantage.

 

EDIT: Scizor with morning sun would just abuse the hell out of it too. Sorry for being all negative, but it's just another headache that I'd rather not worry about.  

Edited September 15, 2015 by NikhilR

[OrangeManiac]

Thank god Pre-evo move learning is a thing.

However, I'm afraid I'll have to say no. This is a move which is so significant that tiers would no longer be accurate, not even close. I'd even argue the right way to do tiering after introducing a move like this is to do it all again. And all we would get as a reward is a move which was banned mostly by being uncompetitive and we might easily think "well shit, this was a bad idea".

I'd wish Baton Pass would at least enforced in Ubers. And in addition if we want Ubers to be something playable then Salamence + maybe Wobbu ban could be on place but that's a discussion for other time.

[BurntZebra]

Yeah gonna agree with nik. Not much as changed really, choice band doesn't really impact it that much and it's still uncompetitive. Quick passing belly drum with smeargle is pretty broken in any tier. Full baton pass teams are still obviously broken. We still don't have any actual way to punish people who just spam baton pass for momentum really. 

 

Would be cool to see baton pass in ubers though, since it might be slightly more balanced in that with tyranitar just crushing everything and curselax being able to set up vs baton pass teams. 

[Robofiend]

I too am against it. I haven't heard anyone (who knows what they're talking about) suggest that BP would be less broken in singles, and as others have pointed out, the 1BP per team rule doesn't stop bad stuff from happening. Furthermore, it's harder to enforce than just banning the move in the first place.

 

As for this "diversity" of which you speak: it might seem like Baton Pass would introduce it, but what we've seen in the past (and future) of Pokemon is that often times Baton Pass just becomes really centralizing and edges out a bunch of other playstyles/team builds. While 1 Baton Passer might seem OK on paper, there's a million ways it can let an OK player set up on a good player and sweep without much actual strategy.

 

Maybe if we had team preview, but even then I'm pretty opposed to it based just on the momentum aspect.

[DoubleJ]

Aight sweet. We've had a ton of change since this was banned so I wanted to hear ya'lls thoughts on if anything may have changed.