I'd like to believe that the rulings keeping ADV OU Baton Pass in check have finally reached a satisfying conclusion. Over the years, valiant players have put time and effort into conveying their arguments regarding the rulings, earning suspect test requirements, powering through opposing teams that abused the holes in the various past rulings, and designing new rulings with the intention of limiting Baton Pass's negatives aspects while preserving its positives ones. However, my experience on the ladder leads me to believe that there's still work to be done. Not with Baton Pass itself, but some of the "strategies" that compliment it.
I'm proposing that more action should be taken to limit the amount of RNG abuse that BP teams can commit (mainly Ninjask's use of Swagger/Sand Attack/Mud-Slap as its 4th move). To clarify, I view banning the mons that cause these issues as the wrong path to take. I believe that they aren't inherently uncompetitive, assuming that the most problematic aspects of them can be addressed through straightforward bans.
The importance of "Generational Identity" is another topic that's been debated over time. For those of you who value it, here are several aspects of ADV OU's identity that pertain to my argument:
- The metagame has less of a problem with offensive threats that can take over games thanks to favorable RNG and/or matchup, compared to some of the metagames of later generations
- Using entry hazards is a good strategy, but is much further from mandatory than in other generations
- Being an old generation with a dedicated playerbase, ADV OU is used to receiving new rule changes that are widely requested (Beat Up not using names Mod, Freeze Clause, Evasion Items Clause, etc.)
- The metagame has a wide variety of viable teamstyles and mons, and many mons have variety in their sets
- Baton Pass is legal, under the belief that the restrictions surrounding it allow it to have a positive presence in the metagame
- ADV OU is often regarded as one of the best metagames that Smogon has to offer, including in regards to laddering
1. Dedicated BP teams are designed around subverting this ideal. When playing against them, it's possible to find yourself in an irrecoverable position because you anticipated the wrong BP recipient, or it had just the right set to finish off your team, or you made a genuine misplay(s) at some point. These instances are part of the game. But to be in that position because they played for pure hax and got rewarded for it? That's just stupid.
2. Roar and Whirlwind, the only phazing moves of Gen 3, serve three main functions: Racking up Spikes damage, temporarily checking mons with setup, and scouting your opponent's team. If you don't use Spikes on your team, you only have two of the main incentives. And even if you do use Spikes, phazing moves can still be hard to justify sometimes in the teambuilder. You can argue that teambuilding is relatively lax in ADV OU compared to other metagames, but between needing to get past common defensive cores and permanently check common offensive threats and establish a concise gameplan and whatnot, it's not unreasonable for your team to have no phazing moves at all.
Roar and Whirlwind don't bypass the Accuracy check until Gen 6, and of course clicking them doesn't prevent your mon from hitting itself in confusion. However, phazing moves are generally still a better click under RNG-susceptible circumstances than offensive moves are, since you don't need to chain multiple moves together to stop the BP team from getting out of control. The point I'm trying to make here is that teams without a phazing move are screwed over extra hard by RNG-abuse BP teams, and this shouldn't be excused with an attitude of "Well teams without phazers are inherently bad", because that's a close-minded opinion.
[Skarmory is an amazing and frequently-used mon that almost always uses Roar, and is immune to Accuracy drops thanks to its Ability Keen Eye. However, BP teams often cover this form of counterplay by using Magneton to trap and remove it, making it difficult for Skarmory to fully contribute to the battle]
3. Because of this dynamic, introducing a new ban that addresses this topic wouldn't be too unusual. There's certainly at least some demand for it. I don't think that anything could reasonably be done about the Paralysis angle; considering that the Paralysis status has strategic merit through dropping Speed, and it's a potential secondary effect of moves that can't be replaced by other moves (Thunderbolt and Thunder). However, Accuracy-lowering and Confusion are far easier to remove from the game. You might as well remove Attract too since the most diehard Ninjask RNG abusers will resort to anything to try to fulfill their sick fantasies. That leaves them with Silver Wind and Secret Power (essentially a 70 BP Body Slam). At least Silver Wind isn't passive, and rarely procs. [Because the current Baton Pass Clause isn't a Mod, it's possible to pass both Speed Pass boosts and Silver Wind's omniboost(s) simultaneously]
4. A reoccurring issue with competitive mons in general is that some players who aren't very developed yet choose to rely on RNG-heavy strategies, in an attempt to make the anticipated difference in skill less of a factor. The thought of someone choosing to do that in this metagame containing a healthy amount of different team archetypes and mons to develop their knowledge and skills with; it's a sad one. Limiting the options to do so would help prevent this.
Moves used for the purpose of hax tend to be a blanket "check" for counterplay against strategies, as is the case of Ninjask using Swagger/Sand Attack/Mud-Slap. Removing these options would add more depth to the choice of Ninjask's 4th move. Toxic to wear down phazers and stall out mons in general, a coverage move to help check a mon(s) that the team struggles against overall, Screech to support an incoming physical attacker, Sunny Day to remove Sand and possibly support an incoming mon, that's enough for me right there.
Not that it matters much, but the mons on BP cheese teams tend to not depend on those teams to be viable. Not-OUs like Marowak and Hariyama have legitimate uses elsewhere, and even something like Poliwrath could work on a not-terrible team if you want to use it that badly (I'd personally try using it on ZapDug, a less cheesy BP-centered team). And it's not like BP cheese team users would have to totally scrap their existing teams just because a few filler moves got banned.
5. I don't want Baton Pass to be associated with cheese. I want Baton Pass to be known for making Blissey more manageable and encouraging players to use a wider variety of special checks, for comboing with Substitute to reward mons with sky-high defensive stats (like Regice and Regirock) and support the format's coolest move (Focus Punch), for DryPass being a more balanced version of the pivot moves introduced in later gens, for AgiliPass Zapdos + 4 mons that function with and without the Speed boost + revenge killer being a usable team, etc.
I don't expect a movement to remove the ability to do any of these things to gain much traction, but the sketchier Baton Pass users and teammates being the way they currently are is making that more of a possibility.
[I acknowledge that this section of my argument was pretty opinionated]
6. This isn't something that you can definitively escape from through raising your elo. I've been in the #2-#200 range on the ladder for a long time now, and I still occasionally encounter these teams. I don't play in tournaments, so I'm not aware of what sort of presence teams like these have in that environment, but I don't see how any feasible reality regarding that part of the format would harm my case.
I might've made it sound like BP cheese users are all mediocre players, but I'm well aware that that's not true. Some of the best players out there experiment with these teams, trying to push them are far as possible under whatever rules exist at the time. As someone deep into teambuilding, I have some respect for that, but there's such a thing as crossing the hax-fishing line, and some of the BP teams floating around are guilty of that.
It seems to me that many of the new ADV OU players view the tier in a naively optimistic light: It's an oasis to visit while the SV OU council tries to make the most of the hand Game Freak has dealt them, where the metagame is balanced and practically everything is viable. We can agree that this is a great tier, but you
will get suffocated by defensive cores and trounced by offensive threats if you're not sufficiently prepared. BP cheese teams are annoying enough to battle against for us seasoned players; imagine how the large amount of newer ones feel.
Tbh I'd still view Ninjask as a net negative for the metagame even if the changes that I'd like to see were to go through, but I understand that it takes more to ban a mon from a tier than just that. And not that they should be a massive priority, but you'd get a lot of flack from the "Smogon hates fun, bans are inherently bad, they can't adapt yadayada" crowd. If you were to remove Ninjask's most blatant RNG-abuse capabilities though, that would be more difficult to argue against for those that would be against it. I can imagine those people saying "Just switch out duh", ignoring the fact that doing so gives the opponent a free turn that they're going to get a lot of mileage out of.
Looking at the ladder statistics just now, Ninjask that use Swagger/Sand Attack/Mud-Slap aren't actually that common. And I don't believe that those sets are overpowered, or that any other Ninjask sets are. I'm just a ladder player who views the concept of banning in a relatively favorable light.