Pokémon Thread XXIX: Sword, Shield, and Spoilers

[enderlord99]

I piggy-backed on my opponent's boosts, got my full setup, and still lost.

[Karnitis]

Yeah, remind me to stay way the hell away from Ubers. I do not need that level of crazy in my meta

[boj0]

Oh wow! That strat is insane, and since most boost counters aren't used in doubles that was pretty much free. Shame Xern doesn't learn Stored Power

[NatureKing]

Baton Pass needs to be banned from doubles. Or at least Complex Banned from pokemon with Stat Boosting.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Ubers bans very, very few things. Only things that become dominant enough that basically everyone needs to have it on their team. This is not one of those things, it's relatively easy to just 2v1 Eevee and kill it as a counter strategy. It works because it's a little off-meta.

That's what ubers is for, mad powerful stuff you can't use anywhere else.

[Bartmanhomer]

Uber Goober.

[enderlord99]

Baton Pass needs to be banned from doubles. Or at least Complex Banned from pokemon with Stat Boosting.

There isn't a Doubles AG, and some people really like those strategies. Are you saying that some people shouldn't be allowed to do what they love?

[NatureKing]

There isn't a Doubles AG, and some people really like those strategies. Are you saying that some people shouldn't be allowed to do what they love?

For the good of a healthy metagame, yes. Baton Pass Stat Boosting is garbage, over-centralising nonsense and part of the reason it banned in OU and Uber Singles. Like how you got beaten by what was essentially a 5 mon team. Baton Pass allows otherwise crap mon like Scolipede or Eevee to simply overpower certain mon. Neither is viable without Baton pass giving their boosts to other mon.

Baton Pass as a pivot move is fantastic, awesome, hence my suggestion for a complex ban to allow for drypassing. It's the free pivot plus switching ridiculous Stat boosts that makes it broken however and glad it has gone. Because of course Ubers is all about having you're pokemon pseudo deity beaten by an Eevee.

People who want to play BP can still do so: this time in AG.

[enderlord99]

People who want to play BP can still do so: this time in AG.

...Which, as I just said, doesn't exist for doubles. Maybe it should, but it doesn't.

[NatureKing]

Neither is there a BP ban. Which as I said, should exist because of how brainless and broke it is as a strat. Like you said, you got off the best possible conditions for you, but still got beaten by essentially a 5 mon meme team thanks to BP.

[Bartmanhomer]

Is Baton Pass move that powerful?

[tyckspoon]

Is Baton Pass move that powerful?

Potentially? It's basically the extreme form of a set-up sweeper, where you try to find a safe turn to use a powerful buff move or two (Swords Dance, Belly Drum, Shell Smash, etc) and then have that pokemon blow away everything in front of it. A Baton Pass team extends this concept to having nearly every member of the team be able to pass buffs to another member of the team, so you can combine buffs from different movepools. In Singles, at least, it's a high-risk/high-reward thing, because you can more easily get your chain pass broken - forced swap moves like Roar and Whirlwind mean the buffs don't get passed along, you could have a fragile member of your chain get predicted into a bad swap and taken out or forced to pass without being able to contribute their own buff, somebody could bring along actual Haze, which has the effect of nulling all status changes.

In Doubles you can use one of your active 'mon to shield for the other one - threatening to KO any counters to your buff passers, using something like Wide Guard or Quick Guard to block common attacks that might knock out one of your passers, or just setting up one of your pokemon as a solo threat/wall while the other one buffs and passes so your opponent is forced to choose which threat they want to let go on (assuming you have your team placed correctly so that both pokemon are unlikely to get taken out by the same thing.) Would make the strategy more stable and a lot harder to successfully interfere with.

[Bartmanhomer]

Potentially? It's basically the extreme form of a set-up sweeper, where you try to find a safe turn to use a powerful buff move or two (Swords Dance, Belly Drum, Shell Smash, etc) and then have that pokemon blow away everything in front of it. A Baton Pass team extends this concept to having nearly every member of the team be able to pass buffs to another member of the team, so you can combine buffs from different movepools. In Singles, at least, it's a high-risk/high-reward thing, because you can more easily get your chain pass broken - forced swap moves like Roar and Whirlwind mean the buffs don't get passed along, you could have a fragile member of your chain get predicted into a bad swap and taken out or forced to pass without being able to contribute their own buff, somebody could bring along actual Haze, which has the effect of nulling all status changes.

In Doubles you can use one of your active 'mon to shield for the other one - threatening to KO any counters to your buff passers, using something like Wide Guard or Quick Guard to block common attacks that might knock out one of your passers, or just setting up one of your pokemon as a solo threat/wall while the other one buffs and passes so your opponent is forced to choose which threat they want to let go on (assuming you have your team placed correctly so that both pokemon are unlikely to get taken out by the same thing.) Would make the strategy more stable and a lot harder to successfully interfere with.

Oh wow. It's that broken huh?

[tgva8889]

The thing about Baton Pass is that used properly in Singles, it's not even that risky. Because of how powerful Pokemon are now, just a single Baton Pass of something like Swords Dance can punish an opponent's switch and set them up for defeat. Because the move allows you to react to your opponent's decision with a switch, it's just a useful utility move even if you don't have that many stat boosts, but it also enables the powerful strategy of just building a big monster.

Generally a Baton Pass chain starts by setting up Mean Look/Spider Web on something so it can't switch out, then putting it to sleep while you setup some stats and then passing those stats to something else to sweep, usually with some move like Stored Power that gets more powerful the more stat boosts you have.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Tournament update!

Because each poule had 3 players competing the ranking comes down purely to number of wins. These are the results:

tgva8889 (2 wins)
boj0 (1 win)
Bartmanhomer (0 wins)

Karnitis (2 wins)
Piggy Knowles (1 win)
Lvl 2 Expert (0 wins)
Rynjin (0 matches)

This means tgva8889 moves on to face Piggy Knowles, and Karnitis battles boj0 next. Congratulations! The deadline for these matches is Friday the 3rd of May. Ones Saturday rolls around everywhere in the world, time's up. (If people are done earlier we will move on to the finals earlier.) I am PM'ing the four people who move on as well.

[Bartmanhomer]

Tournament update!

Because each poule had 3 players competing the ranking comes down purely to number of wins. These are the results:

tgva8889 (2 wins)
boj0 (1 win)
Bartmanhomer (0 wins)

Karnitis (2 wins)
Piggy Knowles (1 win)
Lvl 2 Expert (0 wins)
Rynjin (0 matches)

This means tgva8889 moves on to face Piggy Knowles, and Karnitis battles boj0 next. Congratulations! The deadline for these matches is Friday the 3rd of May. Ones Saturday rolls around everywhere in the world, time's up. (If people are done earlier we will move on to the finals earlier.) I am PM'ing the four people who move on as well.

Oh well. At least I have a great time in my very first Pokemon tournament. Congratulations everybody for advancing the semi-finals.

Ok these two battles are really embarrassing. I play two battles by a Gym Leader Giovanni wannabee.

First battle: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/g...goou-896428865

Rematch: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/g...goou-896429547

I swear in the name of Lolth. This guy want me to challenge the third time and I said to him next time get six Pokemon and he start whining like a complete wyrmling.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

It looks like he's simulating different levels of gym battles with Giovanni, building up the difficulty. Cool concept, but completely unviable versus competitive teams because he'd lose even the final battle super quick, so he tries to find players who are into theme teams and such. A full water team would hardly be his first choice, but it's slim pickings...

[tgva8889]

Let me know when you're free, Piggy Knowles!

[Bartmanhomer]

It looks like he's simulating different levels of gym battles with Giovanni, building up the difficulty. Cool concept, but completely unviable versus competitive teams because he'd lose even the final battle super quick, so he tries to find players who are into theme teams and such. A full water team would hardly be his first choice, but it's slim pickings...

Yes also very unoriginal to add here.

[Emmerlaus]

In any case, thank you for the link to that Gaming app! I'll try to see what I can do with it!

I doubt I'll make a viable team cause I only play Pokemon I like, no matter if they are competitive or not.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Yes also very unoriginal to add here.

Not really any worse than just playing the meta. You have to remember your idea of originality is colored. (So is mine.) You know the ingame content of some of the games, but you have very little idea of the standard builds going around on Smogon. You could fight an exact copy of the team that won the last world championship and you'd be impressed by how original it is. And that's not a bad thing, but it'd look better if you didn't look down on people who use pokémon you recognise as much.

[Bartmanhomer]

Not really any worse than just playing the meta. You have to remember your idea of originality is colored. (So is mine.) You know the ingame content of some of the games, but you have very little idea of the standard builds going around on Smogon. You could fight an exact copy of the team that won the last world championship and you'd be impressed by how original it is. And that's not a bad thing, but it'd look better if you didn't look down on people who use pokémon you recognise as much.

I understand that and players can play any Pokemon they want. Whatever they're original or not. I really don't have any problem with that.

[enderlord99]

I find Baton PAss to be much, much less bull**** than Follow Me and Rage Powder.

Why do they redirect Skill Swap from targeting your own allies‽

WHY!‽!

[Qwertystop]

I find Baton PAss to be much, much less bull**** than Follow Me and Rage Powder.

Why do they redirect Skill Swap from targeting your own allies‽

WHY!‽!

Because the entire point is to be disruptive by redirecting things?

[enderlord99]

Because the entire point is to be disruptive by redirecting things?

Yeah, but it doesn't redirect Heal Pulse or Floral Healing. They should at least be consistent!

[Piggy Knowles]

Won vs tgva8889, gg. https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7ou-898637008

[Bartmanhomer]

Won vs tgva8889, gg. https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7ou-898637008

Great battle the both of you.

[tgva8889]

Good match! Clearly showing my inexperience but a fun time.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Yeah, but it doesn't redirect Heal Pulse or Floral Healing. They should at least be consistent!

Well, they do call it rage powder...

[Karnitis]

Well, they do call it rage powder...

haha perfect bant.