Implemented Let's ban BP in ADV UU

[Hogg]

Hey, since everyone is posting their past gen lower tier changes, it’s about time I get to post one too, right?

I’ve been a vocal opponent of BP in ADV UU for years. (Or, well, BP everywhere, but especially ADV UU.) I implemented what I’m pretty sure was the first unofficial BP ban in ADV UU the first time I hosted UUPL, and it has carried over into pretty much every unofficial tour since. And due to a miscommunication, it ended up getting banned on Showdown as well, and the overall experience was positive from pretty much everyone I spoke to, so it kind of just stuck.

Basically, BP is super toxic in UU, and most of the community has been playing without it for years as it is, so it would be nice to just go ahead and formally introduce a ban (or BP clause, if we wanted to consider inheriting OU’s clause rather than going with a full ban, though I prefer a full ban). Many of the most viable ‘mons in UU have access to BP and multiple boosting moves: Lunatone/Solrock (which also get Hypnosis, for the ultimate screw you special), Scyther and Hypno are all above-average picks as it is, and can become absolutely explosive with BP. Full chains are perfectly viable, as are more focused teams that rely on Scyther passing off +2 Attack and +1 Speed to a Rest Kanga and just winning with very minimal counterplay. And Mr.Mime is just as aggressively good at shutting down Roar/Perish Song as a way of dealing with BP in UU as it was in OU.

I love ADV UU with all its flaws and foibles, so I’m always a bit wary of messing around with it too much, but I’ve played a huge number of games both with and without BP and I can confidently say that it is a significantly better and fairer tier without BP. I’d like to see it officially banned so we aren’t in this weird limbo where it’s not technically banned but might as well be.

(Thanks Lilburr for the image)

 

[Ark]

PS ban is already there, and I definitely support this. The main passers were Lunatone and Scyther, and both of them were pretty absurd. Lunatone passing a boost to otherwise pretty bad mons like Sharpedo could be a game ender. Scyther is even stronger because it already is one of the best mons in the tier without Baton Pass, and if it has the option to pass out of the few mons that beat it to other mons that are already hard to deal with, this strat becomes overwhelming. I've seen a couple attempts at beating this using stuff like super fat roar Walrein, but that's liable to get worn and if you roar as you eat a +2 Hidden Power Flying/Bug from Scyther, it's also gonna be dire. There were a couple chainpass teams going around, too, most notably EW's as far as I'm aware, and those had different ways of dealing with them from the "standard" single passer (or small chains) as well. I don't really see Baton Pass adding anything positive to the tier. It does have the ability to turn games into ridiculous guessing games even if you "prepare" for it, though. That's why I'm completely onboard with formalizing the ps-implemented Baton Pass in ADV UU.

 

[BigFatMantis]

What, exactly, would this change, and how did we already get to a "ban" in PS without a formal procedure for it? BP is currently banned in every iteration of ADV UU - banned in team tours, banned in ADV UU Cup, banned in friendlies since PS doesn't allow it - so it seems this has already been done a while ago informally and perhaps this is just a post to formalize it? I don't think anyone in the ADV UU community would really oppose a BP ban, but my concern is how this happened so long ago on PS and was never changed, and we should make sure something like that doesn't happen again if we want to follow proper procedures on these things.

As for BP itself - I think Scyther passing SD to Kangaskhan is very stupid, but that probably has more to do with Kanga than BP. I think Lunatone passing is fine, as well as other passers, but the SD pass to Kanga is so oppressive that I think it probably has to go (or drop Kanga but we all know that's not happening). Passing to anything other than Kanga I think is manageable. Annoying and difficult to prep for yeah, but manageable.

I love ADV UU and it's my favorite tier out of any tier period, but there are a lot of issues I think it has that we seem hesitant to visit. The main question I would ask this:

Is the goal to have the tier be played as intended, or is the goal to have it played as the community wants it?

If it is the former, and we are proceeding to ban BP, then I think we need to revisit several other issues such as the NFE clause, as well as the fact that we have over 50? UUBLs in ADV UU. The tier is fun, sure, and I know people don't want to "mess" with it if it works fine. But some of these draconian restrictions and bans make it seem sometimes as though the tier is not really ADV UU and is something more artificial that resulted from strange policies 15 years ago. Surely there is some way to test out certain things to see how they play out without making any decisions.

If the goal is just to have it played as the community wants it, then less thought really needs to be put into these things and we can just go with the flow on what everyone generally wants. Which means just formalizing the BP ban that's already in place anyways.

 

[Hogg]

What, exactly, would this change, and how did we already get to a "ban" in PS without a formal procedure for it?

Functionally this would change very little. It’s banned in team tours because I pushed for it to be banned when I hosted UUPL a while back under the argument that it was a fun tour anyhow and BP ruined way too many games, and then basically every team tour that came after followed suit (and added other unofficial bans). That was over three years ago, so we’ve got quite a history of team tours without BP at this point. When I was in charge of UU Classic I initially left it legal for classic, but can anecdotally confirm that BP was all over the place in the early ADV UU Cups. This year was the first year the ban carried over to Classic as well, presumably due to community demand.

As for how it got banned on PS, that’s relatively recent and as I said initially came about due to a miscommunication - back in February, when the ladder was about to be implemented for an RoA old gen ladder of the month, a PS staff member asked someone on the ADV Council if BP was supposed to be banned on the UU ladder, and the council member responded with something to the effect of “well, it’s banned in most tours.”

By the time it was spotted, the month was almost over and most of the ADV UU players on the ladder seemed strongly in favor of keeping it there (this was brought up in @Lilburr’s February 28 thread, “The State of Old Gen Lower Tiers” - on mobile or I’d link it). By the time that discussion concluded, past gen lower tiers were unlocked, and I think the only reason that BP in ADV UU wasn’t the very first official proposal was that with the PS ban, it was functionally already gone. This proposal would be to make what is already essentially the practice official.

 

[Freeroamer]

I love ADV UU and it's my favorite tier out of any tier period, but there are a lot of issues I think it has that we seem hesitant to visit. The main question I would ask this:

Is the goal to have the tier be played as intended, or is the goal to have it played as the community wants it?

If it is the former, and we are proceeding to ban BP, then I think we need to revisit several other issues such as the NFE clause, as well as the fact that we have over 50? UUBLs in ADV UU. The tier is fun, sure, and I know people don't want to "mess" with it if it works fine. But some of these draconian restrictions and bans make it seem sometimes as though the tier is not really ADV UU and is something more artificial that resulted from strange policies 15 years ago. Surely there is some way to test out certain things to see how they play out without making any decisions.

If the goal is just to have it played as the community wants it, then less thought really needs to be put into these things and we can just go with the flow on what everyone generally wants. Which means just formalizing the BP ban that's already in place anyways.

I don’t really think there needs to be a direct progression from formalising a BP ban that gets applied in 90% of games played in this tier to potentially freeing a whole bunch of pokemon, although as far as I can tell only 2 would be really relevant (Haunter and Diglett). For what it’s worth, the topic of the clause has come up before in this thread and petered out twice so take from that what you will.

Haven’t played enough games where BP is allowed to be able to form a coherent opinion on whether it’s stupid or not, so not really got too much to add other than that I think the tier as it’s currently played in tournaments is a well balanced tier so I’d be very hesitant to see an often controversial element like BP added as standard.

 

[Earthworm]

I enjoy Baton Pass in RSE UU. I don't think it's broken and I don't think the tier needs to be touched. There are a lot of fun strategies made possible by the move but not necessarily in an overpowering way. But I'm fairly sure I'm in the minority and I don't have a significant investment in the tier.

Would like to hear Noitu's take on this as one of the most prolific players of the tier, but I'm not sure if he has access to post here.

 

[fatty]

while I do agree that bp opens up some “fun” strategies, I really don’t think it’s balanced in any way in the current iteration of adv uu. as was brought up before, sd scyther bp -> rest kang is probably the scariest thing u could possibly face in this tier. scyther is already an insanely potent offensive threat that rly only needs 2 attacks anyways, and then u give it a chance to give kang +2. there is no reasonable defensive counterplay to this. while not to this extent, I think similar cases can be made for cm Luna > special tenta / vileplume / special mon of choice. the defensive options in this tier simply don’t stack up to these already great offensive mons that can just keep the ball rolling by passing to even better offensive threats.

now I mentioned current iteration because if bp is allowed, one of kang or scyther would have to go (again, I think lunatone and I’m sure other forms of bp would become absurd as well, but this is the most blatant), and at that point I just think we’re better off axing bp. Kangless adv uu is literally an entire different tier and scyther is pretty entrenched as a top mon. unfortunately I don’t see another way around it and I think there’s just way too much precedence to not just ban bp.

 

[Lily]

bump?

It's been a while but the current discussion on ADV OU's BP headaches has reminded me that we probably should do something about this, so as usual I'm going to tag the people who will likely get the opportunity to vote on this and invite them to respond if they so wish. Rough guesstimates so if I missed you then sorry, I will be far more thorough when generating an actual voter list. This looks almost unanimous as of rn, but still.

I won't be doing this until after the current UUSD concludes since it'll give me another tour's worth of voters + I have to do the dirty deed of thinking about SM UU Quagsire at that point anyway so yea.

tags

Plas Garay oak Cam Fantos13 Raichy Bouff Quartosa Shiba Ark TSR Christo JabbaTheGriffin esche fatty Gilbert arenas BKC Star Expulso Finding True Love eden Sam I Yam ict Hogg r0ady Hyogafodex Roseybear

Just give any thoughts you have on whether or not BP should be banned, or just like the OP or whatever. ty in advance o7

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[BKC]

ban it

 

[eden]

ban it lol, its not used in any of: uupl/uusd/uuwc anyway, might as well formalize removing it to simplify rulesets for future tours

 

[fatty]

yes ty

 

[TSR]

send it to hell

 

[Lily]

Sorry! I forgot to lock this thread already, but yea BP was officially banned from ADV UU a little while ago.