PoMMan said: Assuming the simple bans you are referring to are Smeargle and Scolipede, I dont want to ban two non-broken pokemon so that we can delay having to deal with baton pass in its full form, and I believe there are a fair few who agree with me. Click to expand...

I don't have a ton to add on the main topic at hand, as I do not have the most experience with BP teams, but I want to chime in on the general policy idea that this sentence hits on, and why I vehemently disagree with it. Some people say that these Pokemon are non-broken, and banning them would not be an ideal solution, but that runs 100% counter to ever other Pokemon ban we have pretty much ever made. If a single set on a Pokemon breaks the game, that Pokemon is broken. That is how we have done it for every other Pokemon that has ever been banned. It doesn't matter that if we took away or restricted one move, the Pokemon might not be broken anymore. What matters is that, when used with some specific set, the Pokemon breaks the metagame. Saying that such broken Pokemon are "not broken" is based only on arbitrary assumptions of power and what tiers Pokemon "should" be in.Now, I'm not going to say that Smeargle or Scolipede necessarily should be banned. Heck, I've always been in the camp that Baton Pass, even in a full chain, is a perfectly legitimate strategy, and is merely a victim of being late to the party to the extent that people don't think they should have to update existing team archetypes to have to deal with a new team archetype, and that somehow the old archetype is more valuable to the game than the new. But that is honestly besides the point. The point is that if there are really only two Pokemon that are causing a problem, and they are doing so in similar, but not the same way, using things that are perfectly fine and balanced on other Pokemon, then those Pokemon need to go. Claiming that they are "not broken" while simultaneously claiming that they break the game is hypocritical, and simply an attempt to shape the metagame to something that looks "right" regardless of what the proper policy should be.