I would like to delve deeper into the reasons why I, alongside the rest of the council, personally feel that a blanket ban of the move BP is the appropriate tiering decision.



I'd like to preface my main argument by saying that the most recent changes to the clause, however many there were, were a mistake. I mean this in no disrespectful way to those of past tiering, but complex bans especially to this over-layered degree are senseless. So, let's go back to a time before any BP clause for a bit of history and understanding of processes. Baton Pass was roaming free, with the classic dEnIsSsS pass clearly warranting some sort of tiering action at the time. Now, there were many key passers that contributed to the overall brokenness of the strategy. Smeargle, Scolipede, Mew, Vaporeon... the list goes on. So, what is the one common factor that enabled all these pokemon to thrive? Baton Pass, of course. However, good ol' preservation mindsets kicked in and for some reason it was decided that only 3 Baton Passers per team would be fine. Evidently it was not fine, and even so, people persisted that limiting it to 1 passer would surely solve all issues. Well, geopass Smeargle and Iron Defense Scolipede still were deemed to be problematic. Now, instead of banning the again obvious commonality, the overall move Baton Pass, it was again insisted upon Smogon that we keep on preserving drypass and revise the clause (for the third time, mind you) to: only 1 passer per team; cannot pass speed + other boosts. Yes, our current clause really is that disgusting and complex.



Fast forward to May 20th, 2017, and Baton Pass is still stirring as much controversy as ever. Going with the notion that BP in its current state in the SM OU metagame is broken, we clearly have to act somehow. This leaves us with 2 options: 1) making BP clause v4, or 2) blanket banning the move Baton Pass. I think it's pretty clear that dragging out this clause any further is absolutely ludicrous, in both its inability to address the real issue and also the entirely unnecessary complexity that it poses. I mean, the current clause that I bolded above is utterly repulsive. For those of you who say "well if we just ban speed passing then all issues are solved", don't. It doesn't matter if BP even is balanced with that new theoretical clause, because a complex ban of this nature to preserve nothing of substance is completely unnecessary. Even in some hypothetical world where drypassing or subpassing exists in SM OU, we still don't dance around complexities to save some options. Note that we banned Blaziken, not speed boost Blaziken, and in ORAS we banned Greninja, not protean Greninja. What I'm saying is, Smogon bans single and complete pokemon whenever possible. When one other element of a game, be it an ability or a move, breaks multiple pokemon, then we tackle (still simply) said issue. So, in the case of OHKO moves, we ban them altogether as they break multiple pokemon; we don't ban every pokemon that learns OHKO moves. You can say that sleep clause is complex, but it was done because 1) it's better than banning all sleep-using pokemon; 2) better than banning all sleep moves; 3) there is significant historical precedent for such a thing; and really 4) it is still far more simple than our current iteration of the BP clause.



Now, even if you do not think Baton Pass in its current state is broken, a blanket ban on the move is nevertheless the ideal option for Smogon. Let me go back to my point where I say that past tiering was a mistake. Because really, this is a mistake we can fix. Just because it already happened doesn't mean we have to live with a suboptimal reality forever. To go through the minutia of Smogon's tiering: 1) it is neither feasible nor logical to ban all the pokemon that wield Baton Pass; 2) there is nothing worth preserving with a highly complex ban; and 3) there is a simple commonality between all original broken aspects that we can directly address. So, let's tackle this issue head on for once and put an end to years of complex BP tiering in current gens, which is done by banning Baton Pass.