Using Baton Pass to clear late-game Bosses

[Giorgio883]

Hello there,

 

I'd like to talk about the topic of using Baton Pass to clear late-game bosses in PRO.

Bosses are - and have been for a long time - a great way to earn money in the game. By winning a battle against them (every 12d) in Hard Mode, you're guaranteed to get 20-30k (more against certain bosses) plus many relevant items/pokemons.

They're a major part of the game's economy, which is supposed to be a good thing. They're meant to be rewarding to late-game players that manage to defeat them (they have 400 EVs on all stats on hard mode!).

 

Nevertheless, since they were added, players always found a way to "cheese them", here are the cheese strategies through the years (if I recall correctly), please correct me if I'm wrong.

1. One could buff their Mew/Furret with boosting moves and then Baton Pass to a "Sweeper" and clear the boss 

- Crit was fixed, which meant that a single one could hinder the whole stategy, making it less reliable, and thus, less appealing.

2. One could build a team with 5 Sharpedo and a Wobuffet to clear most bosses in the game. You would protect, get the Speed Boost from Sharpedo and Destiny Bond the following turn. The last pokemon you would kill with Wobuffet (with a sash on it) to survive a hit and OHKO the last pokemon with Counter/Magic Coat
- Species Clause was implemented, which meant that you couldn't bring 5 sharpe does anymore.

 

3. One could - similarly - build a team with 5 pokemon that knew Destiny Bond (Mega Banette, Sharpedo, Gengar, Froslass and Gallade) and the ol' good Wobuffet to clear most bosses.

- Bosses were allowed to switch during battles, which made them harder in general (they would switch if the pokemon would start boosting or didn't make much damage), but more importantly, they completely hindered this type of team, because they would switch if you ever pressed destiny bond against them.

 

At the present time, there's another strategy that has taken place. By using a combination of Flash, Screens, Switcheroo (with the Item that doubles stat changes) and Baton Pass, one could reliably boost a "Baton Passer" (Ninjask, Gliscor) and Sweep with another pokemon (like Pangoro, because of his ability Mold Breaker)

My question is: because all the previous strategies were hindered or made useless, why should this one be allowed?

 

Bosses are supposed to be fun. They're supposed to be the very end-game of PvE content, which you would defeat with the aid of your whole roster of Pokemon. 

As they are right now, they're extremely dull. The same strategy is being used against every single one of them. Then what do they stand for?

SUGGESTIONS:

- Remove them at all. If they're supposed to be a grind, then why do they exist at all? Just eliminate them, and lower the inflation.

- Remove them, but create another game mode that IS supposed to be a grind. Nothing more, nothing less, at least don't mask it under the "supposed to be end-game material" cloak.

- Ban Baton Pass at all difficulties. It's not fun to play with and it makes them dull. 

- Ban Baton Pass in hard mode. Let them be exploited but not for the higher rewards (the Destiny Bond issue was addressed in a similar way)

 

But if you ban Baton Pass, how can you beat bosses? 

 

They are meant to be difficult. You're not supposed to beat them all with a single, boring and dull strategy. You're not supposed to beat them all. Hell, they have a 12d cool down, you can be happy by defeating a couple ones you know you can beat. 

For example:

If you have a few good Psychic/Flying type Pokemons, you can easily do Chuck and Koichi in Kanto

if you have some good Fire Pokemon, you can do Erika in Kanto and Bugsy in John (Dock Island)

If you have a few Grass/Electric type Pokemonyou can do Misty in John

 

I realize I might sound rude, and I do not mean to, although I may appear to be so. I just want to make the game better, if my suggestion can be supported enough.

Please think this thoroughly, don't dismiss it because it would lower your income, don't dismiss it if you already have built a team for them. One thing you'll agree with me, they're a grind, and they're not fun to fight. They're just a way to make money.

I'm just making a suggestion, and I'm widely open to debate.

 

Whelp, that's all. I've written a lot more then I expected to, and if you've come to this point, thank you.

 

- Giorgio883

 

[Clumsygirl]

I actually like doing bosses and lose some bosses still by my team so i disagree on this one.

[Clumsygirl]

And tbh, i have 1600 hours play time. Defeating a boss on hard mode is almost impossible without having a stratergy.

[1legend1]

Bro we dont mind to use those strategies... And if you dont like those strategies then dont use it.. PVE is not competitive match... Do whatever u like... 

[Giorgio883]

9 minutes ago, Clumsygirl said:

And tbh, i have 1600 hours play time. Defeating a boss on hard mode is almost impossible without having a stratergy.

 

I agree, I have some strategies myself, but they're not an "instawin" like Baton Pass teams are, and mine vary for each different boss.

[Caprifame]

Banning Baton Pass isnt an option as there is other Strategies and also Mons that can setup on their own (for example volcarona or any dragon dance pokemon + Mega slowbro if you enjoy spending extra time on each boss @Bhimoso). The team will be the same and just replace the baton pass with more utility and use a sweeper that fits the boss.

 

The actual diversity gain you strike for will be rather small as the team core will remain the same and just the sweeper will be replaced from boss to boss depending on what type coverage you need.

 

There will always be "the best team". 

Banning Baton Pass will just add a bit more grind to building the new "best team" and Beginners will have a harder time grinding specific pokemon for bosses. 

 

I hope you can understand that its not a solition, cheese strats will always exist. And banning the current ones will just spawn new, but slower, ones.

 

 

Edited March 30, 2022 by CapriFame

[Bhimoso]

Gonna hop in and give my intake on this debate about to begin (keep in mind if I write something potato it's because I'm sleep deprived rn)
^note, going to be my opinion as a Player, not Staff Member.

 

TLDR AT THE BOTTOM IF YOU DON'T WANNA READ

 

Bosses are the most flawed introduction, by far, in the history of PRO. The problem with Bosses is that they are extremely easy to cheese with a single team (even if some bosses require some strategy, by strategy I mean you click onto a different pokemon sometimes and that's about it), they reward too many good items, money and PvE coins compared to other PvE farmable content. PRO's economy is extremely overinflated to beyond a salvation point, IMO. There's a few issues with it. Dig Spots barely give anything in comparison even if abused multiple times, Pokestops, Excavations, Headbutts (lol I forgot these even existed) Battle Tower, Bug Catching Contest and so on.

 

One thing is making these "newbie friendly and accessible", but after almost 7 years of the game running, we must accept that these are mostly done by lategame players too. These are just not worth the time for lategame players (even for early game ones, tbh) after the money item nerfs (which I personally believe were necessary but without compensatory buffs we're just sinking the capability of new players to be able to farm money to the same rate as before).

 

Nerfing the rewards and making them harder affects EVERYONE, not just advanced players. Targeting a WHOLE thing will affect everyone, and newbies will be more affected naturally. We don't have to spoonfeed them either, they're newbies, they have to learn, not copy and paste the first thing they see on a forum guide or a youtube video. At the same time, it starts to be gatekeeping to ban every single strategy. Smeargle was plain broken in bosses, it wasn't just the Sleep + Substitute + Setup + Baton Pass combo, it also had other sets that could be exploited and have a near 100% if not 100% winrate on hard. The nerf still hurt a lot though, many players are currently frustrated due to the most flexible pokemon in existence (but also the easiest to exploit with) being banned.

 

Banning whole strategies is extremely restrictive and not the way to go (IMO). Is it true that Baton Pass vs an AI is broken? Yes, unfortunately. But now Baton Pass strategies are way less reliable, more crit prone and weaker (in general, there's still some cheese teams that can be used), and right now use rare to very rare pokemon in their team compositions (unless you have 400iq and found out that you can make Baton Pass teams out of Common pokemon and make them work everywhere, which I cannot state how or I'll get it nerfed and Walross will slap me in the back of the head). It's an AI after all. It doesn't matter how many things you ban, players are going to cheese them. 

 

Deflating the economy is necessary, yes, but if we gatekeep new players from even trying bosses out because they're too hard or unpredictable (which I now appreciate because you have to think your strategy a bit more now), these start to not be worth the difficulty anymore, unless you can just copy and paste the same team for every single one of them, after you read up on forum guides or youtube guides which explain how to cheese them to the fullest extent. PvE content such as Bosses is there to be farmed for money and players will optimise and cheese it as much as possible, AIs are not invincible, this was prone to happen sooner or later and we shouldn't normalise it but we have to accept that this type of content is there to be farmed for its sole purpose, money and PvE coin item providing (aside from other items, shiny chances and rare pokemon). 

 

Baton Pass also enables players to try new things against bosses. You can even try to sweep them with Sash Adamant Magikarp spamming Flail at 1 HP while at +6 ATK and SPEED, finally make things like eviolite Gurdurr or Light Ball Pikachu viable in PvE and more and more. Uncommon pokemon that are Untiered or never used in Pokemon find their place in PvE. Banning Baton Pass also makes some of these pokemon that were already borderline unusable even worse. Banning Smeargle already wrecked the utility of many pokemon, banning Baton Pass itself would render hundreds of pokemons useless because you'd only resort to the best options and it would disable all creativity when making strategies to sweep bosses. Baton Pass is not an instawin, it requires many minutes and knowledge of many of the bosses starting pokemon items, moves and what they will do and trying to make them not switch out by tossing them pointless items which will not lock them into choice locked moves or make them run out of PP, avoiding Destiny Bond, Disable, or Perish Song too.

 

As a last comment: Yeah, an ideal world would be a world where we can build 6 different pokemon per Boss, then train them up and fight them 1 on 1. Then you realise bosses:
-Literally cheat with 252 EVs on every stat on Medium and 400 in Hard
-You have to train 6 different pokemon PER BOSS
-There's over 40 bosses, that's 240 pokemon unless you reuse them (let's say 1/3 bosses you do them with the same teams, so 240 divided by 3, around 80 pokemon)
-Still atleast 80 different pokemon you must hunt to level 100 with correct ivs natures etc, ev train, moveset train, find their items and use them in bosses.
-^the amount of hours this can take for a new player (or even old player) to acheive.
Instead of having a Baton Pass core where:

1-2 Debuffers per boss

1-2 Baton Passers per boss

1 Hazard Setter

1 Sweeper (can be a different one per boss or we use multiple ones and each one takes different bosses, example: Slowbro takes Rock, Ground, Fire, Fighting, Poison based bosses, then we use Clefable against Dragon, Fighting, Dark type based bosses, and so on we continue with more).

 

TLDR: The problem with Bosses is not just how cheesable they are, it's how overpowered the rewards are to other farmable PvE content available and how players feel Bosses need nerfs to the used strategies against them, instead of focusing on the rewards problem. Baton Pass as a whole is a healthy mechanic that promotes creativeness in PvE when you don't abuse the same things over and over, as it enables you to buff ANY pokemon to absurd stat limits and try underused or useless pokemon you'd normally never use. 

 

Edited March 30, 2022 by Bhimoso

[Fanned13]

Rip nerfing another boss strats. its only 30k per boss, 600k per week that not even much except u abusing 4 account. think about player who only enjoying pvp, doesnt really into hunt (yes i know its hunting and grinding game but not everyone have 24/7 to playing) and boss only way to get some money for sash or other pvp items. 600k per week, 2.4m per month. buying epic poke like exca sand rush/ha jolly with 31 speed 4-5m. forget about items, we also need saving 2-3 month only for 1 epic/godly poke. also idk why everything so expensive rn, like evrything goes twice as much then last year. nerfing boss is not really good idea. not everyone having time to train more poke everytime boss got nerf.

 

Banning batton pass because its not fun? hard difficulties not suppose to be fun to begin with, stop talk boss suppose to be fun, its for grind money not else (or for shiny scam lol). and if u enjoying starts without batton pass, why not just do it urself? i mean building various team for every boss mean 40 boss x 6 mons per team.  well not everyone specially newbie have time to farm and train new 240 new mons. also not every boss can be beaten with batton pass alone such bugsy, maribelle etc, we still need mons like donphan or bannete to lead.

 

actually if u using batton pass team actually its not as chessy as u think, some time ull need bring 2 batton passer or 2 debuffer or 2 sweeper. sometime boss have Gods luck where they can still hit u with focus blast 3 times streak while having -6 acc and we have +6 eva. u also ned to be clever with items. some boss have poke with flame body (u need lum for sweeper), or sashed magic guard alakzam (u ned sash) or curse body (u cant use banded sweeper) or sand stream ( u cant use sashed sweeper)

[Giorgio883]

Very spot-on posts. You clearly have a much wider understanding on the matter.

 

Bhimoso's  in particular was a great read, and I cannot find a part of it that I don't agree with.

 

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Bosses are the most flawed introduction, by far, in the history of PRO.

 

I thought my suggestion would help solving the concept, but as you said - and I agree - the issue runs way deeper than I initially thought.

 

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Dig Spots barely give anything in comparison even if abused multiple times, Pokestops, Excavations, Headbutts (lol I forgot these even existed) Battle Tower, Bug Catching Contest and so on.

 

That's another sad matter. They all make for entertaining content, but don't reward the player as much, making the Bosses the prime "grind machine". Honestly I have no idea on how to solve it, so I can't criticize it in the slightest.

 

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Targeting a WHOLE thing will affect everyone, and newbies will be more affected naturally. We don't have to spoonfeed them either, they're newbies, they have to learn, not copy and paste the first thing they see on a forum guide or a youtube video. At the same time, it starts to be gatekeeping to ban every single strategy.

 

I can't disagree, sadly. my initial suggestion would probably just ruin the game and the relations with the Staff (were it implemented), because all it would do is render the 6 pokemon they've farmed, useless.

 

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Baton Pass also enables players to try new things against bosses. You can even try to sweep them with Sash Adamant Magikarp spamming Flail at 1 HP while at +6 ATK and SPEED, finally make things like eviolite Gurdurr or Light Ball Pikachu viable in PvE and more and more.

 

This I don't really agree with, but maybe for my lack of info. I haven't heard anyone who doesn't use an unconventional sweeper, instead of the usual Pangoro or Haxorus.

 

Quote

As a last comment: Yeah, an ideal world would be a world where we can build 6 different pokemon per Boss, then train them up and fight them 1 on 1. Then you realise bosses:
-Literally cheat with 252 EVs on every stat on Medium and 400 in Hard
-You have to train 6 different pokemon PER BOSS
-There's over 40 bosses, that's 240 pokemon unless you reuse them (let's say 1/3 bosses you do them with the same teams, so 240 divided by 3, around 80 pokemon)
-Still atleast 80 different pokemon you must hunt to level 100 with correct ivs natures etc, ev train, moveset train, find their items and use them in bosses.
-^the amount of hours this can take for a new player (or even old player) to acheive.
Instead of having a Baton Pass core where:

1-2 Debuffers per boss

1-2 Baton Passers per boss

1 Hazard Setter

1 Sweeper (can be a different one per boss or we use multiple ones and each one takes different bosses, example: Slowbro takes Rock, Ground, Fire, Fighting, Poison based bosses, then we use Clefable against Dragon, Fighting, Dark type based bosses, and so on we continue with more).

 

Lastly, I have to say - and I'm a bit ashamed of it now - that I don't use any "cheese strategy", and I probably wrote this whole post out of spite. 

But to my defense, I've really enjoyed making the strategies such as the ones in the photos I've attached. I've really like the trial-and-error part, trying to make them as reliable as possible. I think it would be really fun to do, as I've enjoyed it dearly, but I understand it's not small task. I have 1400+ hours, about 70+ level 100 pokemons that are usable, which about 1/3 I use to do the bosses my own way.

 
In a perfect world, I think this would be a very entertaining matter. Creating strategies to beat very strong opponents - through trial and error - to get rewarded.

 
As I’ve said, but I’ll repeat myself… I found this extremely entertaining, and maybe by posting it, someone else might try and do this on their own.

 

Quote

As a last comment: Yeah, an ideal world would be a world where we can build 6 different pokemon per Boss, then train them up and fight them 1 on 1. Then you realise bosses:

 

I do this. I feel like through this post, I just wanted people to feel bad about "cheesing the bosses", while it seems the only viable option to the Boss issue in general. You can't ask people to have as many hours or pokemons just to keep up with the economy, and there are no clear other ways to gain as much money with less resources.

 

Apologizing once more, have a good day y'all. 

Cheers!

 

P.S. some of the words in the photos are in Italian

 

- Giorgio883

Edited March 30, 2022 by Giorgio883
Some minor changes, stress on me enjoying the trial-and-error that created my strategies.