Is Baton Passing defense boosts worth it?

Question

Generally speaking, are defense passes useful?

Hypothetically speaking, let's say I have a Smeargle with the moveset, "Baton Pass," "Spore," "Tail Glow," and "Cotton Guard," is it worth maxing out +6 on defense and passing it to a sweeper when an adverse Pokémon can destroy (let's say, a critical or a super effective move) the aforementioned sweeper in question?

Once again, I'm just engaging in hypothesis. I just want a stalwart perspective on this.

Comments

Depends which sweeper is in question. Also, why pass on defence when you could pass on speed? Defence is situational.

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The "stalwart" perspective is that it depends on whether this is for battling other people or in-game trainers. At least tell us which game you're playing.

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Pokémon Black or Pokémon X/Y.

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as someone who plays  a fair amount of buffing mons I would have to say that unless said defence boost came alongside an offence/speed boost or one of the aqua ring esque moves. you also have to consider who the buff is being passed to. optimally you have a stored power mon that can take maximum advantage of the high amount of buffs. just a personal sudjestion but I would swap out tail glow for quiver dance, seeing as the plus to spdef and speed are extremely useful. I run a hackmons set that takes advantage of stored power and the cotton guard/quiver dance combo. the moves are stored power, quiver dance, cotton guard and recover with the ability simple. this might be different from the baton pass set that you are talking about but it relys on the consept of using the defence buffs to survive longer in order to set up more, eventually getting to the point where you oneshot everything.

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Okay for reiteration, +6 defense doesn't mean anything when your opponent could boost their attacks to break through the defenses and more importantly status inflicting moves can cripple it in the process. Okay, speed and attacks matter more depending on the battle.

Okay, thanks.

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God dammit. Didn't mean to convert Sythrus' answer into a comment.

Answer 1

In Generation 5, I'm pretty sure the only good baton passer is Celebi with swords dance or nasty plot. If you spend multiple turns raising your defenses and you're unable to one-shot the opponent, then the opponent gets a lot of time to cripple your boosted Pokemon using status moves like swords dance, nasty plot, toxic, roar, or whirlwind.

Baton pass is banned in Generation 6 OU, so I can't help you there. If you're playing a format that allows baton pass, then you can tell me to convert this answer to a comment.

Comments

"If you spend multiple turns raising your defenses and you're unable to one-shot the opponent, then the opponent gets a lot of time to cripple your boosted Pokemon using status moves like swords dance, nasty plot, toxic, roar, or whirlwind."

So, +6 defense isn't worth it if an opponent were to destroy it outright? Let's say that Smeargle baton passed to a Pokémon with +6 defense, it isn't sufficient enough to stall?

So, I guess I should worry about speed?

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Wasn’t there AG in Gen 6? I mean, they could just fight with no rules in general. :P
It is often hard to get +6 defense boosts, and boosting your defense rather than attack/speed can cause you to get Haze or phazed before you can have enough attack or KO the Phaze/Hazer. :P

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@Renegade Toxic doesn't care about defense boosts, and roar will reset them. Some opponents can raise their own attack to break through a stalling Pokemon.
@Staka There probably aren't any good baton passers in ORAS Ubers.

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@sumwun Okay, it makes sense... It's disappointing to see. I'll just focus on +Speed and +(Spec.) Attack.

I'm going to pivot a little bit, Tailwind is worth it on Smeargle if I already have a speed boosting move on another Pokémon?

I appreciate your time and effort on this question, heh.

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You can post a comment yourself by pressing the grey 'comment' button in the bottom corner of the post, btw.

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I don't know a singles format where tailwind is good. If you're playing doubles for whatever reason, then there should be better tailwind users. (which ones exactly depends on the format)

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Okay for reiteration, +6 defense doesn't mean anything when your opponent could boost their attacks to break through the defenses and more importantly status inflicting moves can cripple it in the process. Okay, speed and attacks matter more depending on the battle.

Okay, thanks.

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...was this supposed to be a comment?

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Yes'm? I'm just trying to wrap up the dialogue. Based on what you and others have said, boosting defense to max isn't as effective when status-inflicting moves like "Toxic" and phasing moves like "Roar" and "Whirlwind" can easily destroy the set ups outright.

Given the information, it's best to focus on offense and speed.

I just to reassure the dialogue up to this point, heh.

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@Renegade MX Comments and answers are different. Comments are used to reply to answers. There should be a button that says "comment" on the bottom right of a post that allows you to comment on it.

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Oh, I see it now, heh.