np: Doubles Stage 2 - Suspect Discussion

[Prof. Almeida]

finally an argument that isn't just "I realize it's not broken but i just don't personally like it." However, I don't think the argument that sleep clause being removed would deter people from playing holds water—at least, it wouldn't deter the kind of people we WANT playing. Anyone from other tiers who tries out doubles has to approach it with an open mind anyways because it's so different; removing sleep clause is hardly going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back and makes them stop playing. If no sleep clause scares anyone off, it would be the people who try to use OU teams in Doubles anyways or worse, and sue me for not crying if we lose those folks. There's been no evidence that the sleep test has scared off potential Doubles contributors—this test has drawn far more people than the first Suspect Test, and most of them have been saying that sleep isn't broken, despite having never played the meta when sleep clause was here!

I have to say that I have never played Smogon Doubles for the sole fact it has sleep clause on. Not that I like to put everyone to sleep, but because a strategy that I often use is to induce my foe to think I'll try to abuse sleep and this way I can focus on killing everything while he is trying to bring my sleep inducer down. I was out of the forum for a while, so I didn't know about the suspect. I have to test two teams for a tourney this week, but you can be assured that I, for once, will get back to Showdown and create a Doubles team as soon as next week, because I'm thrilled to see this thing out.

And that's exactly the thing I preached. Sleep clause complainers are OU players who don't want to adapt purely and simply. And they hurt the metagame much more than the good they bring by being there.

 

[BlankZero]

I think the true test of the Sleep Clause will come when we finally have a mini/tour or other big event in which Sleep Clause isn't in play. For every single one of our events, including this last one, we have had Sleep Clause on, meaning the only real testing we've had is on the ladder, and we know how accurate that can be. While I personally played Audiosurfer and Level 51 during my laddering, I don't doubt that I'm the exception and not the rule, especially when you had to play roughly 50-60 matches to achieve the appropriate COIL rating. What this means to me is that we've only got a very, VERY small sample of what is yet to come and to me, that's worrying. I'm not saying we need Sleep Clause, but I do think we need to try this out in a much more controlled setting before the Council decides one way or another. A minitour with it unbanned would give us that kind of setting, where skilled players who actually know how to play the metagame would be pitted against each other, maybe even in a Swiss Format, which would give us a ton of data. I understand we are doing this with somewhat of a deadline, but I figured I'd throw in a concern I was having with this whole thing.

 

[Stratos]

What BlankZero just said triggered something beautiful and deadly: finally set up a 14-man minitour in #doubles where we played in the Suspect Test metagame and saw how it affected everything. here was the bracket, and here are all thirteen battles, perhaps slightly out of order. You can watch these and make your own judgments about the effect of Sleep on high level play if you wish (also they were basically all good battles, so it's an entertaining watch).


My thoughts: It's true that most people brought Breloom or Amoonguss but remember also that this suffered from the classic playtest inflation where people will overuse the threat they are trying to test. For example, I'm sure that any sort of hyper offense like laga used in SPL week 3 would demolish most of these teams without having to adapt to sleep, but since amoonguss and loom don't fit on teams of that sort, a lot of us ironically ended up using the teams that also need to try the hardest to prepare for sleep—Trick Room. I saw, for example, no talons, one char-y, one skymin... Even then, though, it was clear to me that you can't rely on sleep to win your battles, as you can see in me vs lolk in the finals most prominently. That said, the sleep use in this tournament was a lot more well thought out and strong than the sleep use on the ladder. It is not a threat to be laughed at, but it is a threat that IMO is, well, just another threat, and can be beaten, and is healthy in the metagame.

Arcticblast edit: the bracket, courtesy of finally:

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[Bughouse]

>"basically all good battles"
...lol

but yeah I thought this tour was a decent way of proving once again how minimally sleep seems to impact most battles, even when people intentionally used more sleep than usual. My first game with fangame was somewhat illustrative of how amoonguss crushes TR if the team isn't prepared. He says he's modified the team for use in the sleep clause-less metagame, but there was a misunderstanding for him of whether this tournament had or didn't have sleep clause. anyway... long story short, a TR team not prepared well for amoonguss just dies. I'm sure his modified version would have done a lot better, but should Trick Room NEED to carry Escavalier or whatever else he had used in modifications?

 

[phantom]

I see no problem with having to specifically carry something for an entire clause. In all honesty though the whole, "you need to prepare for this otherwise your team dies" isn't an argument that holds any water. That statement is true with just about everything that's really good. Take a look at the current S-rank. If your team is really weak to any of those Pokemon (like that supposed tr team was to sleep), you're going to be in a world of pain when you're up against such threats. Really though, sleep isn't one Pokemon, so I don't understand why some are approaching the team building aspect as if it is. It's not like you even have to do that much... I mean come on, adjusting one slot (or heck, just slight movepool adjustments or item changes would suffice) for something this broad that essentially encompasses a collective group of Pokemon / strategies doesn't seem like a huge deal to me.

 

[Haruno]

When is the actual voting threat going to pop up? Or has it already been made and I'm too blind/lazy/tired to see it?

 

[Prof. Almeida]

I see no problem with having to specifically carry something for an entire clause. In all honesty though the whole, "you need to prepare for this otherwise your team dies" isn't an argument that holds any water. That statement is true with just about everything that's really good. Take a look at the current S-rank. If your team is really weak to any of those Pokemon (like that supposed tr team was to sleep), you're going to be in a world of pain when you're up against such threats. Really though, sleep isn't one Pokemon, so I don't understand why some are approaching the team building aspect as if it is. It's not like you even have to do that much... I mean come on, adjusting one slot (or heck, just slight movepool adjustments or item changes would suffice) for something this broad that essentially encompasses a collective group of Pokemon / strategies doesn't seem like a huge deal to me.

That's exactly my point. It's not one move or one Pokémon, it's an entire thing. The same way as you have to prepare for WoW if you run a Garchomp, for example, you have to be prepared for sleep. When your 'Chomp is asleep, it'll Wake up in one to three turns, and will atack with full force. When he's burned, unless he has some kind of gimmick, he won't be a problem.

Sleep clause is nonsense in Doubles, as is banning Dark Void in singles. Using the Void in OU singles is ridiculous, since Smeargle can learn Spore, that's way more reliable. The same goes for sleep in Doubles. True, a TR team becomes an easy pray for Amoonguss, but that's the whole thing. I've made an OU team and posted into the RMT session. People noticed I would be destroyed by Bisharp. I won't ask for people to ban Bisharp, then, I have to adjust. And the same goes for this TR team that is weak against Amoonguss, get ready for it.

 

[hard]

However, I don't think the argument that sleep clause being removed would deter people from playing holds water—at least, it wouldn't deter the kind of people we WANT playing.

Finally the next statement that will keep new players from even trying to get serious, since their attempts are often somewhat clumsy, as did all our efforts to start walking on our own feet. Those kind of statements popped up a lot and they made the posts look much more rude than you are.
First of all I see PS as a simulator and only as a second gift we have the ladder. The ladder mechanics help to sort out the fun players from the competitive scene and from my experience this does work well enough to not keep on bashing the lower ranked players(EDIT: or higher ranked players that use well working strategies, which is just as unnecessary to do).

The replays from the mini tourney were also a bit unimpressive since often one side seemed very unprepared for dealing with status. But it was fun to watch them :)
I think even a bigger tourney will not solve the riddle how sleep will affect the metagame, as a whole, after lifting the sleep clause.
There is an inherent risk to unbalance the metagame, but from what we have seen till now, this risk seems to be moderate.

Lifting the sleep clause now and banning it again, if it should run out of control, seems to be the only way to ensure that we determine the effect on the whole metagame and not just some parts of us users.

 

[youngjake93]

What BlankZero just said triggered something beautiful and deadly: finally set up a 14-man minitour in #doubles where we played in the Suspect Test metagame and saw how it affected everything. here was the bracket, and here are all thirteen battles, perhaps slightly out of order. You can watch these and make your own judgments about the effect of Sleep on high level play if you wish (also they were basically all good battles, so it's an entertaining watch).


My thoughts: It's true that most people brought Breloom or Amoonguss but remember also that this suffered from the classic playtest inflation where people will overuse the threat they are trying to test. For example, I'm sure that any sort of hyper offense like laga used in SPL week 3 would demolish most of these teams without having to adapt to sleep, but since amoonguss and loom don't fit on teams of that sort, a lot of us ironically ended up using the teams that also need to try the hardest to prepare for sleep—Trick Room. I saw, for example, no talons, one char-y, one skymin... Even then, though, it was clear to me that you can't rely on sleep to win your battles, as you can see in me vs lolk in the finals most prominently. That said, the sleep use in this tournament was a lot more well thought out and strong than the sleep use on the ladder. It is not a threat to be laughed at, but it is a threat that IMO is, well, just another threat, and can be beaten, and is healthy in the metagame.

Arcticblast edit: the bracket, courtesy of finally:

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I know that people did it somewhat on purpose, but the effect of sleep is really pronounced in these replays. Almost every team carried massive cockblocks to sleep, a sleep inducer or both. You would think that the effect on the tournament meta would be fairly tame for a 'balanced threat', but the meta looks very different.

One thing I want to address is Finally's use of bluffing+ruining. It is almost impossible to tell what is wearing Safety Goggles or Lum Berry and he sure got me thinking when some of his Pokemon didn't even try to avoid Sleep Powder on turns I spent Protecting/Substituting with Jumpluff. This reminded me of a time I battled Nollan and his Rotom-H literally sat right in front of my Jumpluff daring me to put it to sleep, so that it could troll me with Lum/Goggles and roast Pluff. Turns out it had neither item. I think the threat of these items alone completely screws a sleep user if they are actually running it and somewhat screws them if you think they are running it. Similarly, Finally just chilled on the field with Reuniclus against Jumpluff, so I assumed he was taking advantage of Overcoat and went for the Leech Seed. GF me... and this was after I found out that his Jellicent opted for Ice Beam over Shadow Ball.

The difference between tournament play and ladder play is basically that you have to expect the opponent to ruin you and be down 5-6 or worse if you just go for the obvious all-to-easy sleep on a crucial member of the team. On the ladder, no one is running Lum, Goggles, Overcoat or 2 grass types, Scarf, surprise Ice attack, etc. You can just click sleep over and over. Plus tbh, its a technique that promotes single-game ruining strategies that hurt so bad in tours. On the ladder, you can make it up. In a bo3 you know next time. In single elimination, the "WHAT'S CARRYING THE LUM BERRY??" is kind of a huge factor.
I'm not sure whether I like this hidden surprise, more match-up dependent meta as much as the previous one.

Also, to the point of "I'm sure HO would demolish." A fair amount of teams were TR+Amoonguss iirc. TR Spore is a death sentence to HO.

 

[mkizzy]

i'm kinda neutral on sleep cause (which would mean i would support lifting it)
to the guy above me, remember that when this sort of stuff is suspected, its gonna be used a lot more frequently than under normal metagame conditions. i think the surprising/item bluffing thing isn't necessarily unhealthy for the metagame, it just adds another element of mindgames which i like. i don't really think it's matchup as much as dissecting the opponents team to figure out which mon(s) have the item(s) (assuming the opponent didnt just throw those items on, and actually has a strategical reason for using lum berry and those items). on the being prepared thing, i don't think having to prepare is a big deal and i don't think "but i have to carry something specifically for it!" is a big deal either because you should try to be prepared for any big threat, which sleep very much is.
i also think the argument on detering players isn't very valid. wanting to attract players to the tier is very noble but i dont think it should have any bearing on whether or not sleep clause should be banned. the main reason should be whether or not its balanced/healthy/adjective for the metagame.

those are my thoughts feel free to shit on them
e

 

[D-Quag]

I agree with what youngjake said here. In theory, you can toss a lum berry safeguard user on a team and do fine with sleep, but the problem lies in when you're facing a capable opponent. The game sometimes doesn't let you send in your sleep counter when you need it, like when in opposing trick room or when it's already died. Just clicking sleep and making the entire game rely on the sleep turns is all to easy for anyone with skill.

 

[phantom]

In theory, you can toss a lum berry safeguard user on a team and do fine with sleep, but the problem lies in when you're facing a capable opponent. The game sometimes doesn't let you send in your sleep counter when you need it, like when in opposing trick room or when it's already died.

This reasoning is blatantly fallacious to say the least. You can literally turn the tables on this logic and say, "A capable opponent will make it difficult to put multiple Pokemon to sleep. The game sometimes doesn't allow you to use your sleep user when need it, such as putting a threatening Trick Room user out of commission." See what I did there? There's nothing to be gained with this type of logic, it's just plain inclusive. Let's assume that both players are at an equal skill level and can pressure the other just as equally. Furthermore, as emphasized already, relying on sleep isn't a very good strategy due to the unpredictability with the sleep turns. If, for instance, the Pokemon that's been put to sleep wakes up at an inconvenient time, it can screw you over pretty badly. Everything in your post is basically a two-way street, meaning these arguments prove nothing considering anyone from either side can follow this train of thought and apply it to their position.

 

[BlankZero]

Just clicking sleep and making the entire game rely on the sleep turns is all to easy for anyone with skill.

Let me stop you here.

No one with skill is doing this because no one with skill (other than maybe Totem) is turning games into coinflips on purpose. It's the same reason no one uses ParaFusion competitively (ok, maybe be 51 does). It's far too reliant on your luck which makes games into non-skill-based matchups. It's merely another tool we have, but 9/10 times, I'm Burning Kanga/Bisharp and Paralyzing Kingdra/Skymin instead of Sleeping them. Why? Because it's guaranteed to have an effect, and not hinging on whether I got a high roll on my sleep count or not. If we could SEE the sleep counter, I'd be all for using Sleep as a legit strategy. Then, I could prep my next sleep, or prep my mons to attack the exact turn they wake up. Until that happens though, Sleep is just another Confusion to me.

 

[Laga]

just a quick note blank; Joim used Swagger to turn my SPL match against him into a Speed tie (purpose coinflip to then become a game deciding one later), and Randy vs Mizuhime also came down to a Swagger coinflip. Sometimes forcing a coinflip can turn the tides of a poorly played match, and can be the most reliable last resort you have left.

 

[dcae]

As someone who tested Sleep a lot, I can also speak in respects to how unreliable it can be. For example, in my mini tour game, it came down to how long the Sleep turns would be. Naturally, the Sleep only lasted one turn, so i lost. Thus, Sleep is not nearly as foolproof as made out to be. Oftentimes the one turn sleep will destroy the strategy you were creating, and occasionally you will end up wasting the Sleep turns Rage Powdering or Protecting just in case the slept mon wakes up early.

Point is I doubt ppl will try to abuse this to the max, but more likely use it, as Laga said, as a last resort in case that is their only chance at winning. Essentially, it's like when you're losing, and your only chance at victory is for your opponent to choke :]

 

[BlankZero]

just a quick note blank; Joim used Swagger to turn my SPL match against him into a Speed tie (purpose coinflip to then become a game deciding one later), and Randy vs Mizuhime also came down to a Swagger coinflip. Sometimes forcing a coinflip can turn the tides of a poorly played match, and can be the most reliable last resort you have left.

Fair enough, but in general, we do not like to create Coinflips. They aren't competitive unless you're already behind and need something to turn the tides in your favor. This can be seen during last year's VGC Worlds matches, most notably in the Semifinals match between Aaron Zheng and Ryosuke (Game 3) where Ryosuke used Swagger to literally win the game by coinflip. It was considered a really big upset at the time, and I think we should generally not use them, but that could just be me.

 

[D-Quag]

I'm sorry, I worded my post really badly. What I meant to say was that using sleep can quickly turn the tides if used correctly, but shouldn't be abused because of how unreliable it is. Thanks spirit, I evidently wasn't thinking at all when I made the post, I agree with your statements.

 

[Haki]

I agree with what people have said above; I believe Sleep Clause is only effective if used against a single target who is potentially a huge threat. As I have mentioned time and time again, spamming Sleep is extremely unreliable due to the fact the opponent can surprisingly wake up next turn and wreck your team. I also want to mention when I played a few matches vs. Pwnemon, he only used Sleep as a means to make threats to his partner Pokemon immobile for the time being so that he has an opening to take out that certain threat. Same for me; I utilize Sleep to immobilize the opponent while I setup, or simply to disrupt setups such as Trick Room. I believe this is the only effective way to use Sleep, spamming Sleep won't consistently win you matches on the ladder.

 

[realiti]

I agree with what people have said above; I believe Sleep Clause is only effective if used against a single target who is potentially a huge threat. As I have mentioned time and time again, spamming Sleep is extremely unreliable due to the fact the opponent can surprisingly wake up next turn and wreck your team. I also want to mention when I played a few matches vs. Pwnemon, he only used Sleep as a means to make threats to his partner Pokemon immobile for the time being so that he has an opening to take out that certain threat. Same for me; I utilize Sleep to immobilize the opponent while I setup, or simply to disrupt setups such as Trick Room. I believe this is the only effective way to use Sleep, spamming Sleep won't consistently win you matches on the ladder.

I agree, spamming sleep is a terrible idea, it's only good when you use it correctly, like disabling a big threat. When i used spammed sleep to see if it works, i got beaten SO badly. Like you said, when I spammed sleep, i lost a lot of matches. Funny is thing is, when i used TR, i went 15-1......

 

[Pocket]

Sorry for the delay, but the voting thread is finally up! Thanks to all of you who have positively contributed to this suspect process :]

List of Qualified Voters

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1. Arcticblast
2. Ash Borer
3. atomicllamas
4. Audiosurfer
5. AuraRayquaza
6. Biosci
7. BlankZero
8. BLOOD TOTEM
9. Braverius
10. champetero
11. D-Quag
12. Darkmalice
13. ebeast
14. eriados
15. Electrolyte
16. Figufgyu
17. finally
18. GlassGlaceon
19. hard
20. Haruno
21. iliketrains11
22. jas61292
23. jrp
24. jrrrrrrr
25. Knight of Cydonia
26. KyleCole
27. Laga
28. Lasagne
29. Level 51
30. LightningLuxray
31. Lolkomori
32. makiri
33. Mizuhime
34. Nollan
35. Passion
36. Pinoy Pwnage
37. pkblizzard
38. Plus
39. Pocket
40. Pwnemon
41. Robert Alfons
42. Scene
43. Skore
44. Spirit
45. srk1214
46. Terraquaza
47. The Jaiho
48. The Leprechaun
49. TGMD
50. U-Turn Out
51. Ultimathunder
52. Valentine
53. youngjake93

 

[jrrrrrrr]

This is probably a silly question but if we do remove sleep clause, Dark Void still remains banned, correct? I'm asking for a friend I swear

 

[Stratos]

Yes, fuck dark void

 

[Arcticblast]

 

[BlankZero]

Late AF