[syrim]

Originally Posted by Fat Poppy

I've addressed sleep clause, but basically one shouldn't be too quick to jump onto the 'completely broken' train. Consider that having to pack specific Pokemon to deal with a single threat is no foreign behaviour to us, and in fact is common practice.

I would like to highlight this point, as it and points made in my earlier posts help outline the difference between what will create an enjoyable metagame, and what is simply deemed to be not broken, a definition of purpose for us as a tier that I do not believe can be made without testing.

Originally Posted by Fat xenu

what most people don't realize is that by lifting these clauses you're not adding more diversity to the metagame, you're detracting from it. lack of sleep clause would make sleeptalkers and/or lum berry holders almost mandatory on most teams, just as lifting the OHKO clause would make Sturdy pokemon (like skarm and forry) almost as ubiquitous as stealth rock. you're already pretty much forced to pack a kyogre and an ekiller check on every team; creating more mandatory additions to teams would leave very little room for creativity, something which is paramount in a tier with very few options to choose from already.

This is a statement that lies on good principle, but in essence ubers players have many, many mandatory pokemon that they must at least have a plan for, many of which have no actual counter. Even users of full stall must predict to an extent in this metagame, and users of offense often need some kind of defensive core, because of the overpowering nature of the pokemon in this tier, but diversity still exists. The removal of these clauses is certain to have an impact on the metagame we play, but without testing it is impossible to know how diversity will be affected. For instance, Specially defensive Kyogre or Specially defensive Manaphy, both of which are relatively low in usage, especially the latter, could receive massive upsurges in usage because of Darkrai's prominence. Lapras could become a top tier pokemon because of its incredible stall breaking abilities while rain is falling and retaining the ability to be a shaky check to sleep abusers , through hydration, though it obviously fears LO focus blast from darkrai.

Originally Posted by Fat AJC

Out of all the clauses i think removing sleep clause would be the worse thing to do with gen 5 sleep being so powerful the 3 turn max duration isn't even really a nerf when you have to stay in to wake up or be forced to sleep forever meaning if you can't stay in your effectively dead.

Which would make sleep move users like darkrai and smeargle and breloom really good since the only mons with sleep immunity are not even OU and none of them can withstand uber grade firepower and sleep talk is extremely unreliable and can't even really be considered a option since it takes away a moveslot for coverage and/or boosting most of the time.

Any team tailored to handle a sleep clause-less meta will more than likely get iced by a standard uber team. the meta will pretty much be reduced to those who run darkrai and other sleep users and those who try to counter it which would be pretty ugly.

I think that testing will show the heavily polarized views of the metagame without these clauses to be slightly dramatic. For instance, poppy and myself found through some testing of the OHKO clause, that building a team chock full of abusers was a poor route to take, and in my opinon as the suspect ladder develops and threats and checks become apparent, the types of teams you describe will be viewed as a sub-par team as well. There will be many contending playstyles, especially in the Sleep clause-less meta, as offense will be less likely to suffer from being put to sleep, but balance and stall will be better able to support the pokemon best able to handle it individually, so it is extremely unlikely that the metagame stagnates into darkrai offense versus sleep talk stall, as this discounts the differing nature of sleep's checks.

With the already limited amount of pokemon that can switch into darkrai, and the even more exclusive number of those who can revenge it twice, it is very difficult to say that one will have to run an entire team dedicated to the defeat of darkrai and to a much lesser extent smeargle/breloom, as we haven't seen darkrai place any kind of dominance on today's metagame, though it is certainly an accounted for threat. Offense still has many options to outspeed and revenge, and stall and rain balance have nearly perfect answers. Like I've mentioned in previous posts, it is very likely that the old gen 4 lum berry versus life orb shenanigans will return as offense tries to minimize their vulnerability even further, and many 50/50s, such as predicting whether the opponent will sleep again as you switch to a revenge killer(we've all wanted to switch that mewtwo in), or nasty plot will exist, though in all honesty darkrai creates these situations today by putting out heavy damage on all revenge killers, or by simply nasty plotting on an obvious switch to a revenge killer. In essence it will simply receive a much more powerful tool to cause many of the predictions, granted with a much higher emphasis on reward than risk, that it is causing and will always cause, and without testing making blanket claims that diversity will plummet doesn't take into account the number of underutilized checks and counters, from all playstyles, and the somewhat similar effects on the metagame to what you are envisioning that darkrai already has.