Announcement Regarding Sleep Clause in National Dex OU: Community Input

[adem]

What is your stance on sleep as a mechanic under the current Sleep Clause? Is it balanced or uncompetitive?

meh i would rather it be gone but under clause its somewhat dealable, as a mechanic its still inherently uncompetitive but its not broken

Do you believe Sleep Clause should be removed in favor of banning sleep-inducing moves entirely?

yes, keep and test yawn tho, or just keep it and see how it goes, i think that may have value

realistically sleep is still at best an very big annoyance for people even w clause, even if it isnt broken its still something. i dont get the argument of “if it aint broke dont fix it” because realistically it is broke, keeping the clause can just as easily serve as precedence for other clauses or issues being made in the future, and we will fall into this rabbithole because people can legitimately use us keeping clause as a reason foe whatever mickey mouse bandaid fix they suggest. sleep is really just cheese and not a viable strategy, no one is losing sleep if sleel gets banned, ur darkrai can run sludge bomb or focus blast last, ur iron valiant can run focus blast, world isnt gna end. idk why people are so pressed about keeping sleep moves, nothing is gonna change except we futureproof our tier. nuke clause nuke moves save everyone the headache.

 

[FayaWizard]

What is your stance on sleep as a mechanic under the current Sleep Clause? Is it balanced or uncompetitive?
It's not an issue in the current metagame but I still believe it's inherently uncompetitive due to the rng factor with all sleep moves except spore.
Do you believe Sleep Clause should be removed in favor of banning sleep-inducing moves entirely?
Yes, it contributes nothing healthy to the tier and is an outdated way of compromising for a clearly broken mechanic.

 

[Nish the Great]

What is your stance on sleep as a mechanic under the current Sleep Clause? Is it balanced or uncompetitive?
I absolutely hate fighting against hypnosis darkrai, even though I'll probably win, because there's really nothing I can do but pray miss/early wake
Do you believe Sleep Clause should be removed in favor of banning sleep-inducing moves entirely?
Mods are dumb. RNG based mechanics are dumb. Mods to keep RNG mechanics are twice as dumb

 

[ShadowMarioGalaxy64]

The OU council absolutely made the wrong choice in outright quickbanning Sleep due to two little Pokemon and HYPNOSIS rather than Suspect Testing the Pokemon. I'd argue more about Tera still being an overcentralizing mechanic, and should've been banned long before any status, but this isn't the place.

There's nothing wrong with sleep moves inherently with the Sleep Clause active. Hypnosis has lousy accuracy, as does Sing and Grasswhistle, and the more accurate options have a higher number of immunities, as Sleep Powder and Spore do nothing to Grass-Types and Pokemon with Overcoat. With the clause limiting sleep to one Pokemon, this means a sleeper pretty much gets only one chance to set up until the sleeping Pokemon wakes up. Plus, what Pokemon are available that use the more accurate Sleep Moves AND are viable?

I say the same mistake should not be made, and if any action were to be taken, a Suspect Test should be the priority, though with this NOT being Gen 5, I see no reason to ban Sleep with Sleep Clause active.

 

[QwakeG]

I believe that sleep is simply a part of the game that must be taken into account like any other; No action.

 

[BigFatMantis]

Sleep is just not an issue at all here. The SV OU council took action because it was becoming an actual issue in SV OU - the fact that it was a mod was just an auxiliary argument that would have never came up in the first place if not for Darkrai Hypnosis strats making Sleep a little too much. The overarching reason that Sleep was finally banned in SV OU was because the mod (Sleep Clause) no longer kept the Sleep status in check and thus Sleep had to go (at least in the eyes of the council, I personally disagree but that’s fine).

This is not the case in NatDex OU. A council vote on Sleep when Sleep is not in itself an issue would be a humongous overreach or power/control and should be avoided at all costs unless you honestly think Sleep, as currently implemented with the clause, is an issue. You are not following the same route as OU in banning it because the ban was based on Sleep’a impact on the OU metagame. Furthermore, it doesn’t seem like NatDex cares all that much about doing what OU does given the fact they tested Tera twice while it was still legal in OU, so I find this argument very disingenuous.

If you honestly feel like Sleep, as currently implemented with Sleep Clause, is too much for NatDex OU to handle, then I think it’s fair to try to take some sort of action here like OU did. If not, then leave it alone. Personally I think it’s fine.

 

[Skyuchi]

What is your stance on sleep as a mechanic under the current Sleep Clause? Is it balanced or uncompetitive?
Hypnosis is inherently uncompetitive, Sleep Powder is iffy but we don't have any strong abusers so I think it's fine, and Spore/Yawn are inherently competitive. The accuracy of these moves are relevant to the question at hand since if the length to which sleep lasts is a factor in its competitiveness and one of the greatest sources of contention, so is the chance of its application since a Hypnosis is effectively a 40% chance to have 0 turns of sleep, 20% of 1 turn, 20% of 2 turns, and 20% of 3 turns.
Z-Hypnosis/Blunder Policy Hypnosis are both fairly stupid because they allow you to bypass natural checks and counters (e.g. scarfers) based around whether or not you get lucky. They take the flow of the game out of the player's controls and put it in the hands of the dice.

Do you believe Sleep Clause should be removed in favor of banning sleep-inducing moves entirely?
No - but if 0 changes are made to sleep, I think Darkrai as a whole should return to Ubers. That would be fine enough.

If responding no to the above question, is there other tiering action you would like to see taken regarding Sleep Clause or sleep mechanics in National Dex OU?
I'd rather just Hypnosis/Dark Void be banned, in line with the same reason we ban King's Rock, Razor Fang, Quick Claw, and Brightpowder. They add nothing except to allow a lesser skilled player to maybe sometimes win when they shouldn't if they get lucky.

 

[CappyThePulpy]

What is your stance on sleep as a mechanic under the current Sleep Clause? Is it balanced or uncompetitive?
Spore - well-distributed, gives a slight bump in viability to some mons (which are still underwhelming) and is quite healthy
Sleep powder - so rare it doesn’t even make a difference
Hypnosis - rng based and abused by two mons. Combined with the set guessing and tera guessing one needs to do vs both darkrai and ival, this adds too much variance to reliably make a low risk play as you might get 1v4 or even 1v5 swept (darkrai gets a nasty plot with Zhypno, ival sleeps your check and kills it). The meta currently feels very punishing for not properly checking the status immunity checkbox in the builder. Even if checked, most status immune mons in ou dont switch into darkai or ival too well, with the two tapus being your best bet.

Do you believe Sleep Clause should be removed in favor of banning sleep-inducing moves entirely?
No. Simulator accuracy makes a lot less sense in the context of national dex. And with only two mons abusing a mechanic, banning the mechanic makes no sense at all. If ONLY two mons in the meta could abuse tera, would tera be considered for a ban?

If responding no to the above question, is there other tiering action you would like to see taken regarding Sleep Clause or sleep mechanics in National Dex OU?

Looking at hypnosis may be worthwhile if such an action can be justified. I know we usually ban the mon not the move (dracovish), yet a hypnosis ban would be healthy for the meta and for player enjoyment while darkrai and ival still have plenty of good sets to run.

 

[R8]

What is your stance on sleep as a mechanic as of right now?
In its current state, I do not think it is broken or uncompetitive to the level of things like double team or baton pass. That being said, I still think it is competitively a net negative, as it unnecessarily introduces an element that can take the game out of the hands of the players. I am not saying that every instance of RNG should be removed: I am saying that if - and only if - an uncompetitive element has no competitive value and can be removed without the use of a mod, then it should be banned. That's the difference between evasion moves, ohko moves, kings rock, etc... with stuff like freeze chances and critical hits. Sleep falls in the first category.

Do you believe Sleep Clause should be removed in favor of banning sleep-inducing moves entirely?
Regardless of if Sleep Clause does its job or not, I believe it should not exist. Even in a metagame not playable on cartridge, modding a mechanic in order to balance it should never be considered unless every other feasible option was taken into consideration. On top of that, removing sleep from the game would be a net positive for the format, even though this is not the particular reason why I wish to see sleep clause gone. There is no good reason to continue to implement sleep clause at the beginning of every gen when you can just ban sleep moves instead.

That being said I will not cry about it sleep does stay for the remaining of the generation, it's not like sleep actually breaks the metagame. However I do think it would be in the format's best interest to follow the step if Smogon starts to move on as a whole from sleep clause.


I need to be abundantly clear about one thing in particular, and this will be my most important point in this post: while I do think sleep clause should not exist, removing it right now would be a net negative for National Dex as a format. It would most likely be interpreted as a targeted tiering action and be compared to SVOU which had other reasons to ban the move, misinformation will be spread, etc. I believe Sleep Clause should be removed because it is horrible policy, not because it doesn't do its job, and the potential massive misunderstanding that might happen by nuking the clause right now is just not worth it.

Here is my proposal:
Keep Sleep Clause for the rest of the generation until either:
- Generation 10 comes out, making it abundantly clear that this is a change in policy rather than an action aiming to solve an issue specific to the tier
or
- Sleep Clause is removed from basically every current gen format besides National Dex.

I know this is probably going to be a controversial take; however, I believe that this would be the best course of actions to take for National Dex, and I believe removing Sleep Clause would be in the format's best interests. Removing Sleep Clause should not be done while disregarding pragmatic considerations for the tier, in my opinion.

 

[adem]

since i dont think i can reply to any specific post on here, im just going to address some general points made and debunk some issues with statements made in this thread and others.

1. the issue being discussed is sleep clause, the policy itself is archaic and would be laughed out of the room if someone suggested it in this day and age. if anywhere during your argument you mention that anything about sleep in its current state is problematic, ie z hypnosis darkrai is too annoying, or if you think hypno or dark void are too annoying then any point you make about keeping the clause in place is moot and you missed the entire point of the discussion. if there is an issue due to a sleeping move, it is because the clause doesnt work anymore, and just another reason why it should be removed and be done with, there is no ifs or buts to this, any post in this thread that mentions any element of sleep as an issue then goes on to say sleep clause works fine is a bad post and should be disregarded

2. no one is banning sleep, the status. even if sleep clause is removed, the only moves that will be banned or at the very least looked at are those that directly instigate sleep, ie spore hypno sleep powder. i assume this is miscommunication but its leading to a lot of misinformation being spread, no, sleep is not being banned, you can still use rest, relic song, or whatever, no one is banning a status. no one is also ”banning a mechanic”. this is another frankly ridiculous notion being pushed around to fuel the fire.

3. the comparisons to paralysis also are really dumb frankly, considering for one the methods to inflict it are harder than sleep as well as even after inflicting theres still better chances to move + it having a competitive use outside of full para, which is the speed drop. the only reason why sleep in its current state can be seen as more “dealable” is because we have a clause to try and limit it, which if you think isnt doing its job well then look at point 1.

4. this (sleep clause) is again a policy issue, not a metagame issue, suspect tests for this have nothing to do with policy, if you want a suspect test its just further proof you dont know what you are talking about. if you think sleep clause is fine policy wise and should be kept, argue it here. similiarly, comparing this decision to any other metagame related discussion or issue is also irrelevant, as they have nothing to do with policy. sleep is also special considering its the only element in the tier to have a clause directly tied into its tiering, so comparing it to anything else , ie: tera, would be laughable.

5. removing clause and going with a sleep ban would not be in any way an abuse of power by the council, it would be correcting a bandaid archaic policy solution that is proven to not consistently work across metas.

6. natdex does not have to follow what ou does in terms of big important decisions, but it can if it deems it a correct step forward. comparing metagame tiering decisions (such as suspect tests) to correcting policy is a gross misunderstanding of the entire point of this discussion and the subject at hand. furthermore a horrible analogy that has nothing to do with the discussion. re point 5, if the policy is clearly starting to fall apart in ou, what is the issue with correcting it now, while the issue is still fresh and can garner the most traction of input, rather than wait til it starts inevitably causing issues for us like it did for ou.

7. simulator accuracy matters a lot for us regardless, no one can just disregard it just because we are not fully replicable on cart. by that logic, whats stopping us from adding whatever we want to mold and twist to what the council wants for the tier? there is a reason we made a policy discussion thread on the identity of national dex, and established that. cart accuracy is important to assure we stick to as close as what it would look like in cart as possible, following the identity laid out. any posts disregarding this should be seen as disingenous.

8. darkrai should not in any circumstances, and will not be returned to ubers any time soon, regardless of how you feel about it. there was an extremely recent suspect, and the majority voted for it to be unbanned. if you voted keep banned, then your welcome to talk about why its broken in the metagame discussion thread, if you didnt vote in the test then i would highly recommend you to not comment on this, if you lack either the skill or the dedication to the tier to do the test, then you do not deserve an opinion on wether it should stay or not. removing darkrai would be a gross abuse of power and frankly an insult to the people who qualified for the test.


bye

 

[BigFatMantis]

5. removing clause and going with a sleep ban would not be in any way an abuse of power by the council, it would be correcting a bandaid archaic policy solution that is proven to not consistently work across metas.

6. natdex does not have to follow what ou does in terms of big important decisions, but it can if it deems it a correct step forward. comparing metagame tiering decisions (such as suspect tests) to correcting policy is a gross misunderstanding of the entire point of this discussion and the subject at hand. furthermore a horrible analogy that has nothing to do with the discussion. re point 5, if the policy is clearly starting to fall apart in ou, what is the issue with correcting it now, while the issue is still fresh and can garner the most traction of input, rather than wait til it starts inevitably causing issues for us like it did for ou.

I think most of this post is fair and while I disagree with some things, it's not a bad opinion to have. However, I wanted to address these two points specifically because I think they are a bit misleading.

Re: Point 5: The council doing anything, regardless of whether it's removing sleep clause or banning sleep or anything else, is in itself obviously not an abuse of power because the council has the power to do that. It does, however, become an abuse of power if they are doing it contrary to the community's input/opinion. Generally speaking, the council is supposed to serve the community, and the meta should be reflective of what the community generally wants, so long as it is within reasonable bounds for the metagame. That was the whole purpose of making this thread if I'm not mistaken, to gauge the community opinion on this. So, yes it would be an abuse of power to remove Sleep Clause unless it seems pretty clear that's what the community wants to do. And comparisons to OU decisions are fine when you see that OU was surveying their community before making decisions on things like this, and eventually got enough support to justify taking action as a council. If they did not do this, then they would have been abusing their own power, which, generally speaking, they don't do (kudos to the OU council). If your position is that the community doesn't know policy, you are very mistaken - I know plenty of community members that know policy better than some council members, and any statements downplaying their policy knowledge is frankly offensive.

Re: Point 6: I think this is a slight mischaracterization of how tiering works. Yes, you are generally supposed to wait until something becomes an issue before taking action on it. If it's not an issue, regardless of whether it's a policy issue or not, then you don't take action. So the answer to "why wait until it starts causing issues" is because that's what you're generally supposed to do. If you don't think it's an issue right now, there's no reason to take action. The only exception, I think, would be if the community was clamoring for a change in the policy which, depending on how this thread goes, may be the case! I don't think so though at the moment.

 

[adem]

taking in community input is important, and I agree, if the council does deliberately go against what the community wishes then it would be an abuse of power. however its pretty obvious that numerous posts within this thread ”take the journey” yet miss the point, so to say. Aka a lot of them mention the fact that some element of sleep is an issue, yet instead of leading to the point you mention in your initial post:

unless you honestly think Sleep, as currently implemented with the clause, is an issue

thats why its important to explain to people how a good bit of people are just missing the point. its pretty clear that a good bit of the community has an issue with sleep as it is, just that a good half of them go instead to targetting specific moves instead of the clause, which is the entire point of this thread.

And comparisons to OU decisions are fine

comparisons are not fine when it is comparisons like this that have nothing to do with the actual point.

Furthermore, it doesn’t seem like NatDex cares all that much about doing what OU does given the fact they tested Tera twice while it was still legal in OU, so I find this argument very disingenuous

again i reiterate, this is a policy discussion, comparisons of tiering decisions have no relations at all to this since they are very different tiers in terms of a metagame. policy is shared between the two, and if it has holes in one, it will have holes in others.

If your position is that the community doesn't know policy, you are very mistaken - I know plenty of community members that know policy better than some council members, and any statements downplaying their policy knowledge is frankly offensive.

i never once mentioned this in my post, please do not put words in my mouth. you are making up stories to deviate away from the point i am trying to push throughout my post. plenty of community members know policy, plenty dont. some council members know policy. some dont.
my post was simply highlighting and addressing the issues in the posts that i see here, i am not downplaying the entire communities policy knowledge, or downplaying anything at all. i am merely pointing out issues. please do not do this again, this is incredibly rude.

think this is a slight mischaracterization of how tiering works. Yes, you are generally supposed to wait until something becomes an issue before taking action on it. If it's not an issue, regardless of whether it's a policy issue or not, then you don't take action

this. is. not. a. tiering. issue. how many times do i have to reitierate this, this has nothing to do with tiering. this is a correction of a policy that is implemented for most metas that has historically been extremely disputed and would get laughed out if it was proposed nowadays. it has prove. that it does not work, see: ou, and some of the posts in this thread, and it does not align with values we follow today. there is zero reason to wait until this causes us a lot of issues, especially if it is already proven to have issues.

 

[Kyo]

What is your stance on sleep as a mechanic under the current Sleep Clause? Is it balanced or uncompetitive?
(This shouldn't be primarily focused on any specific Pokémon and how viable or unviable it is in the current meta. We want to know how you feel about the mechanic of sleep, various sleep moves, and Z-Hypnosis as a mechanic.)

Do you believe Sleep Clause should be removed in favor of banning sleep-inducing moves entirely?
(Please explain your stance. Note that this potential ban would not include rest, relic song, dire claw, or the effect spore ability. It only applies to moves that directly induce sleep on the opponent as their primary purpose.)

If responding no to the above question, is there other tiering action you would like to see taken regarding Sleep Clause or sleep mechanics in National Dex OU?
(Responding with "No Action" is sufficient if you wish to see no change to the current ruleset.)

First of all, thank you to everyone who took the time to respond to this thread. The feedback that you provide is essential in keeping the National Dex OU council informed on community opinion. It makes our work that much easier and helps us reach decisions that we hope the player base at large will appreciate.

I've discussed with the other council members, and we have decided to take no action on Sleep Clause at this time. Sleep Clause will remain in its current form in National Dex OU. Community sentiment largely favored this decision with many citing that current sleep abusers did not hold a strong enough position in the metagame to warrant a tiering change for sleep moves. While there is valid consideration for Sleep Clause to be removed in favor of a more consistent tiering policy, this doesn't outweigh the significant desire from the community to retain the status quo. Sleep Clause has been sufficient thus far and likely will continue to be for the duration of Gen 9.

This is most likely the final word on Sleep Clause for SV National Dex OU. However, we will keep our options open if a more targeted ban pertaining to individual sleep moves or individual abusers becomes necessary at some point. Nothing will change for now. Thank you again to everyone who contributed feedback.