Banning sleep moves in Gen 5

[Kevin Garrett]

I'm not completely convinced that Darkrai is the only problem with sleep, but it is the biggest. This shouldn't be ruled out until we have some testing after Darkrai is banned. I always hear people saying sleep got nerfed because it is 3 turns max. Honestly, I would rather have a 4-5 turn sleep and not have it reset every time you switch out. It is quite an annoying trap that you can't completely pin on Darkrai. Take Breloom for example, you take the Spore and you switch out. That Pokemon is essentially useless for the entire game unless it is something the opponent can't touch the whole game, which is hard to have happen with all the threats this generation.

 

[lilyhollow]

making pokemon like Darkrai and Breloom seem much better than they actually are.

why would you say this?

 

[symphonyx64]

Lets not get ahead of ourselves here.

While the sleep mechanics have drastically been changed in gen 5, and probably for the worst, obviously the most prominent abuser of said mechanics is Darkrai. With great offensive stats, and being fastest Pokémon able to induce sleep, in fact the most accurate sleep [aside from Spore users] without the need of a Choice Scarf, Darkrai is obviously going to cause people to complain.

However, echoing what a lot of people have said in this thread, lets take a second look at how the new sleep mechanics influence the metagame after the first round of suspect testing has concluded. From what I have seen, the general consensus is pointing towards banning Darkrai anyways. Maybe the new mechanics won't be as bad as everyone sees them now, who knows. Only time will tell.

And no, reverting to 4th generation sleep mechanics is simply unacceptable. The developers of Pokémon Black and White have given us these new sleep mechanics for who knows what reason and they must be abided by. We cannot simply revert to past mechanics just to satisfy the community. I remember Phil saying he wants to close the gap between Wi-Fi and simulated battling.

 

[capefeather]

Huh, I distinctly remember a battle in which Sleep lasted four turns. Was this a mistake that was rectified? Or are we not counting the wake-up turn?

 

[cim]

Or are we not counting the wake-up turn?

The wake up turn isn't counted by most people's metrics since the attack is successfully executed.

 

[Firestorm]

How about the fact that one is relying on a strategy that revolves completely around luck while the other doesn't?

I meant that in both cases you're merely restricting the use of a move. Not to mention it seems pretty luck based considering it literally puts them out of commission for a random number of turns between 1 and 3.

 

[cim]

Luck alone is a bad reason to ban something from competitive Pokemon, since the entire game of Pokemon completely revolves around probability management. So we don't need to pretend we don't have a precedent for banning Sleep inducing moves; Evasion and OHKO are exactly the same.

As for Effect Spore, honestly I don't care if the rule's implementation makes Effect Spore cause a loss. Both Breloom and Parasect have an alternate ability that is much better, so the effect on the metagame would be negligible. (No idea if there's a 5th gen Effect Spore only pokemon...)

 

[Hipmonlee]

I dont see any reason for the implementation to cause effect spore to result in a loss.

Just to be clear, I strongly doubt there is any need to ban sleep moves in bw. I'm just saying that if you do go through with it, effect spore is could easily, and should be an exception. As well as Metronome.

Have a nice day.

 

[Cyrrona]

I strongly agree with panamaxis and Haunter, and I really do think most of sleep's current dominance can be attributed to Darkrai's presence in OU. In my opinion, the wisest course of action is to wait until Darkrai's gone, give the dust some time to settle, and then reexamine the issue if sleep continues to pose a serious and sustained problem. Doing anything extreme with the moves this early in the game is jumping the gun.

 

[Bad Ass]

TFC, Haunter, Panamaxis, and others have the right idea here. The best thing to do here is to wait and see if Darkrai since banned, since it is really the main abuser of sleep. If it is banned, let the metagame pan out and see if we still think that it's broken. If it stays OU, we should seriously consider testing.

 

[makiri]

Sleep is similar to RBY freeze now. While freeze is entirely luck and sleep is controlled by your opponent's moves, the is fact one Pokemon may be entirely out of commission for the match. However opposed to freeze there is more than one option to take care of sleep using Pokemon. Sleep Talk, Heal Bell, something with status, etc all give you options to deal with the usually very obvious sleep inducing Pokemon. And like Jackal mentioned if you don't have a counter on your team for a certain Pokemon is it inherently broken? Sleep is just an additional factor you need to plan for when creating your team and at the moment the primary sleep inducing Pokemon is receiving a large number of suspect nominations, so maybe this needs to be reevaluated after Darkrai is banned or not.

 

[eric the espeon]

Sleep is similar to RBY freeze now. While freeze is entirely luck and sleep is controlled by your opponent's moves, the is fact one Pokemon may be entirely out of commission for the match. However opposed to freeze there is more than one option to take care of sleep using Pokemon. Sleep Talk, Heal Bell, something with status, etc all give you options to deal with the usually very obvious sleep inducing Pokemon. And like Jackal mentioned if you don't have a counter on your team for a certain Pokemon is it inherently broken? Sleep is just an additional factor you need to plan for when creating your team and at the moment the primary sleep inducing Pokemon is receiving a large number of suspect nominations, so maybe this needs to be reevaluated after Darkrai is banned or not.

RBY Freeze made a Pokemon an utter dead weight for the rest of the match (unless the foe was stupid enough to use a fire move on it, or you switched in on a fire move aimed for something else). BW Sleep is, from the article:

The amount of turns for which a Pokémon will be asleep is set randomly—with the exception of Rest, which lasts two turns—when the Pokémon initially succumbs to its slumber. As with bad poisoning, a counter is put into effect, this time assigning a number between two and four inclusive (one fewer than the previous generation). Each time the "fast asleep" message is displayed, the counter decreases by one, until the counter reaches zero and the Pokémon wakes up. In other words, a Pokémon will be asleep for one to three turns, with an equal chance (33.3% or 1/3) of each result.

The Pokemon misses 1-3 turns. RBY Freeze is in hardly comparable to that.

 

[gengod]

Ugh...I honestly think some of you guys are making a big deal about nothing. There is nothing banworthy about the new sleep mechanic. Just accept that its something new to deal with and play around it and stop complaining about something that's hardly detrimental to the game.

 

[JabbaTheGriffin]

This is just an odd result I guess. I was forced to post this topic if i wanted to even be able to nominate sleep moves. So I guess this should be more about nominating broken moves (which is how i should have just initially framed it i guess even though i did try to just in the scope of sleep moves). This discussion about whether or not you think sleep moves are broken or not is probably more served as a stark discussion or once people think sleep moves become a big enough deal and nominate it. I just want to be able to nominate it if I see it as broken (which i'm currently not allowed to).

 

[Ice-eyes]

I think the policy should be that, if a move / ability makes a large number of pokemon broken, then it should be banned. If one or two specific pokemon are very good and the move / ability is part of this, and there are other pokemon with the same move which are not broken, then the particular broken mons should be banned - in this case, Darkrai.

 

[cim]

Can't we do this case by case instead of trying to write a firm policy on exactly how to handle complex situations we haven't always foreseen?

 

[lilyhollow]

I think I agree with Chris here. There's no way we can predict a useful cutoff for "number of Pokemon that need to be broken for a move to be banworthy," and I can't think of any other good metrics besides "whatever the community happens to be more comfortable with at the time." It could be useful to just say "never ever ban moves unless they break every Pokemon that can use them" just to avoid complexity, but imagining a scenario where 30+ otherwise-OU Pokemon are broken by a particular move shows that some sort of reasonable cutoff is needed in order to avoid potential community outrage (however unlikely the situation). That being said, I think we can reasonably expect that it will almost never be necessary to ban moves, unless people really are that bothered by "two whole Pokemon" being somewhat overpowered.

 

[makiri]

RBY Freeze made a Pokemon an utter dead weight for the rest of the match (unless the foe was stupid enough to use a fire move on it, or you switched in on a fire move aimed for something else). BW Sleep is, from the article:
The Pokemon misses 1-3 turns. RBY Freeze is in hardly comparable to that.

Did you not read what I said? I said similar in the way people are treating this new sleep mechanic. With the new sleep mechanic you cannot switch in and waste sleep turns, it will consistently reset, thus you have to either leave it up to chance and keep your mon out until it wakes up and allow the opponent to set up or it will become dead weight for the match until you are given the opportunity to give it a chance to wake up which in this metagame also means giving your opponent the chance to set up. For all intents and purposes, the sleeping Pokemon is dead weight and will provide nothing unless you are willing to risk certain things waiting for it to wake up. It is entirely comparable to RBY Freeze, while not as devastating and uncounterable as RBY Freeze, in a fast paced metagame such as the one we are playing in now a crippled Pokemon is entirely useless, but unlike RBY Freeze there are countermeasures players can now take against it.

 

[jrrrrrrr]

There is no possible way that people could have been serious about a "slippery slope" when talking about classic sleep clause and not oppose this ban as well. What's next?

"Paralysis has always been extremely good, and now that Speed is as important as ever, getting a sweeper paralyzed is basically a free KO. There's no using smart play to tick turns off of a timer, you're stuck with it the whole match. Pokemon using Paralysis moves often get the pseudo-kill by paralyzing something and then are able to do what they would do normally, making pokemon like Jirachi and Togekiss seem much better than they actually are.

So, I think we should consider and talk about it and not leave it completely out of the discussion because of how major it would be to take something out of the game that has been there since gen 1. The new emphasis on Speed in this metagame has really just screwed it up to an insane degree. You can almost equate them to ohko moves with much higher accuracy that can only be blocked by switching in a mon with status, which is usually unreliable at best (especially against Jirachi and Togekiss).

Not to mention that FPing is entirely luck based and we shouldn't be encouraging that!

We really need to stop throwing around the buzzword "broken". It's really skewing everyone's judgEment and it is quite frankly impossible to discuss things on this forum when there is no actual definition of broken to go off of.

On top of that, I disagree with the notion that sleep is broken in gen5 in the first place. Defensive pokemon don't really care about sleep. They can sit in there, take the sleep (1 turn since theyll be slower), get a turn to sleep on the switch (2), and then they can roll the dice on turn 3. One turn sleeps are incredibly deadly and have backfired on me more times than I can even count. If you're using a 6-frail-sweeper team, then yes, you will likely have issues with sleep. But that was also true in gen4.

Sleep isn't broken, Darkrai is.

 

[Mario With Lasers]

On top of that, I disagree with the notion that sleep is broken in gen5 in the first place. Defensive pokemon don't really care about sleep. They can sit in there, take the sleep (1 turn since theyll be slower), get a turn to sleep on the switch (2), and then they can roll the dice on turn 3.

There's a chance they'll have to eat a move and still be asleep on that third turn, though.


And Jabba, maybe you should change the OP a little? It's *very* misleading as it is now, as nominating moves is what you wanted to talk about and be allowed to do and well I guess no one noticed it...

 

[lilyhollow]

"There is no possible way that people could have been serious about a 'slippery slope' when talking about classic sleep clause and not oppose this ban as well."

There actually is, in that the two have nothing to do with each other. Classic Sleep Clause is an issue of changing game mechanics, whereas banning sleep moves is an issue of "do we ban moves or not, and if so, under what circumstances?"

edit: oh, well I completely agree with everything you said then. =)

 

[jrrrrrrr]

There's a chance they'll have to eat a move and still be asleep on that third turn, though.

This is true, but has existed for all 5 generations of Pokemon.

"There is no possible way that people could have been serious about a 'slippery slope' when talking about classic sleep clause and not oppose this ban as well."

There actually is, in that the two have nothing to do with each other. Classic Sleep Clause is an issue of changing game mechanics, whereas banning sleep moves is an issue of "do we ban moves or not, and if so, under what circumstances?"

You seem to have missed the comparison between one slippery slope and another. "If we start changing game mechanics, where do we stop" is just as much a slippery slope as "If we start banning things even when luck isn't involved, where do we stop". I was just pointing out that they are both slippery slopes, not trying to compare the reasonings. If anything, this slope is slipperier since we wouldn't even have to deal with the pedantic strict-game-emulation crowd. I was just using that line to illustrate how quickly I think our community's trigger finger has gotten in discussing bans. It's like every time something comes up that is even remotely good, there is a strong movement to ban it. I'd rather have a couple of powerhouse pokemon in OU than have a community of whiners. We need to come up with a legitimate definition of "broken" before we keep throwing the word around, because these topics are getting more and more insane in my opinion. It's topics like this that make me glad I don't have Phil's job.

 

[cim]

This is true, but has existed for all 5 generations of Pokemon.
You seem to have missed the comparison between one slippery slope and another. "If we start changing game mechanics, where do we stop" is just as much a slippery slope as "If we start banning things even when luck isn't involved, where do we stop".

We totally ban Pokemon for non-luck based reasons all the time. I'm pretty sure we do a decent job of arguing when to stop.

Not all actions are slippery slopes just because the end point is subjective. When decisions are made at each point, the slippery slope argument becomes a fallacy.

 

[jrrrrrrr]

We totally ban Pokemon for non-luck based reasons all the time. I'm pretty sure we do a decent job of arguing when to stop.

We also don't adhere to strict game mechanics all the time. I'm pretty sure we do a decent job of arguing when to stop.

Not all actions are slippery slopes just because the end point is subjective. When decisions are made at each point, the slippery slope argument becomes a fallacy.

Why couldn't you have said this in the "putting my foot down" topic? We could have used this reasoning there.

And because I missed this earlier...

This is just an odd result I guess. I was forced to post this topic if i wanted to even be able to nominate sleep moves. So I guess this should be more about nominating broken moves (which is how i should have just initially framed it i guess even though i did try to just in the scope of sleep moves). This discussion about whether or not you think sleep moves are broken or not is probably more served as a stark discussion or once people think sleep moves become a big enough deal and nominate it. I just want to be able to nominate it if I see it as broken (which i'm currently not allowed to).

No offense Jabba, but this entire topic is ridiculous...especially if you really did make this just to propose banning more moves later on. How would we even test for a broken move? What would qualify as a broken move? What moves do you have in mind? Why are you going around looking for things to ban? The attitude of your posts in this topic is detrimental to the Policy Review as a whole. We shouldn't be going around actively proposing bans "just because". The ideal PR forum is one whose actions are practically invisible to the player base. We should be looking for fewer bans, not setting ourselves up to ban things in the future.

 

[whistle]

agreed with panamaxis and chris is me that pokemon are probably the main culprit, so this should be decided on a case-by-case basis (i.e. banning specific pokemon). my reasoning is a tad different though. basically I view any decision to ban specific moves as an unnecessary complication.

my basic premise is that a "competitive pokemon" consists of a species as well as legal moves and legal abilities. if you want to use a sleep move, then you have to use darkrai/smeargle/roserade; you can't just slap spore onto a sd garchomp and call it a day. thus, at its core, there is an inherent opportunity cost to using a sleep move -- it restricts the set of pokemon that you can use. spore and sleep powder are undoubtedly good moves, but due to this opportunity cost, their true value is dependent on the strength of the pokemon using the move. this means if a sleep move seems broken, it is probably because the pokemon using the move is overpowered, so our existing framework for pokemon bans handles it.

to put things in perspective, think about all the times in 4th gen that your opponent used an offensive team with a sleeper and you never got a chance to wake your pokemon up. or when you used smeargle, spored a restalk gyarados, and subsequently felt very silly. what about when you tried to wake up your pokemon, but instead let your opponent set up a dd/sd/sub? none of these imaginary situations depend on the mechanics change from 4th to 5th gen. in spite of that, none of us felt that sleep was broken in 4th gen... so maybe it is just specific 5th gen pokemon that are the issue.