BH Balanced Hackmons Suspects and Bans Thread

[Rumors]

Eh, keep in mind a couple of things. There might be no restriction on who can run sleep, but there's also no restriction on who can run anti-sleep. Additionally, while sacrificing a Pokemon to sleep could be a game ender, it can also potentially backfire if you can only sleep one target and you waste your sleep on the wrong target. It also allows some potential strategy around keeping a Pokemon asleep to effectively make the rest of your team immune, which seriously weakens stuff like anti-Imposter Safety Goggles Spore, Sleep-Drum, PH Sleep Shuffle, and so forth (or at the least nerfs them at the team building level of the meta.) Team unity is important, yeah, but you'll have those matches where one of your Pokemon isn't doing much, like an Unaware wall versus a pure-Stall team or a Rocks setter versus a team full of Regen and Magic Guard, and they'd make good sleep fodder in those instances.

As irritating as sleep is, I don't think there is an inherent lack of strategy in using it in a sleep clause environment. It is pretty brain-dead when its entirely unrestricted though.

 

[ShedMiddleFinga]

Eh, keep in mind a couple of things. There might be no restriction on who can run sleep, but there's also no restriction on who can run anti-sleep.

First off, that was a very small part of my post, and second off this theory has major flaws in a real world setting. An offensive team just has much more latitude to run something like sleep than a sesmi-stall or pure stall team has to check it. This is because the stall team has to be concerned about improofing, checking ate, checking specs/band, checking don, checking hazard spam, checking shedinja, checking normalize gar and it goes on and on and on. An HO team does not need to be concerned with walling stuff because its main focus is to break teams before they get broken. At some point, you sacrifice checking every single thing under the sun in order to run some offensive mons. So there are most definitely restrictions on what a semi stall team can realistically prepare for.

I will reiterate my main point from my previous point as you didn't really address it. One, a sleep clause would still force teams to prepare for sleep to almost exactly the same level as they do now. So why do anything anyway? Two, sleep adds nothing to the meta. In other metas were sleep can only be run on specific mons it adds to those mons overall usability at the cost of being quite predictable. In this meta sleep is not always predictable and can be run on everything. Three, assuming that you don't need a mon is the sort of thing that loses you games.

I mean come on people we are talking about a move that requires little to no skill. How will only being able to sleep one mon at a time solve that issue? BH is not other metas. We do not need to follow the exact same structure for bans as they do.

 

[Rumors]

It was, but most of your post was't "your point", so to speak, so I didn't really take a look to address it. But, lemme try to break it down and keep it brief.

First point: Offense has Spore, Lovely Kiss, and No Guard Sing as viable sleep options. Mold Breaker is also an option. Defense has Magic Bounce, Poison Heal, Comatose, Magic Guard (with status), Safety Goggles, Misty Terrain, Electric Terrain, Grass-types, Aromatherapy, and, situationally, Shedinja to handle sleep, not counting sub-optimal strategies like Insomnia, Sleep Talk, and Safeguard. Any defensive team worth their salt will have at least one of those naturally and will probably pick up multiple just out of inherent team building.

Defensive teams can also run sleep moves themselves, which pressures offensive Pokemon from being unable to run damage items/abilities lest they become useless.

Besides, have you ever tried to run sleep or really any status against a good Misty Terrain team? I tell you, just trying to get a single Spore, Will-O-Wisp, or what have you is a nightmare.


Second point: HO still has to be concerned with checking things lest they suddenly get walled to hell, swept by Imposter, or out-gunned by an unexpected offensive threat. Semi-stall, meanwhile, can check a wide variety of things with the right cores. (The best cores not only cover a lot of mons, but also have natural redundancies so losing one or getting slept sin't game ending.) They're not sitting ducks trying to wall the entire meta and vulnerable to an army of spores and are incapable of doing anything if they don't somehow counter sleep on their entire team. If that was the case, no variant of stall would be viable.

Plus the team variant that tries to check/counter the entire meta is "Paranoid Stall", not semi-stall. Semi-stall is a stally team with some offensive oomph when it needs it. Or it's a balanced-team leaning on the more stally side of the spectrum. Either definition works.


Third point: Sleep clause, I argue, relaxes the need to build to counter sleep. Two major reasons: running lots of Lovely Spore users is fairly viable right now, but becomes much more questionable in a sleep clause meta because once a mon is put to sleep, the sleep move is largely a dead slot on all teammates until the slept opponent wakes or is KOed. The other is that clerics become a lot more potent since they don't have to worry about being put to sleep, which increases their viability. A defensive Pokemon running a sleep move currently can easily trade the slot for Aromatherapy without losing out, so long as the team isn't reliant on status orbs.


Fourth point: You say sleep requires little to no skill, even in a sleep clause situation. Yet you also said...

Which one should you choose, the Frail sweeper that might be KO'ed before it wakes up, or the wall that allows you to chansey proof your own team and wall theirs?

Making the right call there is definitely not "little to no skill". whether you're the sleeper or sleepee. I can tell you, that isn't always an easy call and sleeping the first thing you see can lose you games. Hell, it lost me a randbats tournament a couple of years back when my Sleep Powder hit an opponent's offensive Pokemon and not the Pokemon that walled my entire team. He kept the sweeper out of play and just let me beat myself to death on his brick wall as punishment for me making the wrong call.

 

[ShedMiddleFinga]

First point: Offense has Spore, Lovely Kiss, and No Guard Sing as viable sleep options. Mold Breaker is also an option. Defense has Magic Bounce, Poison Heal, Comatose, Magic Guard (with status), Safety Goggles, Misty Terrain, Electric Terrain, Grass-types, Aromatherapy, and, situationally, Shedinja to handle sleep, not counting sub-optimal strategies like Insomnia, Sleep Talk, and Safeguard. Any defensive team worth their salt will have at least one of those naturally and will probably pick up multiple just out of inherent team building.


Second point: HO still has to be concerned with checking things lest they suddenly get walled to hell, swept by Imposter, or out-gunned by an unexpected offensive threat. Semi-stall, meanwhile, can check a wide variety of things with the right cores. (The best cores not only cover a lot of mons, but also have natural redundancies so losing one or getting slept sin't game ending.) They're not sitting ducks trying to wall the entire meta and vulnerable to an army of spores and are incapable of doing anything if they don't somehow counter sleep on their entire team. If that was the case, no variant of stall would be viable.

Defense does have counterplay but I think you missed the point of my reply. When you build a semi-stall team you cannot check everything.That's not my opinion, thats just a cold hard fact. There is no defensive core of 3 mons that can check everything in the game. My point is that devoting ability slots to sleep will invariably weaken your team against almost every other type of team not running sleep. The only exceptions to this are poison heal and magic bounce which do have some utility on there own, though not as much I would argue as prankster, regenerator, and fur coat. So when you team build, you have to pick and choose what things you want your team to do well against, and what things it might struggle against. I would never dedicate 2 (or even 1 if the sole thing it did was check sleep) ability slots to stopping sleep. This is because all of these mons is that they can be played around. They are NOT inherently counters to the sleep status. Every single one of these abilities except for comatose can be nullified. PH can be knocked off and purified, Magic bounce can be hit with mold or core, grass types can be hit with lovely kiss, safety goggles don't last for shit and terrain can be replaced. That argument is far far less important (in a real world setting) than my second point. Having one of these abilities does not make you inherently safe from a mon running sleep. A misty girtina has absolutely no chance against a pixilate diancie running v/create/boomburst/extremespeed/spore. Neither does a PH yveltal, or a goggles registeel. Even if your mon can check sleep, they have 3 other moves to rip your mon a new one.

To adress your second point; HO does not aim to check anything. I'm not sure why you would say they are. They run 4 or 5 mons designed to break the meta, a Chansey (sometimes), and something with prank D-Bond/Unaware. This is true for pretty much every and any HO team I have seen above 1700 and even 1600 for that matter. I really do not care how HO teams are structured in the 1300s or the 1400s because I don't face them often enough to know them that well.

Third point: Sleep clause, I argue, relaxes the need to build to counter sleep. Two major reasons: running lots of Lovely Spore users is fairly viable right now, but becomes much more questionable in a sleep clause meta because once a mon is put to sleep, the sleep move is largely a dead slot on all teammates until the slept opponent wakes or is KOed. The other is that clerics become a lot more potent since they don't have to worry about being put to sleep, which increases their viability. A defensive Pokemon running a sleep move currently can easily trade the slot for Aromatherapy without losing out, so long as the team isn't reliant on status orbs.

It's hard to counter this because it would require me to see in the future to see what a sleep clause meta would look like. Despite that, I'll try. First off, you said a move slot becomes largely a dead slot, but you failed to acknowledge that the mon you switched in (if you don't switch then you might lose the wall and then lose the game) risks becoming a dead slot up until its 4th turn. (because it was switched in)
Just as a general question, do you regard trading a mon for a moveslot as a good trade?

Clerics only have 8 pp and its hard to argue that 8 pp will outlast 24 of most sleep moves. Plus against a non status team, aromethary is "largely a dead slot on all teamates"

Which one should you choose, the Frail sweeper that might be KO'ed before it wakes up, or the wall that allows you to chansey proof your own team and wall theirs?

That was supposed to be what the person defending against sleep would say.

Making the right call there is definitely not "little to no skill". whether you're the sleeper or sleepee. I can tell you, that isn't always an easy call and sleeping the first thing you see can lose you games. Hell, it lost me a randbats tournament a couple of years back when my Sleep Powder hit an opponent's offensive Pokemon and not the Pokemon that walled my entire team. He kept the sweeper out of play and just let me beat myself to death on his brick wall as punishment for me making the wrong call.

I literally just made a post about how BH =/= other metas because it is simply structured differently. You simply cannot compare a meta where the main goal is to batter the opponent away (trade attacks until one of you faints) to a meta that relies on volt turning into sweepers to nuke mons. In BH you need both the u-turning wall and the sweeper. Having one of them asleep is going to give you a bad time.

Edit: A simple ctrl find on the word sleep brings up these people asking for a suspect in the last 10 pages: Semako, SuperSkylake, DarkRisingRay, Rumors, OM!, Inonedn, tzop, loser2017, Anaconja, and ShedMiddleFinga. That's literally 10 people. Illusion got a suspect after only 3 people advocated a suspect: GL Volkner, Willdbeast, and Semako. Both sleep and illusion were discussed on page 38 if anyone cares. It seems to me that nobody has come up with a valid reason why sleep should continue to exist, at least 10 people on this forum (which is about half the people that post here honestly) want it suspected, other things have been suspected with far less community support, and somehow sleep hasn't gotten a suspect. So taking all of that into account I'm going to ask a single question. Why?

 

[Rumors]

I'm not gonna dig into the semantics and everything covered in your post, like defining Smogon dictionary definition of a Check or going into detail about how I don't feel you need both U-Turn and a sweeper to have a functioning team, it'd just detract from the focus here and make a needlessly long post.

Really, you can have a successful pivotless stall team. It's just a lot harder to play.


A) Most sleep checks are also general status checks, so they're gonna be useful as long as the opponent has any status, especially if they also carry other utility. The only exceptions are Safety Goggles (negate weather damage) and Insomnia, which is almost entirely outclassed by Comatose.

Can explain where Insomnia might be better if anyone cares, but it's very very niche and you'll probably never use it anyway.


B) No team can check/counter everything, period. So, thinking about it some more, I don't see how "preparing for sleep weakens you to other threats" is a valid point in general. Team building is all about trade-offs, after all, and good team building is making the optimal trade-offs.* The obvious exception though are things that require excessive preparation to handle that outright cripple your ability to respond to teams not running the thing in question, such as Huge Power, Shadow Tag, Evasion, Chatter, Primaldon, CFZs, etc. Sleep is there currently, but I strongly doubt Sleep Clause sleep would be.

*Besides, if you did manage to find the perfect team that beat everything, then everyone would quickly copy it, the viable meta would be nothing but that team and slight variants, and it'd quickly have its critical component(s) banned.


C)

Just as a general question, do you regard trading a mon for a moveslot as a good trade?

It's situational and this is not the something you can blanket answer. This is a similar question you have to ask when it comes to making a sacrificial switch, using Destiny Bond/Explosion. Unless you're steamrolling your opponent, you will inevitably ask yourself "is sacrificing this for my opponent's that worthwhile?" during a match. Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes no. This is only a bad thing when you get a 50/50 scenario* and no amount of skill will ever make it more than a blind pick. But removing all 50/50s from a meta is impossible and probably undesirable.

*(Eg. "If I click Spore and he get clicks Sub, I lose. If I click Boomburst and he clicks Metal Burst, then I also lose. But if I Boom his Sub or I Spore his Burst, then I win.")


D) If I can't compare to the dozens of official and OM metas that have sleep clause implemented into, then what can I compare to? Sleepclauseless metas like VGC, Smogon Doubles, or AG? I mean, I do typically say not to speculate on how the future will look, but sleep clause is so prevalent through Smogon for years and years that I think it's pretty safe to draw a number of conclusions. BH is different, but it's not THAT different.

And if anyone says "but in BH I can run any move on any mon", I'll just point you to the Setpedia. Unless you're fighting Gurpreet, you typically know what to expect from your opponents at team preview.


E) Not to be a smartass, but I find it funny on your tags of "these guys have been asking for sleep to be removed forever, so you shouldn't be against sleep either" to argue against me when I'm included in those tags. For the record, I'm against sleep. I want a sleep clause since I think the nuclear option would be overkill and half-measures, like banning Lovely Kiss, pointless. However, if it came down to nuke or nothing, I'd probably vote nuke since it's more important sleep goes away.

Sorry though if it comes across smartassy.

 

[ShedMiddleFinga]

I agree with most everything you wrote in the last post so I'm not going to argue with it that much.We both want to deal with sleep, just in different ways. You believe that a sleep clause will make sleep more strategic and a little less omnipresent and I believe that a clause wouldn't fully solve the problem and that sleep is just bad for the meta whether under a clause or not. I think that both of those are valid opinions, and its pretty clear to me by now that I'm not going to change yours so I'm not going to try. I made my shot already.

I'm sorry for the confusion about the last part of my post. It was meant to be directed at Flint not you. I tried to be explicit saying that those people where only asking for a suspect and not asking for a ban. I just feel like the community is supposed to take direction from its members, yet none of the things that I want banned: Shell Smash and sleep, have received suspects despite having large amounts of community support. It is very frustrating to feel like you aren't being listened to, especially since I didn't agree with a few of the previous bans (illusion mostly).

 

[morogrim]

I just feel like the community is supposed to take direction from its members, yet none of the things that I want banned: Shell Smash and sleep, have received suspects despite having large amounts of community support. It is very frustrating to feel like you aren't being listened to, especially since I didn't agree with a few of the previous bans (illusion mostly).

I think you answered your own question there. The BH meta takes direction from its members, not just you. At the end of suspect tests, those eligible can vote for "ban" or "no ban" (or abstain). Just because you didn't agree with a few bans doesn't mean the majority of the community (or those eligible for voting at least) didn't either. The same goes for suspect tests; usually if the arguments for a suspect test are compelling enough or if a majority of the players ask for it, the suspect test usually happens.

E: Thought I might as well add my own opinion on sleep here, already talked about it on OMs discord and said I was too lazy to post on forums but here we are.

My opinion on sleep until recently (probably until around OMWC) was that sleep itself wasn't inherently broken; it is the combination of sleep+setup that becomes dangerous. The reasoning I had for this was that a sleep set without setup would be easily walled by common PH/RegenVest walls without much difficulty since the sleep users wouldn't have enough damage to break through with just sleep. On the other hand, pure setup without sleep also wasn't broken in my mind because of all the counterplay readily available against it: Spectral Thief, U-turning into Imposter, Prankster, Unaware, and pivoting into a faster/higher priority threat are all examples of this. Obviously not all of these methods work on all setup mons, (U-turning into Imposter vs. an Unburden user for example is not a counterplay at all) but generally speaking a setup mon will be vulnerable to at least one of these strategies.

So what specifically changed my mind? Well, I realized a few things: First off, most sleep+setup mons don't really need their sleep moves to be successful in the current meta. In fact, I personally rarely run sleep moves on my PH Gigas or Triage Ray and they both do just fine even without the sleep move. A ban on sleep would just make it slightly more difficult for those kinds of mons to find setup opportunities as they will have a smaller pool of mons which they can setup on. Second, there are always some cases where you automatically are put in a disadvantage from turn 1 unless if you are running very specific anti-sleep measures (for example, if your opponent leads with a No Guard mon turn 1, at least one of your mons will be put to sleep unless if you are running Misty Surge, Magic Bounce, or a PH mon with Spiky Shield/Baneful Bunker and you lead with that PH mon). This idea led to the third factor which were the cases where the sleep user's success depended entirely on the number of sleep turns they got. For example, Dazzling Mega Gengar would normally not be able to beat RegenVest Ogre. But, if the Ogre user is unlucky and is put to sleep for the full 3 turns, Mega Gengar can now KO a mon it normally wouldn't have been able to.
Out of these 3 factors, I feel like only the third is uncompetitive because the success of the mon (and by extension, the player using that mon) could sometimes be entirely dependent on chance. The second factor isn't really uncompetitive since even if sleep is banned and you are placed in that same situation, at least one of your mons will still be status'd; it just won't be sleep. The first factor, as already explained, isn't really uncompetitive since even in the event of a sleep ban, those mons will still most likely remain successful because sleep isn't their main source of viability/success rate.

In conclusion, my current opinion on sleep is that in most cases, the conventional sleep users aren't really reliant on the sleep move for their success (it obviously can sometimes help them, but their main source of viability isn't sleep; the point is that even with a sleep ban, the mons in this category will still be successful/viable). However, there are some cases where a sweeper's success rests entirely on the number of sleep turns they get. This is obviously uncompetitive, and imo unhealthy for the meta.

So what now? Imo a suspect test on sleep is completely fine, and I am very interested to see what a sleepless bh meta would look like. Also keep in mind that in the event that sleep does get banned, the "competitive" setup mons will still be completely viable; it would just be the setup mons that rely on sleep for their success that would stop seeing play (which imo is another plus).

on the topic of DQM sweepers

As for setup DQM, I definitely agree that in the current meta, Prankster users such as Giratina have done a great job at shutting down pretty much all relevant physical DQM setup sweepers (such as Mmx) in addition to the BellyBurden (such as Kartana) ones. The ideal moveset a Prankster user such as Giratina would run to counteract these kinds of threats would be Haze, Recover, U-turn/Core Enforcer, and Spectral Thief/Poison Fang/Destiny Bond. Running Destiny Bond on a mon such as Giratina imo isn't really optimal (which is why I slashed it in as the third option on the 4th move) as there are very few mons in the game that are capable of OHKOing Giratina, especially among the mons that this particular Giratina set is designed to check (obviously this Giratina doesn't check setup mons such as MGuard Diancie, but it's also irrelevant to mention this as Prankster Giratina isn't meant to check that mon to begin with). As a result, running a suboptimal move such as Ice Shard would not only weaken the user's potency, but also wouldn't really do much in terms of enabling it to bypass Prankster Giratina either as Giratina can easily go for Spectral Thief or Poison Fang after Haze to immediately pressure the setup mon.

 

[Champion Leon]

I think if Sleep is a concern that overwhelms your team, then its your own fault.

Imposter & Shedinja is something teams must prepare for, and Sleep isn’t much different. One can step in and do what you do, one can be immune to your attacks, and one can disable one of your 6 Pokémon (or more).
If people can use specific moves and items to plan for those Pokémon, like Spooky Plate Gengar, Sungeist Geyser or Mold Breaker, etc. then I don’t see how sleep is not something to prepare for. If sleep is removed, people may use Paralysis or Burn, and Nuzzle cannot be Taunted or magic Bounced. Certainly the effect is not a twin of Sleep, but it is something that can block other status effects you want like Toxic Orb from activating.

I don’t think Sleep is overpowered, but it is something teams should consider, and it’s also not as scary as Shedinja for an unprepared team, and not as scary as Scarf Imposter taking advantage of an unprepared sweeper.

Sleep is an option many people use themselves, and some people don’t because of the common stops to it like Safety Goggles, PHeal, etc. and it can lose momentum when you Spore something that has Safety Goggles, that you didn’t plan for, just as it can cause a momentum loss when they use Spore and you don’t have Safety Goggles.

I don’t see Spore used like it used to be, and in turn I don’t see Safety Goggles (I use Knock Off and can see items on the foe) as often. It’s almost like when both became popular, they both decreased in popularity.

Sure, No Guard Sing, and even Lovely Kiss exist, but Spore is for garnering free turns, while something more centralizing like Shedinja pose a bigger threat, and when we actually consider that, Sleep doesn’t seem so bad in comparison.

If sleep is so strong vs your team, perhaps sleep isn’t all that your team need to work on countering.

 

[tzop]

they is no ultimate counter to sleep , play magic bounce gira for counter the mmx toxic orb + spore . if you face a ray mega with spore you spore answer will be useless. There is so much possibilty on this tier that you can't counter all or play misty surge

 

[Champion Leon]

they is no ultimate counter to sleep , play magic bounce gira for counter the mmx toxic orb + spore . if you face a ray mega with spore you spore answer will be useless. There is so much possibilty on this tier that you can't counter all or play misty surge

I guess it is b/c I use Misty Surge, but Electric Surge could also work. Mega Ray with Spore often pack Triage so anything faster that is Dazzling and is immune to Spore like Sceptile-Mega or has Safety Goggles could work. Further, Misty Surge can stop Spore, Toxic Orb’s activation, and could be on something that isn’t KOed by Rayquaza.

What about a team of Poison Heal Giratina, Safety Goggles Prankster Registeel, Magic Bounce Magearna, Safety Goggles Flash Fire Celesteela, Dazzling Sceptile-Mega, and Soundproof Arceus with Safety Goggles?
You block Spore and the team can handle variations of Rayquaza, without Misty Terrain.

Substitute, Taunt and certain moves can also prevent Spore, not just items and abilities.

This is a sudden team but the point is these are all standard Pokémon that are not be threatened by Sleep.

Scarf Imposter can also threaten Rayquaza with or without Spore, depending on the set. I’m sure there are others like Soundproof Safety Goggles Slowbro-Mega with Frost Breathe, etc.

Anyways, there are ways to plan for it, plus which set are you referring to for Spore Ray?

 

[Rumors]

I don't think Imposter/Shedinja are on the same level as sleep. They're super centralizing, yeah, and I hate both of them, but I grudgingly think they're both healthy for the meta, since they keep a lot of dumb stuff in check, and removing them would no doubt have nasty ripple effects.


As explained many, many times before, Imposter is the only opposing Pokemon you can be 100% prepared for even before team preview hits. Yeah, it takes some planning to work around, and sometimes you'll have to take a couple of sub-optimal or weird choices to account for it, depending on your team. But as long as you keep Eviolite, Scarf, Light Ball, and Plate versions in mind (and occasionally weird ones like Toxic Orb), it'll literally never catch you by surprise. It's pretty rare for a good player to get defeated by Imposter without screwing up somewhere earlier in the match, even if they didn't prepare for an unusual variant that's present.


Shedinja is the definition of high risk, high reward. On one end of the spectrum, it can 1v6 the entire enemy team without risk and is the world's greatest pivot. On the other end of the of the spectrum, it literally cannot do anything and you would have been better running Truant Weedle. It requires a ton of team support to use effectively, especially in this age of moves like Sunsteel Strike, so running it requires no small sacrifice on the user's part.

 

[highlighter]

Just gonna drop my thoughts on sleep.

Let's start with a fun hypothetical: we'll take everyone's favorite move lovely kiss and pretend that instead of putting you to sleep it freezes you. I know your gut response is that this new version is broken as hell would definitely be bannable. However, everything viable that checks lovely kiss (i.e. PH, mbounce, misty terrain, comatose) will still check this version. I know this is an unfair comparison because after 3 turns of sleep you are guaranteed to wake up while freeze can theoretically last indefinitely. But the reason I wanted to mention this is because the ONLY counterpoint I'm seeing people make is that there are many checks to sleep.

Alright let's continue this fun hypothetical new BH meta. Now spore will freeze you instead of sleeping (and to make it fair safety goggles/grass types will prevent this new spore from activating). The counterpoint that "there are many checks" remains the same. Yet this scenario is still much much more uncompetitive simply because the RNG of freeze activating is higher than sleep. Well, okay I just stated the obvious. But the point I am trying to make is that the only counterpoint to sleep is completely invalid. Comparing freeze to sleep is comparing apples to oranges, but the common factor is that both involve RNG activation. If raising the RNG makes the counterpoint less significant, then the counterpoint wasn't legitimate in the first place. Without any restrictions at all, any offensive mon can (and probably will) run freeze. Whenever I face an opponent, I'd have to ask myself whether their offensive mons can freeze me or not. In this new meta, I will literally have to run anti-freeze measures on all of my mons, or if they get frozen I will have to treat them as dead weight.

Wait that last part sounds familiar.

That's right, this point has been made over and over and over and over again but with sleep. Let's take a look at one of the ban guides for clauses: "Dominant strategies with either no checks, or the player has to choose between preparing for this specific strategy or the general meta". I don't want to have every mon on my team be sleep-proof. I don't want to run goggles on every offensive or defensive mon. I don't want to have to choose between risking sleep or letting my opponent setup for free. However, the threat of sleep is always something I have to think about when teambuilding, essentially restricting what I think is best for my team.

I know I've been bashing sleep this entire post but personally I am still on the fence about sleep. What I am trying to do is continue this discussion and hope I catch the attention of our corrupt tier leader and maybe he can do something about sleep. Like others, I'm very curious as to how a sleepless meta would look like. Whether its more healthy or not is up for speculation.

 

[MAMP]

i'm in favour of sleep clause, but nothing further than that — banning sleep moves as a whole is entirely unnecessary. i feel that a lot of previous posts in this thread are overrating the power and consistency of sleep and exaggerating the lengths you have to go to to handle it.

first of all, your pokemon don't become complete deadweight when they're slept. this is why i think the comparison with freeze is really strange. if your pokemon gets slept, there is a 1/3 chance that it sleeps for one turn, meaning your opponent didn't even gain any turns from sleeping you. waking a pokemon by just getting it in safely and burning turns is perfectly feasible as well, and happens quite regularly. a sleeping offensive pokemon can still force switches based on the threat of it waking up, and bulkier mons often are able to come in easily against stuff that can't really hurt them and just burn off turns. there is an obnoxious element of rng to this, but it is somewhat predictable as you're guaranteed to wake within 3 turns. acting as though a slept pokemon is just useless for the rest of the game is unreasonable.

highlighter's post above implies that in the current meta you need to make every mon on your team sleep proof which is a strange thing to say because it isn't even close to being true. this isn't a thing that people do, or have ever done, and you've never needed every single mon on your team to be resilient to sleep in order to not lose to sleep. i feel like i'm probably misinterpreting that part of the post bc it's hard for me to imagine that that's what you meant.

i also disagree with the notion that by running sleep checks you significantly weaken your ability to deal with the rest of the meta. abilities like poison heal, magic bounce, and misty terrain are still strong abilities even discounting their strength against sleep. you aren't sacrificing a whole lot against the rest of the meta by running sleep checks — even goggles (which actually sucks enormously) only takes up an item slot. compared to the specificity of answers that stuff like norm gar or specs ray require, sleep seems tame.

sleep is also not skilless and nor does it come with no opportunity cost. there is a significant risk/reward involved with sleep, both in teambuilder and in battle. offensive threats with sleep moves can be challenging to imposter-proof, limiting what pokemon can run sleep effectively. hyper offense is held back by this especially. by putting spore/kiss on your set you are sacrificing a coverage move or a utility move or whatever for a sleep move that will do very little in a lot of matchups and almost might as well be a blank moveslot against misty/electric terrain teams — the tradeoff here is not insignificant. sleep is far from skilless in battle as well. you can't just click sleep moves and get results because if you spore into a goggles mon, a bouncer, a ph mon, a grass-type etc you have given your opponent a completely free turn. this can give your opponents free switches or potentially cause you to lose a pokemon. on hyper offense, this can mean a devastating loss of momentum. this is exacerbated by the fact that goggles and bounce are both invisible until you hit them; you often have to make guesses about your opponent's team to figure out if it's safe to go for a sleep move. on turn 9 of this wcom game i misread quantum's team and kissed a bouncer, resulting in me losing a pokemon. sleep is far more potent when they don't know about it — it can be really deadly when you catch your opponent off guard with it, but against a competent team, once you show them spore/kiss, the dynamic shifts entirely and it can become quite difficult to land a meaningful sleep unless they happen to be very weak to the specific sleep mon you're using. like basically any other strategy in bh, sleep requires good teambuilding, prediction, team reading, and good information control to be successful.

ShedMiddleFinga much of your struggles against sleep come from the fact that the teams you build are just really weak to sleep. that replay you posted where you lost to the triple sceptile team is not proof that sleep is broken, it's just you having a really awful matchup. like, of course a slow fat team that relies entirely on 2 mons with goggles to check sleep is gonna lose to a dedicated knock+spore spam ho team. this is like building a team with no ghost-type and 4 mons walled by shedinja, then posting a replay of it losing to shedinja and trying to use it as proof that shed is broken. like, i agree that we should do something about sleep, but from playing against you on ladder, seeing your replays and teams you've posted around, you don't really seem to put a lot of effort into checking sleep and i feel like that skews your views on the matter.

SuperSkylake in a similar vein, the two replays you posted of people losing to xern don't prove a whole lot. in the first one, your team had fairly sketchy xern checks and your opponent had an unconventional xern set that just happened to beat them. rough matchup. in the second one, that team's only xern answer is going to its own xern and hoping to crit first. these replays aren't 'lovely kiss is broken' they're 'teams that are weak to xern lose to xern'.

a small thing: the poor accuracy of lovely kiss is a huge and often overlooked drawback of the move. the fact that it does nothing 1 in every 4 times you use it makes it very inconsistent, and ive seen easily dozens of games lost on the back of a kiss miss. kiss misses aren't something you can really rely on when playing against it, but it does make it far riskier than it would be otherwise, and makes it really hard to just sleep an entire squad with kiss.

all that being said, i am still in favour of a sleep clause to nerf sleep spam ho and to broaden the range of counterplay to certain ph sweepers, and to better align the bh ruleset with that of standard tiers (makes it easier for people to get into the tier). in my view, sleep becomes really problematic when it's a) paired with shell smash/contrary (smash and contra should be banned instead) or b) on dedicated sleep spam teams (sleep clause solves this issue).

 

[Klang]

Figured I'd throw in my 2 cents on this.

The thing about sleep which in my opinion makes it banworthy is the inconsistency of it. I.e. the fact that it can vary from 1 to 3 turns. 3 turn sleeps are extremely debilitating and essentially tantamount to a death sentence in an offence vs offence matchup and the length of the sleep turns decides almost all of these types of battles when sleep is involved. And if you want to play consistently, you have to almost always assume they'll happen.

A good example of this is my OMPL battle against MAMP where MAMP used sleep to great effect:
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7balancedhackmons-836737673

From turns 5-7, MAMP sleeps my Diancie. Diancie proceeds to sleep for 3 turns in a row while MAMP is able to set up a shell smash and attack twice through my focus sash and do considerable damage to my team. A 1 turn sleep on the other hand would have almost certainly won me the game, and a 2 turn sleep probably left us in a neutral or so position.

In that same replay another example, even though not as significant on turn 12: my Shedinja getting a 1 turn sleep would have sapped a ton of momentum from MAMP as well.

I'm not bringing these up because I'm complaining about being haxed; had I gotten 2 1 turn sleeps that would just be me haxing my opponent. But the point I'm making is that here sleep RNG plays a massive role in how these types of games turn out. It's extremely uncompetitive.

If sleep were say, always 2 turns, then you could play around it and plan around it. But it's inconsistent, and that's why I think it's banworthy (or, clauseworthy I guess, I don't have a strong opinion on what should be done to mitigate sleep, I just think that it's an uncompetitive mechanic).

EDIT: Also Lovely Kiss' accuracy is yet another factor that makes sleep massively RNG dependent.

 

[ShedMiddleFinga]

MAMP I do realize that sleep has an opportunity cost and that lovely kiss is not always reliable. I don't think that sleep is the most viable strategy in the meta to ladder with or I would be using it. I dont think something has to be the best thing in the meta to be bannable though. Things like chatter and illusion and gengarite never were used the most (hell I think i saw base form gengars every 30 battles at the time of the ban) because they lacked consistency. The issue was that they were used enough that you had to prepare for it or risk losing to it. I believe the basic argument against all 3 of those bans was that the cost of preperation was too high and that even a prepared team might lose to those sets. Nobody asks to bring back chatter because soundproof exists. Nobody asks to bring back pdon because fc tina exists (though I would if I thought I could do it). And nobody asks to bring back gengarite even though shed shell and ghost types exist. As hay lighter pointed out, it's the exact same problem with sleep. The prep cost is too high and a prepared team still might lose to sleep. So I'm at a loss why people still want it. (Also wanna back up klang's argument that 3 turn is what breaks sleep here as he hit the nail on the head with that)

I'm even more at a loss at why people think the only answer is a clause. Nobody asked for a chatter clause or a pdon clause or a CFZ clause (which probably would have been an ok solution honestly). People's minds are clouded by precedent. There is no precedent for an illusion clause so people want to ban it. But people see sleep and are so used to a sleep clause that they gravitate towards that option. I don't think sleep clause will solve anything, much like an illusion or pdon clause would fail to solve anything because 1 pdon would still requine you to run fc tina. If 1 mon runs something you still have to prepare for it the same as if 2 or 3 do.

Seeing as no viable arguments have been made about what sleep adds from the meta I don't understand why people want it. I can tell you what it takes away... skill. Because any time you put the fate of the game in RNG you take the emphasis away from skill and towards luck.

I look foward to all your replies about how sleep is nothing like chatter.

 

[morogrim]

Chatter and sleep are on 2 completely different levels of being uncompetitive though, I don't think comparing the two is very logical. At least with sleep moves there is some risk involved in the sense that if you mess up, you could end up even losing momentum as a result (an example of this would be clicking spore on a Magic Bounce user or a PH sweeper switchin). With Chatter, you have the closest thing possible to a 0 drawback play as there is only 1 scenario where you actually could lose momentum by clicking the move. In the absolute worst case scenario, you end up clicking Chatter on a Soundproof switchin in which case you can simply switch out and you only lose momentum if the Soundproof mon pivots out on the switch. As I already mentioned, the uncompetitiveness of sleep is in situations where the user manages to score a KO or something meaningful as a result of the target being asleep for a certain number of turns IF the user wouldn't have been able to accomplish the same result with fewer sleep turns. An example of this would be the KOs that result from repeated 3 turn sleeps on walls that on average should be able to wall said mon, but are instead KOed as a result of being unlucky.

 

[Rumors]

As an addendum, Chatter was a move viable on literally every set and, if you "didn't see a lot of Chatter", then you weren't here when it was quick-banned. That crap was more common the CFZ-spam. Especially since Soundproof didn't work because Mold Breaker Chatter showed up two seconds later to shut it down. There was no check to Chatter, neither a viable one nor even a dumb one like Harvest Lum Berry (Knock Off/Trick). The only thing that's really been comparable to Chatter this generation were CFZs. Even Water Bubble and Pdon, with all of their glorious bullcrap, wasn't close.

If you really wanna see how dumb Chatter was, just look at this team from the era. It wasn't even a good team, but it curb-stomped pretty much every non-Chatter team. There was literally no counter to this team as a whole simply because of spamming one move.

Hide

You Hate Me! (Rayquaza-Mega) @ Leftovers
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Chatter
- Nuzzle
- Air Slash
- Substitute

You Hate Me Too! (Rayquaza-Mega) @ Leftovers
Ability: Mold Breaker
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Chatter
- Glare
- Substitute
- Tail Glow

ZOMG! (Kyogre-Primal) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpA
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Moonblast
- Chatter
- Volt Switch

SRSLY!? (Mewtwo-Mega-Y) @ Life Orb
Ability: Protean
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Chatter
- Oblivion Wing
- Psystrike
- Earth Power

O RLY? (Kyurem-White) @ Lum Berry
Ability: Refrigerate
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Atk / 252 SpA
Mild Nature
- Extreme Speed
- Boomburst
- Chatter
- Recycle

YA RLY! (Lugia) @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
EVs: 248 HP / 132 Def / 128 SpD
Bold Nature
- Wish
- U-turn
- Defog
- Chatter

Anyway... As for the whole thing of precedent, bear in mind when precedent has historically worked, it's not a bad idea to try it. It's a precedent for a reason. Conversely, we shouldn't ignore precedent for the sake of being different. A sleep ban may or may not be better than a sleep clause, but saying "BH is different so we shouldn't do a clause" really isn't a good argument. Meanwhile, Klang has a much more compelling argument in favor for a ban (I'm assuming he's suggesting ban, anyway) and really should be the direction to go.

IMO, it'd probably be best for Flint to make a quick poll before going to suspect test asking which route to take, assuming sleep goes to the suspect. (And, IMO, it should.) We can all argue all day long about clause versus ban, but I don't think we'll get a clear answer for him otherwise.

 

[ShedMiddleFinga]

With all due respect morogrim I think chatter is banned for EXACTLY the same reason sleep should be. Lets look at how good it really is compared to spore.

Confusion does continue even if a pokemon avoids being confused, so this is going to require calculating permutations. I'll be generous and say the average amount of turns confusion lasts is 3 (average of 1 and 4 is really 2.5 but that's not a whole number) out of those 3 turns a mon will experience no confusion 34.3% of the time (.7 x .7 x .7). It will experience confusion once 44.1% of the time and twice 18.9% of the time (3!/((3-2)!2!) *.3^2 * (1-.3)^(3-2)) (look up binomial distributions if you care). Finally, it will be confused all three times 2.7% of the time (.3x.3x.3). This is compared to the 33% chance for 1, 2 and 3 turn sleep respectively. This means the average amount of turns a mon sleeps is 2 while the average amount of turns a mon is confused is .9 (.343 x 0 +.441 x 1 + .189 × 2 + .027 ×3)

So we can see just looking at the numbers (the confusion #'s are going to be a bit high too because I took 3 instead of 2.5) we can see that sleep grants more turns than confusion. Ignoring damage from confusion (because I can only handle so much math and that would be insanley complicated) we can see that a mon with spore can outdamage the chatter mon with seperate moves (they would have to have more than 114 BP though, such as close combat) This is assuming that confusion happens linearly, which of course it does not. There is only a 33% chance of course that confusion happens turn 0 meaning that your chatter mon will likely die (or come close) before a single confusion activates. (The chance that a mon that can 2HKO a chatter mon will get the chance to do so (2 consecutive turns with no confusion) is still .58% (.66x.66 all divided by .75 which is the chance confusion continues past the first turn (25% it stops every turn)) and if your mon can OHKO the chatter mon then forget it, 66% chance that your mon might die is terrible. This is obviously far far subpar to how sleep works, activating in a linear fashion and insuring a mon won't wake up on the turn it is spored. So as an offensive setup move I would argue that spore is just flat out superior to chatter against a mon that isn't immune to that paticular status. (The chance that spore gives you a turn to setup is 66% while for confusion it is 11% (.33×.33)) There really isn't any room for argument here imo especially when you realize confusion disappears on switchout. So just from a hax standpoint, we can see that sleep is better. Of course chatter has far less checks than spore making it work better than it appears on paper (not sure if misty terrain works). Fact remains though, against a mon not resistant to either, spore is better.

So if anybody else would like to tell me chatter is unquestionably better than spore please go ahead.

TL;DR The main point is, both shift the focus away from skill, and neither should be allowed.

(Totally with you on the poll rumors but I wrote this before I saw your post so I didn't focus on it >.>)

 

[morogrim]

Once again, you fail to consider the main point I was trying to convey which was:

A. Those numbers are only true if you assume you land your sleep. You did not take into account the risk factor of clicking the sleep move and the chances of the sleep move being successful or unsuccessful. I can tell you right now (again this is me repeating myself because you did not understand the first time) that Chatter does not have any of these drawbacks. Again, the only situation where the move will be unsuccessful is when the opponent brings in a Soundproof mon and that's only if your user isn't Mold Breaker.

B. Chatter additionally deals upfront damage whereas sleep moves do not, which is also partly why Chatter has little to no drawbacks. Even if the opponent doesn't take dmg from confusion, you still did some damage with Chatter; the same could not be said about sleep moves.

Once again, and this is starting to sound repetitive so hopefully third time's a charm and you finally understand, the main reason for Chatter's uncompetitiveness is that it has little to no drawback in addition to the damage and status condition it inflicts. Sleep moves have risks/drawbacks involved when you click them while not dealing any damage either, which makes them much riskier to use when compared to Chatter. Yes, the reward may be higher if the sleep move is successful, but that's a big if.

I also have stated that sleep could be uncompetitive in some cases, which imo means it at least deserves a suspect test. The disagreement here is to what extent sleep is uncompetitive, which is obviously nowhere near the uncompetitiveness of Chatter for reasons that have already been mentioned. I don't think it's a matter of "anybody else wanting to tell you that Chatter is unquestionably better than Spore" and moreso a matter of you accepting this well-known fact by employing the smallest bit of logic in your thought process. You can do it!

 

[ShedMiddleFinga]

Morogrim, I am not an idiot and I don't know why you treat me like one. It seems that your disdain for me was so great that it prevented you from reading my post.

I addressed the fact that "Of course chatter has far less checks than spore making it work better than it appears on paper (not sure if misty terrain works). Fact remains though, against a mon not resistant to either, spore is better" and also seperatly here
"So as an offensive setup move I would argue that spore is just flat out superior to chatter against a mon that isn't immune to that paticular status."

And don't come at me with that chatter deals damage bit because I addressed that too
"we can see that a mon with spore can outdamage the chatter mon with seperate moves (they would have to have more than 114 BP though, such as close combat) This is assuming that confusion happens linearly, which of course it does not. There is only a 33% chance of course that confusion happens turn 0 meaning that your chatter mon will likely die (or come close) before a single confusion activates"

And finally you keep saying that chatter comes with no inherent drawbacks but I would say risking an OHKO (against a sweeper) with 67% odds just to get a 60 BP hit in is a pretty big inherent drawback.

And also I believe at the end of my post I said "TL;DR The main point is, both shift the focus away from skill, and neither should be allowed."

I have no desire to bring chatter back into the meta, but as I see it, sleep and chatter are not so different. I was just attempting to draw a comparison.

 

[morogrim]

You already admitted that the number of mons that are sleep resistant are way more than those that are confusion resistant. This already means that the group of mons that resist neither status are largely outnumbered by the cases that are vulnerable to confusion. This alone should prove the point that Chatter is for the most part superior to sleep (in terms of being uncompetitive) just because of how little the number of cases are where sleep could contend with Chatter. Your continued attempts at defending something you yourself are making points against is already proving my point, I don't need to really do anything else.

E: I also completely forgot to mention this, but maybe this will help you better understand why Chatter is so much more uncompetitive than sleep: Chatter forces uncompetitive situations much more often than sleep. Regardless of the odds of any outcome, the fact that Chatter introduces the RNG factor so much more frequently than a sleep move (or in your own words, Chatter shifts the focus away from skill much more often compared to sleep) shows that Chatter is the more uncompetitive move. This is again, regardless of any of the odds of success or failure after being affected by the status condition. Even if the odds of breaking out of confusion are higher than the odds of waking from sleep, the fact that Chatter can cause confusion almost every time that it is used means that this RNG factor is almost always introduced into the game upon use. Obviously the same could not be said about sleep as common abilities (PH, Magic Bounce) and Safety Goggles are all measures that can check sleep but cannot check confusion. An uncompetitive situation is uncompetitive regardless of the odds of breaking through or remaining affected.

Sleep and Chatter are different enough to the point that Chatter was quickbanned but sleep not only wasn't banned (or quickbanned), but also is still going through discussions to determine if it should be suspect tested (let alone getting banned). If this isn't a clear enough indication of their difference, idk what else to tell you.

on the topic of idiocy

I don't have any disdain for you; If I did I wouldn't be trying my best to help you understand something as basic as Chatter being more uncompetitive than sleep. However, you can certainly think the way you want to and that's perfectly fine. I wouldn't try to convince you otherwise either seeing how difficult it is (hopefully the "is" becomes a "was" after this post) to teach you something as trivial as this.

 

[Champion Leon]

Misty Terrain does block confusion, ShedMiddleFinga
https://m.bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Misty_Terrain_(move)

It also prevents Rest, and if Yawn was used and the Pokémon becomes Drowsy, then Sleep is prevented unless it wears off the turn it would fall asleep (next turn).

morogrim Sleep can cause damage with Bad Dreams. So if someone used No Guard Lovely Kiss or Sing, they could use a Bad Dreams teammate.
***********
Since most people don’t ever use Misty or Electric (or even Grassy) Surge, let me put in perspective how Sleep can still pressure Terrain teams, similar to the way Priority would still pressure Psychic Terrain teams:

I think Sleep would be less of an issue if Anchor Shot and other moves didn’t trap opponents into Sleep so waking up can become only viable for 1 turn before being put to sleep again. (This is important because you can even Anchor Shot a Misty Surge user and then Spore it when Misty Terrain wears off).

This all assumes 2 things: They don’t have an escape move- Dragon Tail / Circle Throw / Whirlwind / Volt Switch / U-turn / Baton Pass / Parting Shot or they are not a Ghost-Type.

U-turn alone prevents this from being a huge issue, but it can still be absent from many Pokémon’s movesets.

So Misty Surge can work on a Ghost-Type like Giratina, for example, but you also have to ensure when you switch it out, that when you send something else in, you can U-Turn, etc. once the foe uses Anchor Shot, so you can reset Misty Terrain. In either case, the threat of Spore, etc. still requires calculated Switching on your part, just to prevent Sleep itself.

Since Terrain wears off at the end of the turn, you would need to U-Turn the turn it wears off to something else, and then switch in to Giratina the following turn. Giving your opponent at least 1 free turn on your switch to Giratina from the Pokémon that was U-turned in.

This also means you cannot switch to a Flying type that would be unprotected by the Terrain.
Factor in the switch to Giratina for setting Misty Surge, the switch out to play with the rest of your team, the U-Turn to another teammate on the final turn Misty Surge lasts and you have used 3 turns out of 5 or 8, just to prevent Sleep.

You also have to switch back to Giratina to reset it, giving a free turn to your opponent.

That gives you 2 / 5 or 5 / 8 turns to use your team under Misty Surge. Since the threat of Sleep can force switches even when immune, due to the limited duration, it alone can rack up hazard damage and necessitate losing momentum.

The opportunity cost of Misty Surge is not being able to use any status moves against your opponent’s Non-Flying types or Toxic Orb on your own team’s Non-Flying types (PHeal), a reduction in your own Dragon moves’ damage, and the factor of not protecting any Flying-Types on your team.

You can use Electric Surge to still take advantage of PHeal, and statusing your opponent’s Pokémon with other options like No Guard Zap Cannon, while powering up Electric moves and still preventing sleep, but you still don’t get all of the advantages of Misty (prevent their self-inflicted status like PHeal, their Dragon moves, and preventing all of their status moves- not just Sleep).

 

[E4 Flint]

Thanks all for the level of high-quality discussion on the topic.

My thoughts on sleep have traditionally been close to one-to-one with what mamp said. I have thought that with the change in sleep reset mechanics from gen 5 to gen 6, the key introduction of Safety Goggles, the usage of increasingly viable abilities in PH, MG, Magic Bounce as well as supplementary tools that keep getting introduced like (in order of gens they were used) sleep talk, magic coat, insomnia/vital spirit, terrains, comatose have led to the effectiveness of sleep going down. Insomnia and Vital Spirit in fact are the "ultimate counters" for sleep that people have said do not exist in this thread. I have also noticed that sleep out of pretty much anything else, has resulted in high levels of confirmation bias i.e. people tend to remember when they've lost due to a bad sleep roll much more than when they've won because they got a favorable one, again which mamp touches on.

Yes, as Shed said, it is true mold sleep can be run which has much fewer counters, but the ones that do exist are much more popular than mold + sleep itself has historically been while still having some of the niche tools like comatose, insomnia that still do work. I have covered this topic in detail last gen:

Hide

I believe that sleep can be used competitively, as a risk-reward tool, a coverage option that improves your mu against certain mons that you could not otherwise beat, just as if you ran another move. A positive example of this would actually be, imo, the exact example morogrim mentioned with kyogre; the use of sleep allows a mon to beat another that they normally would not be able to, just as a specific coverage move would e.g. bolt strike on sf m2y. This is also seen in many ph mons which sometimes have to decide between a general purpose sleep move and a better more specific, coverage option for mons or a team that are more sleep-resistant.

However, I recognize that while this might be fine in an isolated one on one, with the increase in power creep, this has led to instead of taking down a specific mu, to wrapping up the game as klang mentions and morogrim continued in his post. I also see highlighter's point about being forced to run goggles is actually a centralization as many other items could be used (even though goggles has the secondary benefit of being immune to weather damage). Whether this brings it into the territory of banworthy is I guess what we need to figure out.

(tldr)
Therefore, I am considering taking action on sleep in bh. I think the first step should be a poll to determine what options we should have. My initial thoughts are

1. implement a sleep clause. I personally think this would be the preferred outcome to keep the competitive usage of sleep, but it may be too drastic of a step
2. ban specific sleep moves. I don't believe in banning sleep in its entirety. I actually do agree with Shed that we do not need to be tied to the way other tiers usually solve this by having a sleep clause. If there is interest in suspecting individual moves one by one after seeing how they do then I think we should facilitate that, just as it's done in 1v1
3. there are enough tools available to handle sleep; no further action is needed

i would like you all to discuss these potential options and I will read and go ahead with the next steps as needed. thanks again

 

[morogrim]

A positive example of this would actually be, imo, the exact example morogrim mentioned with kyogre; the use of sleep allows a mon to beat another that they normally would not be able to, just as a specific coverage move would e.g. bolt strike on sf m2y. This is also seen in many ph mons which sometimes have to decide between a general purpose sleep move and a better more specific, coverage option for mons or a team that are more sleep-resistant.

The problem is Bolt Strike has a flat 85% accuracy, whereas in the cases where you run sleep moves as the "risk reward coverage option," you usually need the full 3 turns of sleep for this "coverage move" to be effective. This obviously points out that relying on something like a 3 turn sleep in far more uncompetitive than relying on a move that has a flat accuracy of 85% for example. If anything, relying on a 3 turn sleep is a bit closer to relying on Sheer Cold as a coverage option than Bolt Strike. Obviously sleep is by no means the same as an OHKO move, but on the spectrum of "risk reward coverage moves," relying on getting specifically 3 turns of sleep is probably closer to the OHKO move end of the spectrum than a move such as Bolt Strike.

 

[ElMustacho]

Thanks all for the level of high-quality discussion on the topic.

My thoughts on sleep have traditionally been close to one-to-one with what mamp said. I have thought that with the change in sleep reset mechanics from gen 5 to gen 6, the key introduction of Safety Goggles, the usage of increasingly viable abilities in PH, MG, Magic Bounce as well as supplementary tools that keep getting introduced like (in order of gens they were used) sleep talk(1), magic coat, insomnia/vital spirit, terrains, comatose(2) have led to the effectiveness of sleep going down. Insomnia and Vital Spirit in fact are the "ultimate counters" for sleep that people have said do not exist in this thread. I have also noticed that sleep out of pretty much anything else, has resulted in high levels of confirmation bias i.e. people tend to remember when they've lost due to a bad sleep roll much more than when they've won because they got a favorable one, again which mamp touches on. (3)

Yes, as Shed said, it is true mold sleep can be run which has much fewer counters(4), but the ones that do exist are much more popular than mold + sleep itself has historically been while still having some of the niche tools like comatose, insomnia that still do work. I have covered this topic in detail last gen:

Hide

I believe that sleep can be used competitively, as a risk-reward tool(5), a coverage option that improves your mu against certain mons that you could not otherwise beat(6), just as if you ran another move. A positive example of this would actually be, imo, the exact example morogrim mentioned with kyogre; the use of sleep allows a mon to beat another that they normally would not be able to, just as a specific coverage move would e.g. bolt strike on sf m2y. This is also seen in many ph mons which sometimes have to decide between a general purpose sleep move and a better more specific, coverage option for mons or a team that are more sleep-resistant.

However, I recognize that while this might be fine in an isolated one on one, with the increase in power creep, this has led to instead of taking down a specific mu, to wrapping up the game as klang mentions and morogrim continued in his post. I also see highlighter's point about being forced to run goggles is actually a centralization as many other items could be used (even though goggles has the secondary benefit of being immune to weather damage). Whether this brings it into the territory of banworthy is I guess what we need to figure out.

(tldr)
Therefore, I am considering taking action on sleep in bh. I think the first step should be a poll to determine what options we should have. My initial thoughts are

1. implement a sleep clause. I personally think this would be the preferred outcome to keep the competitive usage of sleep, but it may be too drastic of a step
2. ban specific sleep moves. I don't believe in banning sleep in its entirety. I actually do agree with Shed that we do not need to be tied to the way other tiers usually solve this by having a sleep clause. If there is interest in suspecting individual moves one by one after seeing how they do then I think we should facilitate that, just as it's done in 1v1
3. there are enough tools available to handle sleep; no further action is needed

i would like you all to discuss these potential options and I will read and go ahead with the next steps as needed. thanks again

I'd like to comment some of the numbered points (bold and italic) in the quote before discussing on the action of sleep in bh.
1) Sleep Talk is laughably a check to sleep. Most of the problems caused by sleep are inconsistencies as the number of sleep turns is unknown. Each turn of sleeping has a chance of waking you up and a chance of doing nothing, except the 3rd turn where we know we wake up and the "0th" turn where we know we can't wake up. If Sleep Talk is run then the chance of using the intended move (assuming you have one to begin with) is 1/3. Which is ridiculous, because we are trading use the intended move or do nothing with 1/3 chance of using the intended move or do nothing. It might have been useful in the past, I wasn't even here in gen 5 and 6 without oras, but it's flat out bad right now, like not even worth mentioning. Who would have have the moveslot to run it? Is fighting rng to wake up with rng to pick the correct move a good idea?
2) If we are listing the checks to sleep, we might want to add Quick Feet and Guts (orb activated), autoheal from weather in the form of Hydration and Leaf Guard(idk if it's the right name) and Shed Skin. The most relevant of this addition is probably Quick Feet, but let's be honest even if very rare it's probably more relevant than Insomnia as it also allows to outspeed dazzling (sort of). For moves we have Substitute (when not Sing/Grass Whistle) and Uproar (I'm listing everything I can think of, I know it's bad). Also we have berries.
3) I think that the explanation lies here:" I can lose on teambuilding because I didn't prepared for MMY yet I'm facing one and I can blame it on me, I can lose on predicts as I sent Zygarde into MMX and it clicked a scouted choice locked Ice Hammer that could have been Bolt Strike and I can blame it on me, I can prepare for sleep and [...] but nowhere I was given the chance to influence that amount of sleep turns (unless Early Bird), I can't blame it on me". That little (or big if you want to see it that way) detail is the infuriating one. It's rng and it produces those effects (confirmation bias). It also happens with irl slot machine but I'd derail if I discussed about that. The closest thing I can think of that could piss off like that is sending in a 65% HP Flash Fire Registeel into -ate Diancie boomburst to heal some damage only to get critted on switchin. Making a good choice and seeing it fail because rng sucks. Similarly ph xerns beats most regenvesters (including ogre excluding tina) solely dependant on sleep rolls, because Magma Storm into Spore means that ogre with 3 turns of sleep actually never wakes. (He's dead, Jim)cit.
4) The only thing I can think off that Teravolt sleep beats that other stuff doesn't is Magic Bounce. "Much fewer" is incorrect because it's just one. I'll have someone say:"hey but knock off and purify and stuff" but then I answer that it's a lot of support and it comes with the price of not running something else.
5) I've seen people saying that sleep is dumb to use because it's low risk high reward. It is false, for anyone not believing this. Currently in the meta it is possible to abuse a sleep predict mostly with switches. Any ph activated mon that gets in gains 1/8 of hp. It begins to matter rather immediately given that 12.5% usually means 2hko turns into 3hko (looking at fakespeed vs Regigigas). Anything already status-ed comes in for free. Primal Groudon yet to revert can switch in for free when carrying Misty/Electric terrain. Magic Bounce can get in and you gotta be immune to that sleep yourself or you are not going to like the next turn. In case of Spore the list grows by adding whatever runs googles and grass types, Kartana and Ferrothorn. Kartana free switches are frightening because the thing is going to mop the floor with so many things. You gotta start to pray that you have a good check to that particular set or else the morale is sack something or worse, GG. It is true for most wallbreakers, but Kartana has the "free switch on Spore" option.
6) The wild thing is that common users of Spore need Spore to beat the stuff they normally beats. Take for example Ph gigas; a exemplary user of both Spore and being imposterproof. Take out Spore and the thing is no longer improof. Believe it or not, sleep less gigas vs imposter is actually a speed tie on the last facade, facade boosts and ph healing factored in (without koff, but you still wouldn't quite survive well with koff). The same goes for Xern. Sometimes, Spore is the set, not a coverage move.

Now, for the actions;

a) Sleep clause; If there's a correct amount, it's 1. 2 doesn't help. I'm not either particularly pro or against it, but it surely is reasonable.
b) Ban sleep move/s; Where would that line should be placed? Spore would be almost certainly on the list, maybe kiss, but the others? Sleep Powder is the bad mix of the first two, is that enough? In a kiss and Spore less meta, Sleep Powder still sort of requires googles as a check, and it wouldn't be any different. Stop at Hypnosis? At the No Guard moves? We gotta try to rng past enemies with Serene Grace Relic Song or not? Yawn still has 100% and more or less forces a switch, but you have the option right?
c) Do nothing; this is the other viable option. The noncompetitive sleep options mostly are accompanied by smash/Contrary, so maybe that's the problem? A complicated clause that says; no sleep with smash/Contrary? Looks

sorry about this, I had to

to me.

I wish I was clear enough with my points, if you need an explanation ask it.