participating in my first sustest, wish me luck homies, because fuck kyurem i hate that thang
Btw, thank you from removing grasswhistle from the list of ban moves after I raised up that fact on r/stunfisk that no mon in SV OU learned that move... you might want to do the same with lovely kiss...
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I think Kyurems best teammate is probably G-Slowking with Chilly Reception (If you want to use the Specs Kyurem).How have people been building teams for kyurem? I'd like to build my own for a suspect account but I haven't seen it enough to really get an idea of how to build around it.
I don't agree with the full sleep ban either. I would have liked for yawn to remain legal, but at the same time complex bans are really stupid and we should try to avoid them. However, let's not pretend that Sleep Clause Mod wasn't an issue well before Darkrai came to play. I remember in early gen 8 there was a discussion about it as well, as well as earlier in gen 9. Hypnosis Darkrai winning games was the straw that broke the camel's back in the eyes of many players. Not to mention the fact that SCM is inconsistent with modern tiering policy AND the sleep moves ban has precedent from Gen 5 OU. Calling Darkrai subpar is also just wrong, he's a very potent special attacker that can do incredibly well with correct positioning, but he's also extremely frail and can't really touch unaware mons without the correct coverage for both their base typing and their tera. In addition to that, base 125 is a good speed tier but it's also contested by most of the scarfers available. Iron Valiant is arguably banworthy (an argument for another time) but is undeniably very good. A9 was only ever good as a screens setter and almost never actually lived through the mid game. Amoongus is genuinely good even without sleep, as has been seen with assault vest sets in gen 7. Darkrai also never needed hypnosis, that set sucked ass and left you more vulnerable to the second special wall because you had one less coverage move. I think banning hypnosis would have been a good first step (with the second step being a full sleep move ban) but again, complex bans suck. There were completely reasonable fears that sleep would be handled the same way baton pass has been in past gens.- This is a terrible ban, and it was done in a terrible manner with zero consistent logic. A few players deciding on a whole mechanic is wholly wrong. The ban gained traction based on results from a risky Darkrai set, and a niche Iron Valiant set. You already know what this means: there were some especially dramatic victories in tournament/high level play and players are not happy about it.
- That's the only real reason. Everything else has been pseudo intellectual arguments to justify a supermajority of a minority of the player base making this change. I'll break down the integrity of the ban below, and explain why it truly is just a kneejerk reaction with no foundational argument:
- This was never about sleep specifically, because mons like A-Ninetales and Amoongus have been running around using Hypnosis and Spore to no complaint for a while now, and before that Clodsire and Torkoal made healthy use of Yawn (and mons like Hippowdon in lower tiers). Beyond that, Sleep Clause acted as a proper buffer for sleep abuse, and the "cartridge integrity" argument is pointless because we already know that Smogon does not always go by cartridge. Just banning OHKO moves is against cartridge so why pretend to be in hysterics about Sleep Clause? If sleep was truly such an overwhelming issue, why ignore it until now?
- This isn't about status in general, because freeze and paralysis (which has been nerfed over the gens) are not included in the argument. If status that randomly hampered your ability to act was an issue, why not also ban anything that can freeze or paralyze the opponent? A comprehensive ban of anything that randomly hampers actions would be a more grounded implementation of the complaint of the council based on their pseudo-arguments against sleep, which are that it is "uncompetitive" and can wildly swing momentum. Don't freeze and paralysis do the same thing?
- This isn't about RNG in general. We already know many moves and abilities that players are perfectly okay with and use have chances to afflict status such as is the case of a plethora of moves, and abilities like Static and Flame Body. So a random chance of status being applied and swinging momentum in your favor in a manner totally outside of both players' control ALREADY exists and is CONDONED. So it's not about sleep, it's not about agency-robbing status, and it's not about RNG. The ban is inconsistent with the logic of any of these arguments.
So what is this about? This is about tourney players getting caught with their pants down versus a risky Sash Darkrai set spamming hypnosis, and Iron Valiant (yet again) showing up with a set that allows it to really abuse it's booster energy speed strategy to overwhelm the opponent. The end results of this ban shows how terrible it is:
- Darkrai will languish as a subpar special attacker and probably continue to drop in the tiers (because the mon is designed around abusing sleep)
- Iron Valiant will be perfectly fine because that mon can do literally whatever it wants with its massive movepool, and booster energy speed.
- offense is even MORE powerful now because defensive mons can no longer threaten sleep on greedy switch ins and boost attempts.
- many mons like Amoongus, Torkoal, Hippowdon, Alolan Ninetales, and others will lose a desperately needed tool to maintain viability wherever they are.
The easiest way to sum up how stupid and illogical this ban is is this: Sweet Kiss is banned, but Dire Claw is not.
The logically consistent choices when dealing with this scenario, if they cared at all about competitive integrity and being part of a community, would have been:
1. Nothing at all. Darkrai and Valiant are relying on risky and niche sets to surprise their opponents hoping for RNG to save them. It is what it is. If a player wants to bet the farm on that, let them.
2. If you feel you MUST ban a move, ban hypnosis. A 60 accuracy sleep move that is predominantly learned by mons that do not need it in the meta and it feels really grimy when it lands and you get a lot of momentum. Darkrai, Valiant, and A9 are the biggest abusers and aside from Darkrai, these mons don't need Hypnosis to do their job and do it well. Darkrai will end up dropping tiers but, it is what it is.
3. If you MUST ban a mon, then ban Darkrai and Valiant to Ubers. Darkrai will always be rage inducing by design because it's supposed to abuse sleep, and Valiant is one of the most abusable pokemon in the game right now. It can do everything but wall. Status, boost, bait and trap (with d bond), sweep, stallbreak, chip, revenge kill... it does EVERYTHING with an absolutely MASSIVE toolkit that leaves it wanting for just about nothing. It has a move and plan for EVERY mon in the tier, and with a winning matchup to boot. I'm honestly surprised it and Kingambit haven't been banned yet, but you know what, It's good they haven't. Power is a good presence in any meta, as the absence of overwhelming power results in slow grindy matches that nobody but people with unreasonable amounts of freetime can enjoy. (This is within reason of course, so, for example, Gambit is only scary as the last mon, and valiant is scary if built correctly and entered at the right time) but I digresss.
4. If you really want to pretend this is about player agency and pure competitiveness, then you MUST ban ALL RNG factors. Get rid of any move that has a chance to apply ANY secondary effect, and remove status moves that apply any status to you. You must also remove all non-100 accurate moves. I don't think I need to explain why this is stupid.
Correction, Teal Mask re-introduced Flip Turn as a TM. Most of the mons that had it in Gen 8 got it back, including Barraskewda.
how are you gonna keep this "monarchy" bit going in the age of greater community involvement within the history of smogon, stop larping man its just pocket monstersThe Yawn ban is so stupid Im sure the OU monarchy's head will end up rolling at this rate. Such a dumb decitions, did Torkoal really deserve that?
Yeahhow are you gonna keep this "monarchy" bit going in the age of greater community involvement within the history of smogon, stop larping man its just pocket monsters
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If (mechanic) is uncompetitive in high level play and negatively affects tournament results, then a ban of (mechanic) is justified under the grounds of making the game more uncompetitive. That shouldn't be too controversial, but I have a feeling it will be.Hi I would like to share my thoughts about the sleep move ban.
- This is a terrible ban, and it was done in a terrible manner with zero consistent logic. A few players deciding on a whole mechanic is wholly wrong. The ban gained traction based on results from a risky Darkrai set, and a niche Iron Valiant set. You already know what this means: there were some especially dramatic victories in tournament/high level play and players are not happy about it.
Putting aside the fact that I haven't seen a Clodsire with yawn in months, the cartridge integrity argument is far from pointless. OHKO clause is enforceable on cartridge by disqualifying a player who brings OHKO, which also applies to evasion, Baton Pass, Last Respects, Shed Tail, Species Clause, and any of the Ubers banlist. Sleep Clause Mod is not enforceable on cart because the mod never prevented you from bringing any sleep inflicting move, it would just actively alter the gamestate to make it so that a sleep move fails when used more than once, and disqualifying in this case creates a disparity on cart with edge cases such as Relic Song, Dire Claw, Encore, and exhausted PP on other moves + no switches or trapping moves in effect.- That's the only real reason. Everything else has been pseudo intellectual arguments to justify a supermajority of a minority of the player base making this change. I'll break down the integrity of the ban below, and explain why it truly is just a kneejerk reaction with no foundational argument:
- This was never about sleep specifically, because mons like A-Ninetales and Amoongus have been running around using Hypnosis and Spore to no complaint for a while now, and before that Clodsire and Torkoal made healthy use of Yawn (and mons like Hippowdon in lower tiers). Beyond that, Sleep Clause acted as a proper buffer for sleep abuse, and the "cartridge integrity" argument is pointless because we already know that Smogon does not always go by cartridge. Just banning OHKO moves is against cartridge so why pretend to be in hysterics about Sleep Clause? If sleep was truly such an overwhelming issue, why ignore it until now?
Freeze is not a consistently inflictable status. Sleep moves that have a chance to inflict on attack, such as Relic Song and Dire Claw, are fully legal. The aim of the ban is not to remove 10% hax, but to tier moves that can somewhat consistently inflict a status deemed uncompetitive. Furthermore, Paralysis has utility outside of its RNG-inflicted inaction (which is shared with sleep) as a form of speed control for faster pokemon.- This isn't about status in general, because freeze and paralysis (which has been nerfed over the gens) are not included in the argument. If status that randomly hampered your ability to act was an issue, why not also ban anything that can freeze or paralyze the opponent? A comprehensive ban of anything that randomly hampers actions would be a more grounded implementation of the complaint of the council based on their pseudo-arguments against sleep, which are that it is "uncompetitive" and can wildly swing momentum. Don't freeze and paralysis do the same thing?
Okay, where the hell did ANYONE in favour of sleep claim that they wanted to remove RNG in general? I have not seen a single argument complaining about 10% burns or Iron Head flinch chance or whatever else it is that you think it is that people are trying to tier. This is uniquely about sleep and the way it functions being problematic.- This isn't about RNG in general. We already know many moves and abilities that players are perfectly okay with and use have chances to afflict status such as is the case of a plethora of moves, and abilities like Static and Flame Body. So a random chance of status being applied and swinging momentum in your favor in a manner totally outside of both players' control ALREADY exists and is CONDONED. So it's not about sleep, it's not about agency-robbing status, and it's not about RNG. The ban is inconsistent with the logic of any of these arguments.
ctrl-c ctrl-v first line of my postSo what is this about? This is about tourney players getting caught with their pants down versus a risky Sash Darkrai set spamming hypnosis, and Iron Valiant (yet again) showing up with a set that allows it to really abuse it's booster energy speed strategy to overwhelm the opponent. The end results of this ban shows how terrible it is:
mfw 135 spA 125 spe ice/dark/poison coverage with np and potential tera blast coverage is "subpar" now- Darkrai will languish as a subpar special attacker and probably continue to drop in the tiers (because the mon is designed around abusing sleep)
This is the first thing I agree with you on and it's "iron valiant good". I'll take what I can get.- Iron Valiant will be perfectly fine because that mon can do literally whatever it wants with its massive movepool, and booster energy speed.
Offensive mons are stronger than they've ever been, but defensive mons still have access to toxic, paralysis, their own boosting options (curse/id/cm/etc.), phazing, hazards, or recovery if they're low. They're not starving for move options.- offense is even MORE powerful now because defensive mons can no longer threaten sleep on greedy switch ins and boost attempts.
Aside from the fact that a9t still has av/encore and is probably going to be just fine running both stabs, most of these mons will be fine. Amoonguss can run Toxic and hex/tantrum, Torkoal has numerous slot 4 options and isn't going to be severely impacted with the strength of current sun abusers (some of which are also relying on sleep powder to set up, btw!), and Hippo still has rocks, recovery, stab, and rock coverage/stockpile/phazing/body press. Even if they weren't as strong, preserving viability of mons comes second to tiering uncompetitive mechanics.- many mons like Amoongus, Torkoal, Hippowdon, Alolan Ninetales, and others will lose a desperately needed tool to maintain viability wherever they are.
Sweet Kiss is not banned. None of us are clamoring for action to be taken of a 75% accurate move that inflicts confusion.The easiest way to sum up how stupid and illogical this ban is is this: Sweet Kiss is banned, but Dire Claw is not.
The problem comes when these sets have a strong enough risk/reward with sash to be worth using by a large majority on ladder, taking agency out of any opposing player's range of options. Unfortunately, this ended up becoming the case with the Darkrai Hypnosis 3Atk set with sash.The logically consistent choices when dealing with this scenario, if they cared at all about competitive integrity and being part of a community, would have been:
1. Nothing at all. Darkrai and Valiant are relying on risky and niche sets to surprise their opponents hoping for RNG to save them. It is what it is. If a player wants to bet the farm on that, let them.
For this to work, the people arguing for a Hypnosis ban would have to prove that the move itself, and not its users, are the problem, which isn't feasible when the move is less accurate and reliable than options like sleep powder or spore. Also, stop underestimating Darkrai without sleep.2. If you feel you MUST ban a move, ban hypnosis. A 60 accuracy sleep move that is predominantly learned by mons that do not need it in the meta and it feels really grimy when it lands and you get a lot of momentum. Darkrai, Valiant, and A9 are the biggest abusers and aside from Darkrai, these mons don't need Hypnosis to do their job and do it well. Darkrai will end up dropping tiers but, it is what it is.
Darkrai's non-Hypnosis sets, while annoying, have answers in faster mons that can threaten it with a good switch, such as Valiant or Boulder, or mons that can reliably ignore NP like Clodsire. Valiant can be properly scouted for and answered by Skarmory (SD /mixed set), Clodsire (CM or mixed without Psyshock, forces timer on physical with toxic), or Corviknight (basically any set that isn't bolt, which Valiant rarely runs nowadays.)3. If you MUST ban a mon, then ban Darkrai and Valiant to Ubers. Darkrai will always be rage inducing by design because it's supposed to abuse sleep, and Valiant is one of the most abusable pokemon in the game right now. It can do everything but wall. Status, boost, bait and trap (with d bond), sweep, stallbreak, chip, revenge kill... it does EVERYTHING with an absolutely MASSIVE toolkit that leaves it wanting for just about nothing. It has a move and plan for EVERY mon in the tier, and with a winning matchup to boot. I'm honestly surprised it and Kingambit haven't been banned yet, but you know what, It's good they haven't. Power is a good presence in any meta, as the absence of overwhelming power results in slow grindy matches that nobody but people with unreasonable amounts of freetime can enjoy. (This is within reason of course, so, for example, Gambit is only scary as the last mon, and valiant is scary if built correctly and entered at the right time) but I digresss.
We are removing things we can tier. A major reason we removed Sleep Clause Mod is because it was just that - a mod, non-enforceable or replicable on cartridge. What you are suggesting would involve either removing the vast majority of moves in the game or modding them to not inflict their effects, which once again is not enforceable. Pokemon is a game with an inherent level of RNG and it is on the player to potentially account for that occurring. There will be games you lose to RNG, but having it be a common and uncompetitive presence in the tier is problematic.4. If you really want to pretend this is about player agency and pure competitiveness, then you MUST ban ALL RNG factors. Get rid of any move that has a chance to apply ANY secondary effect, and remove status moves that apply any status to you. You must also remove all non-100 accurate moves. I don't think I need to explain why this is stupid.
There's so much wrong with this post that it would take hours for me to boil it all down. I'll just go over a couple things.
Banning moves doesn't violate cartridge mechanics lol. Unless you are trying to tell me there's some force in-game that's making you click an OHKO move every few turns.
Most of the main abusers of sleep were either offensive mons or support mons. Amoongus is pretty much the only relevant defensive mon that was using sleep, and it isn't even OU by usage.
I don't agree with the full sleep ban either. I would have liked for yawn to remain legal, but at the same time complex bans are really stupid and we should try to avoid them. However, let's not pretend that Sleep Clause Mod wasn't an issue well before Darkrai came to play. I remember in early gen 8 there was a discussion about it as well, as well as earlier in gen 9. Hypnosis Darkrai winning games was the straw that broke the camel's back in the eyes of many players. Not to mention the fact that SCM is inconsistent with modern tiering policy AND the sleep moves ban has precedent from Gen 5 OU. Calling Darkrai subpar is also just wrong, he's a very potent special attacker that can do incredibly well with correct positioning, but he's also extremely frail and can't really touch unaware mons without the correct coverage for both their base typing and their tera. In addition to that, base 125 is a good speed tier but it's also contested by most of the scarfers available. Iron Valiant is arguably banworthy (an argument for another time) but is undeniably very good. A9 was only ever good as a screens setter and almost never actually lived through the mid game. Amoongus is genuinely good even without sleep, as has been seen with assault vest sets in gen 7. Darkrai also never needed hypnosis, that set sucked ass and left you more vulnerable to the second special wall because you had one less coverage move. I think banning hypnosis would have been a good first step (with the second step being a full sleep move ban) but again, complex bans suck. There were completely reasonable fears that sleep would be handled the same way baton pass has been in past gens.
On your point about offense, most of the pokemon clicking sleep moves were on offensive teams themselves too. Like defense invalidates itself this generation and offense is always going to be dominant and the sleep ban didn't do anything to counteract this. Solution number 4 is also completely unreasonable and a strawman and you know it. There's a line between competitive RNG and bullshit RNG and that line has been determined to be sleep (even if some of us disagree with that assessment). There's also nothing stopping the council from deciding to unban yawn specifically, however unlikely that is, with enough community support for that move.
Dire Claw also was never the problem move on either of Sneasler's 2 main sets and it also doesn't need to be banned because Sneasler was banned on its own merits, as well as the thing where an offensive move will never be banned if only one pokemon learns it (i.e. Last Respects pre home). Relic Song ban would de facto ban Meloetta Pirouette forme. And while one could argue that it would be consistent, it's also consistent to not ban moves with the secondary effect of banning sleep as also seen in the gen 5 sleep ban.
Overall, I believe this was a post made out of anger, not out of logic. In trying to decry the "pseudo-intellectual" arguments you see, you made many yourself.
dude just go play VGC if you hate smogon decision making so much. go play BSS which is, I've heard before at least, the actual thing game freak balances around. Like if you're getting this heated about a decision that had most good players and many midlevel players agreeing with it, like just step away.You should take a logic class if you think so. I'm merely assessing their argument. While I dislike the decision, I've long since removed any emotional stock in smogon. I like the tool and being able to play but I don't believe the metagames, at least OU which is where I used to frequent, is managed properly at all. There is a fundamentally incorrect belief that fuels Smogon which is that Pokemon, a game with baked in RNG, competitively built around double battles, should be forced to work for 6 v 6 singles no matter what the cost, and that cost ends up being an largely inconsistent banning system that revolves around what a minority of the playerbase happens to think at the moment.
I think the exceptions in past gens shouldn't be changed because they make the tiers playable. Freeze Clause in gen 1 for exampleYou literally can (with a few exceptions, none of which present in gen 9. said exceptions should be changed but again, not in gen 9). It just takes a longer time to do so, Showdown just expedites the process a ton.
although i rarely post, im very glad to know that kyurem after a long month is finally getting the suspect and perhaps even the banKyurem is being suspected in SV OU: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...ocess-round-9-let-it-go.3735078/#post-9948251
It's hard to read this post since someone spilled a whole bottle of emojis on italthough i rarely post, im very glad to know that kyurem after a long month is finally getting the suspect and perhaps even the ban
For a while now i've had very strong thoughts about , and more or less its choice sets(both & ), although OU has had plenty of heavy hitters on the special side(most comparably in this metagame), the common thing with these is that they usually fall under have the archetype of glass canons, were they wont live more than 3 moves at MOST unless the matchup is incredibly in their favor, in regards to the comparision too, existing in a metagame were is 1/3 of the most prevalent pokemon(the other 2 being & ) makes it more barable. But kyurem isnt like that, to me it falls into exactly what a broken pokemon is, were you're never strong enough to take it out before it takes you out, but youre also not tanky enough to live its moves.
Just off the basis of its typing, ice dragon is already amazing offensively, and considering the fact you get freeze dry too which makes potential walls such as toxapex get completely halted because of freeze dry. A very early counter(or at least check) at the start of dlc 2 i thought would be prevalent was , most famously used on LandorusTBeatsGreatTusk's miku gang team, yet it barely it gets 3HKO'd by freeze dry and in return has to spam moonblast which results in a 3HKO on kyurem in return. Basically requiring you to switch out into your ice resist and start the cycle all over again once kyurems back in.
Another one of the tiers most prevalent walls even after both DLC 1 & 2 has been , having a naturally amazing ability is already something keen eye will take notice of to be able to check it with tera, but even with it the most you can do is a great 50% with ruination, then chip it with earthquake or whirlwind
all of this isn't EVEN mentioning earth power, being able to have perfect coverage where NOTHING resist your coverage no matter what, was exactly what many had issues with , although that pokemon had much more than just amazing coverage, its already a basic issue, and with the fact that has more bulk and can choose between being physical with AND special with & instead of just or , it tells me everything i need to know, although both of these pokemon fill different roles(with being able to fill MUCH more than just a physical setup sweeper), i feel as if both are heavily problematic as they limit what you're able to do, it feels as if you HAVE to run a check for kyurem alone instead of having an all around great special wall such as
while yes has always been a great special wall and is a common way to check it, it feels limiting to ONLY have blissey as your special wall, pokemon like and could work just as well as walls if was not around all feels too similar to 's control of the tier,
overall, i am hoping that kyurem will be banned after a long month of it being around and causing issues
honestly i just started doing it cuz others did too, i didnt even realize they had emojis but i'll keep this in mindIt's hard to read this post since someone spilled a whole bottle of emojis on it
Jokes aside, it's really hard to follow when there's a picture at least twice a sentence. I'm not sure where this trend came from, but I think it does more to hinder readability than help it.
Aside from the pictures thing, your writeup is good and I agree with the majority of it
There is a fundamentally incorrect belief that fuels Smogon which is that Pokemon, a game with baked in RNG, competitively built around double battles, should be forced to work for 6 v 6 singles no matter what the cost, and that cost ends up being an largely inconsistent banning system that revolves around what a minority of the playerbase happens to think at the moment.
If (mechanic) is uncompetitive in high level play and negatively affects tournament results, then a ban of (mechanic) is justified under the grounds of making the game more uncompetitive. That shouldn't be too controversial, but I have a feeling it will be.
Putting aside the fact that I haven't seen a Clodsire with yawn in months, the cartridge integrity argument is far from pointless. OHKO clause is enforceable on cartridge by disqualifying a player who brings OHKO, which also applies to evasion, Baton Pass, Last Respects, Shed Tail, Species Clause, and any of the Ubers banlist. Sleep Clause Mod is not enforceable on cart because the mod never prevented you from bringing any sleep inflicting move, it would just actively alter the gamestate to make it so that a sleep move fails when used more than once, and disqualifying in this case creates a disparity on cart with edge cases such as Relic Song, Dire Claw, Encore, and exhausted PP on other moves + no switches or trapping moves in effect.
Freeze is not a consistently inflictable status. Sleep moves that have a chance to inflict on attack, such as Relic Song and Dire Claw, are fully legal. The aim of the ban is not to remove 10% hax, but to tier moves that can somewhat consistently inflict a status deemed uncompetitive. Furthermore, Paralysis has utility outside of its RNG-inflicted inaction (which is shared with sleep) as a form of speed control for faster pokemon.
Okay, where the hell did ANYONE in favour of sleep claim that they wanted to remove RNG in general? I have not seen a single argument complaining about 10% burns or Iron Head flinch chance or whatever else it is that you think it is that people are trying to tier. This is uniquely about sleep and the way it functions being problematic.
mfw 135 spA 125 spe ice/dark/poison coverage with np and potential tera blast coverage is "subpar" now
This is the first thing I agree with you on and it's "iron valiant good". I'll take what I can get.
Offensive mons are stronger than they've ever been, but defensive mons still have access to toxic, paralysis, their own boosting options (curse/id/cm/etc.), phazing, hazards, or recovery if they're low. They're not starving for move options.
Sweet Kiss is not banned. None of us are clamoring for action to be taken of a 75% accurate move that inflicts confusion.
The problem comes when these sets have a strong enough risk/reward with sash to be worth using by a large majority on ladder, taking agency out of any opposing player's range of options. Unfortunately, this ended up becoming the case with the Darkrai Hypnosis 3Atk set with sash.
For this to work, the people arguing for a Hypnosis ban would have to prove that the move itself, and not its users, are the problem, which isn't feasible when the move is less accurate and reliable than options like sleep powder or spore. Also, stop underestimating Darkrai without sleep.
Darkrai's non-Hypnosis sets, while annoying, have answers in faster mons that can threaten it with a good switch, such as Valiant or Boulder, or mons that can reliably ignore NP like Clodsire. Valiant can be properly scouted for and answered by Skarmory (SD /mixed set), Clodsire (CM or mixed without Psyshock, forces timer on physical with toxic), or Corviknight (basically any set that isn't bolt, which Valiant rarely runs nowadays.)
We are removing things we can tier. A major reason we removed Sleep Clause Mod is because it was just that - a mod, non-enforceable or replicable on cartridge. What you are suggesting would involve either removing the vast majority of moves in the game or modding them to not inflict their effects, which once again is not enforceable. Pokemon is a game with an inherent level of RNG and it is on the player to potentially account for that occurring. There will be games you lose to RNG, but having it be a common and uncompetitive presence in the tier is problematic.
You literally can (with a few exceptions, none of which present in gen 9. said exceptions should be changed but again, not in gen 9). It just takes a longer time to do so, Showdown just expedites the process a ton.
dude just go play VGC if you hate smogon decision making so much. go play BSS which is, I've heard before at least, the actual thing game freak balances around. Like if you're getting this heated about a decision that had most good players and many midlevel players agreeing with it, like just step away.
One point being, why do we NOT tier with collateral in mind? What Gen 9 OU decides actively has an impact on every metagame below this (UU, RU..). Others have brought up confusion as to why it is tiered like this, and I have to agree with that. Regardless since thats the way it works, what makes it so tiering shouldn't keep in mind collateral damage? I understand every metagame has its own specific environment where some strategies thrive and others aren't as impactful, but given that there was an opportunity to solve this in another way that doesn't involve banning sleep entirely (see point 2), why are we not thinking about collateral? This could very easily be used as precedent to retroactively ban sleep in previous gens as well where it isn't as bad or as precedent to keep sleep banned going into the next generation. I know the topic of how this will affect oldgens was discussed in the thread, but given how much of Smogon's decisions seem to be precedent-based, its not absurd to think of this as a possible outcome. Focusing this entirely as an SV OU related discussion is being blind to the overall scope of a decision like this.As for banning Pokemon like Darkrai and Iron Valiant, this was the second most desirable outcome to me and I resonate with people taking this stance. The main thing it boils down to is that it would take banning multiple Pokemon on top of a clause that is a major outlier just to preserve a handful of sleep moves that would have an even smaller handful of users. Given that we never tier with collateral in mind, preserving these moves vs. preserving the other users is never a debate we will engage in -- any debate between the two camps is entirely arbitrary. This makes the primary differentiator the fact that the current Sleep Clause mod is ineffective and needs to be reformed in some capacity.
This seems to be saying things about this proposed solution that are not entirely true. Many of these things were accounted for, the idea was seemingly not entertained despite no glaring invalidity. Situations in which the opponent is encored or tricked into sleep moves but do not have the option to switch are quite rare and only seem to happen when the opponent is forcing the sleep-inducing pokemon to break the clause. MeepBard did have this situation accounted for in saying that, since the opponent is trying to force the player to break sleep clause, they should be punished by allowing a second sleep to go through (something that seems entirely reasonable). With PP Stalling, the clause could also gray out sleeping moves until it is the only move available. If a pokemon's only move is a sleep move and they cannot switch, the pokemon is dead in the water regardless and won't be able to benefit from multiple slept targets anyways. The other criticisms of MeepBard's solution are all criticisms that break gentleman's agreement. Predicting wake up turns and for sure misclicking are moves that would be entirely illegal in cartridge play. In the same way, it's illegal for a player on cartridge to accidentally select a team with a banned pokemon or ability on it when starting a battle. For our simulator, we automatically block illegal teams as a convenience feature and ergo we would automatically block sleep moves from being pressed. This is something that can always be replicated on cartridge. The obvious issue with it would be that Future Sleep abusers could still stir up trouble under the clause, but the solution that was proposed alongside that is to then simply ban those pokemon that abuse it. This gives us an avenue to keep sleep and maintain the flexibility to decide whether a pokemon with sleep is too much for the tier or not.[On Grayed Out Sleep] While you can agree to not click a second sleep move, there are various situations where it may be forced to come up such as Encore, predicting wake-up turns, PP stalling situations, misclicks, and so on. You cannot just have these avenues left entirely unaccounted for, so when one side of the spectrum includes a full solution to the problem in the metagame (meaning no future sleep abusers can stir-up trouble either and the current ones are mitigated) and a full solution to the issue people take with current policy (with it not being repeatable in-game), it is the default among the two.
This point still does not make much sense to me. To my knowledge, suspects can prove if the player is well-versed enough in a metagame to make informed decisions on it. This should apply to pokemon and mechanics. For what reason do players need to know tiering policy or historical precedent or anything else listed? Why does council get full power in this situation? Under this logic, council would have the power to ban a mechanic 99% of even the informed community wants to include in the metagame. I don't understand why in-depth knowledge of tiering policy is required to decide on what the community wants in a community-based pokemon format.For someone to ladder 30-50+ games in SV OU and achieve a high enough ELO to get requirements, this proves they are competent in the current metagame, giving them capability to rule on if a Pokemon is broken or balanced in their opinion. However, this does not include any components that pertain to policy. There is no mandate to know tiering policy, historical precedent, what is actually legal within the games, and a whole slew of other things that can pertain to deeper policy decisions. Given this, trying to suspect something like sleep moves or evasion, which fit under the umbrella of uncompetitive, would be akin to trying to fit a square object within a round hole: the qualifications for a suspect do not cover this area, in my opinion. I also stated my desire to handle things internally prior to the survey went up or the council voted here and nobody objected to it at the time whatsoever.
So you agree Showdown modifies the game in a way that cannot be replicated in cartridge, right?
How exactly is this a fundamentally incorrect belief, and what is your preferred alternative?
No, the contention is that Sleep Clause Mod as implemented could not be replicated mechanically on cartridge. All of the other Clauses result in game states that can be achieved in Cartridge play, but would take more time to reach the exact same mechanical result rather than being automated by the simulator and scripting. Sleep Mod actively changed the way the simulator behaved in a scenario compared to the same actions being taken in a game played the exact same way on Cartridge. It cannot be replicated without altering either the code or having to change the player decisions made on 1 or more turns to reach the same result.So you agree Showdown modifies the game in a way that cannot be replicated in cartridge, right?