Announcement Sleep is now universally banned in LGPE

[Eve]

:sm/jolteon::sm/venusaur::sm/ninetales-alola:
The woke agenda strikes again
​

See thread title. Acting upon genuinely unanimous agreement within the active LGPE community and effective council, Sleep moves (except Rest) will no longer be allowed in Smogon's standard Single Battle LGPE formats (OU, UU, RU etc.).

Why?
Mechanical parity with cartridge aside...
Arguably the three most defining Pokémon in OU right now, outside the obvious Mew, Melmetal, and fast megas, are Venusaur, Jolteon, and Vaporeon. These three basically always run Sleep Powder or Yawn, which result in uncompetitive situations where they can bypass otherwise reasonable counterplay in ways that other Pokémon simply cannot. Because these three are so popular and provide such good role compression to teams beyond their sleep access, this comes up rather often and doesn't really benefit the metagame- these Pokemon will almost certainly continue to perform well in their roles even with Sleep banned. The only arguable positive impact of Sleep moves is that they help keep Nasty Plot Mew in check, and if that becomes a problem, it's one we can later. There is already a good chance anyway that this is the first of many tiering actions LGPE will face in the relatively near future anyway.

Sleep has also proved a major nuisance in LGPE UU, which is, all in all, an extremely balanced and skill-based format. Sleep is the exception, especially in the form of Alolan Ninetales who regularly uses Hypnosis to randomly sweep in seemingly impossible situations. Victreebel has often used Sleep Powder on a set with Substitute to put its limited answers in awkward spots, and Venomoth's current placement in UUBL is undeniably thanks in part to Sleep Powder. With the tier's significant increase in power level and defensive options since Venomoth's ban, and now the removal of Sleep Powder from its arsenal, I think we can probably give the moth a second chance in UU in the near future.

Not a lot else to say, other than stay tuned for an OU VR update that'll probably lead to even more new toys for UU to play with.