I think the current SS metagame is pretty fun building and playing wise, I do enjoy it for now but we'll see if anything stands out and make it during PL. As many know I've been a strong advocate to reducing RNG in every 1v1 gen this includes banning sleep inducing moves, Jirachi, and Togekiss. While the latter two may be a bit farfetched, I think getting rid of sleep induce moves is a step in the right direction. RNG is part of the game, but removing RNG as much as we can would never hurt the metagame, it will always have a positive outcome rewarding the better player.
Why sleep inducing moves?
I think it's fairly simple to say that sleep is an uncompetitive status in a meta where you can't switch out and the whole game depends on that one Pokemon doing Pokemon stuff. If we go back to the definition of Uncompetitive in the
Tiering Policy Framework we get:
Uncompetitive - elements that reduce the effect of player choice / interaction on the end result to an extreme degree, such that "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant.
Sleep inducing moves reduce the player choice / interaction in two ways. First the moment the sleep inducing move gets used, for example Hypnosis is 60%, Sleep powder is 75%, Sing is 55%, Yawn is 100% but forces the protect/set up/attack situation. This completely lowers the interaction between players and really throw the game into RNG. Now before people say "Oh, all other moves can miss", there's one simple different, if Focus Blast hits you can survive it and KO the opponent for example, also other moves like Focus Blast, Thunder, Fire Blast are used as coverage / main STAB moves to deal damage and their purpose isn't to really stop the opposing Pokemon to not being able to move for x amount of turn. Plus, when it comes to moves like Fire Blast and Thunder, other moves like Flamethrower and Thunderbolt exists - with less BP ofc - without risking misses.
It also reduce the player choice / interaction after the sleep moves hits, here is where its more impactful and you leave the whole game to dicerolls for the next three turns. It removes every outplaying opportunity from one of the player which can reward the "less skillful play" pretty easily. I don't think sleep adds anything to the metagame other than blatant hax and leaving the game to RNG. Speed traps will always exist, but they will fall into "more skillful building/picking/playing" since they'll always be speed traps but they'll either fall in the category of utilizing sub/encore/disable or fast tanky Leech Seeders which are still valid strategies without sleep. Sleep ban would just target RNG speed traps that sole job is to outspeed put to sleep and leave the game to dicerolls which is highly uncompetitive.
Why sleep inducing moves not other hax chances?
Now before people say "Oh if we ban sleep while not ban Ice Beam?". The answer is pretty simple, moves with secondary effects have advantages and a reason to be in the game, Thunderbolt giving a paralyze chance is fine since Thunderbolt is used as a legit move to deal damage, Ice Beam giving a Freeze chance is fine since it' also used as a move to deal damage - now if there was a move that auto freezes you like sleep then it would also be uncompetitive. Adding to that, Paralyze is a fair status move that gives the lowering speed advantage so it is used strategically and not to fish for paralysis chances. When it comes to sleep, there's really no advantage other than leaving the entire game to dice rolls, like sleep accuracy, and sleep turns dice rolls which throws the matchup into the randomness.
It's not used in tournaments!!!
Do we really have to wait before someone get cheesed in a tournament to take action? But in all seriousness in no way the tiering policy framework say that we only cater to tournament plays. It states:
I.) To create a metagame that is conducive to the more "skilled" player winning over the less "skilled" player a majority of the time.
II.) To ensure that both our ladder and tournament crowds are catered to regarding I.)
So removing sleep would better ensure that the "skilled" player/builder player wins over the less "skilled" player cause we removed one of the rng element that we can remove. It also caters to ladder players which enter a big part in the tiering policy since they also play the same game as we do.
Looking into abusers is really dumb too, we're looking into reducing RNG as much as we can, so banning one abuser will not do many wonder, au contraire it would make us lose legit strategies used, ex: specs sylveon, Wisp Mega Gengar, Sleepless Venu which all are viable on their own and can fit on other type of teams.
Again sleep IS NOT broken, it is UNCOMPETITIVE, and this is pretty important to remember when forming arguments with/against sleep.
