let's rework bw sleep clause [SLEEP MOVES NOW BANNED, SLEEP CLAUSE LIFTED, POST#40]

[Finchinator]

We had another tournament today in the RoA room on PS; this time around we had 24 people, which led to a close, hour-long tournament! Below you can see the semi-finals and finals from the tournament, which was won by Raiza over gamer snaga.

apesh!t vs raiza - replay
keeping it snowy vs gamer snaga - replay

raiza vs gamer snaga - replay

 

[Posho]

From the small experience I've gathered in these last two tournaments I participated in, I can tell the metagame seems healthier now. I've been able to use more volatile teams as opposed to back then when I'd have to be constantly concerned about a 'solid' sleep answer.

In order to illustrate, here are some teams I have been using in these tournaments. Some are recycled, but I think they're a decent example on what I mean.

Hide

View attachment 213479
This team I brought to SPL last year and you can tell by the match-up that depending on Breloom's set, I would've been in total danger.

A team without a bulky grass nor one of the latis, which are usually mandatory in order to ease mu vs. loom/mong.

Team made by dice that is clearly weak to TOrb loom sets.

Some people might remember this team from Smogon Tour 24, when I played vs Kory. This team has no sleep absorber and I had to play 5 vs. 6 during the whole match, and thanks to BW mechanics I couldn't burn through sleep turns. The match was literally decided on whether my Alakazam woke up or not.

I know these aren't the flashiest/most meta-breaking teams, but I can tell that there's more flexibility as regards teambuilding and there are less games decided upon rng, which is incredibly healthy for the metagame, I strongly believe.

 

[Finchinator]

We had another tournament today in the RoA room on PS; this time around we had 22 people, which led to a close, hour-long tournament! Below you can see the semi-finals and finals from the tournament, which was won by airports over neutralzone!

neutralzone vs Finchinator - replay
RNNMisterioussaint vs airports - replay

neutralzone vs airports - replay

Expect an announcement about a future vote and what it will entail this weekend!

 

[Finchinator]

Last BW RoA Room No Sleep Tournament: 11 players

replay - finch the bw goat vs oilert
replay - finch the bw goat vs shooka berry

Shooka berry won over finch the bw goat (that's not my alt btw, it's someone else). This tournament did not have another semi-final game due to a DQ when someone AFK'd and it had a bit less participation due to overlap with the end of the SPL draft, unfortunately. With that said, we had pretty good participation throughout the week and a lot of solid games as a result to that. Thank you so much to Earthworm and the remainder of the RoA staff for helping organize this, Hogg for the idea, and the players who participated throughout the week for making this as enjoyable as possible.

As for the tournaments themselves, my main takeaway is that the metagame without sleep is a direct improvement from the metagame with it. You do not have to sacrifice a Pokemon or a moveslot to dedicate yourself to proper sleep coverage, there is a lot more room in teambuilding, and games are obviously never decided by Sleep Talk shenanigans. While BW will never be a truly perfect metagames in my eyes, this is the best version we have witnessed of it thus far and I think that it is very competitive this way. I also believe that Breloom will retain a lot of viability with the Poison Heal Protect variants, which are quite good at the moment. In addition to this, I think that Latios being able to use Trick will open up a lot more anti-stall/defensive core possibilities, thus letting BW retain its identity as a more aggressive, fast-paced metagame that it always has had besides for some recent phases when stall popped up (prior to the trapping related bans, for example).

---

The BW council plans to proceed with a vote on BW Sleep next week (starting on Monday, December 23rd). This vote will list throughout the entire week due to holidays and giving people a chance to review the thread and their thoughts before voting, but we will hopefully have a verdict prior to 2020 and SPL11.

As for how we plan to tackle the problem, the council echoes the sentiment of rozes. We wish to ban all moves that have the sole focus of inducing sleep (Hypnosis, Sing, Spore, Yawn, Dark Void, Sleep Powder, Lovely Kiss, and Grass Whistle), but not moves/abilities that have other, more focal purposes (Relic Song, Effect Spore, Psycho Shift, etc.). However, we are aware that moves like Relic Song and Psycho Shift (specifically when the latter is paired with Rest + Sleep Talk) or abilities like Effect Spore can lead to multiple Pokemon getting slept over the course of a single battle. Because of this, we believe that keeping the current sleep clause in effect as a safety measure is still for the best, essentially limiting the scope of our vote to just the aforementioned moves that have the sole purpose of inducing sleep.

Finally, if the initial vote results in a ban, we plan to have another vote after SPL in order to make sure that individuals still feel the same way after the tournament, which will give us a larger sample size of the "new" metagame.

 

[DragonWhale]

Is sleep clause even necessary? This is the first time a smogon singles format is able to be "true to the source" by having all rulesets be enforceable on cartridge play, but we're keeping the clause because of... Relic Song, Psycho Shift, and Effect Spore?

One is a mediocre signature move on a mediocre Pokemon, one requires three moveslots and has a 1/3 chance to successfully sleep something, and one is an ability on Pokemon that have far superior alternatives (Amoonguss, Breloom).

Having sleep clause for these three things when the far more ubiquitous secondary effect and far more deadly freeze is unrestricted sounds very silly to me. Freeze clause was removed because of how unlikely it was for two Pokemon to be frozen in a game, I feel like there's more than enough reason for the same logic to be applied to sleep once sleep moves are banned.

 

[Kink]

Im sure this was thought of already (haven’t read all the posts tbh), but since we’re discussing changing the mechanic, have we considered changing it to current sleep mechanics or Gen 4, or something that just doesn’t reset sleep upon switching? Wouldn’t that rectify most if not all issues and still provide a format that’s extremely familiar to the majority of the player base? I feel this deserves serious consideration if the issues discussed in OP and beyond are as serious as explicated.

 

[Eo Ut Mortus]

The announcement above was preliminary. Per reasoning reflected in Legitimate Username's and DragonWhale's posts, we are removing sleep clause altogether in addition to the aforementioned move ban. Relic Song is strictly inferior to other permitted RNG-based strategies, and Effect Spore can be reasonably assumed to be unviable based on its distribution and low effect chance. It's harder to gauge the potential impact of Rest/Sleep Talk/Psycho Shift; however, at surface level, it doesn't seem good enough to warrant maintaining policy inconsistencies through preserving sleep clause. Per this thread, Rest/Sleep Talk is generally considered unviable, so the value of this strategy rests almost solely in its ability to put multiple Pokemon to sleep simultaneously. At a minimum, it would require 4 turns of setup to work; on average, it requires 8. The strategy is contingent on taking damage, meaning that it cannot be used effectively by the main user of Psycho Shift, Sigilyph. It is heavily projected, and people can respond to a subsequent sleep attempts by switching in the first Pokemon who got slept.

Kink: We're not considering breaking cartridge mechanics. Only the current BW sleep clause currently breaks cartridge mechanics; none of the changes we considered do so. This is a topic larger than the scope proposed and probably not one that the community would so readily agree on.

For the record, though our change does restore cartridge fidelity by removing sleep clause, this decision should not be viewed as any form of response to ongoing discussions about sleep clause/cartridge integrity. We are making this decision with the interests of the BW metagame exclusively in mind; the fact that we are moving simulator representation closer to the cartridge is a side-effect rather than a motive.

 

[We Three Kings]

This suspect feels rather rushed. It should never go only 9 days between the first mention of the idea, to the suspect test, especially when it's a change as large as this. While I support the change (ban sleep-inducing moves and removing Sleep Clause as a whole), I think it would be much wiser to let this discussion run through SPL, and then make a decision afterwards. BW is not in such a bad state that we have to quickly enforce this before SPL, it is more than playable with the current ruleset. I would also prefer to extend this to other generations (6 and 7 mainly), but I know this isn't the place for that (and it wouldn't get much support anyway).

I think there should be a suspect ladder too. I'm not sure why ADV and DPP has them when BW doesn't. The ladder is pretty inactive, but DPP wasn't that much better before/after the Latias suspect either. The requirements should be the same to vote for every gen, even if BW has an extra slot in official tournaments. While I'm on the topic, the parameters dice mentioned are too inclusive in my opinion. I don't think going 2-1 in WCoP groups is necessarily more impressive than going 4-5 in SPL. In WCoP, some teams might not have a good slot, and you could get a really favorable group. In SPL you'll play nine of the best players, and everyone will play against the same players (not always true because subs). Top 8 in Smogon Tour points is also a stretch to me. If I got to choose, I'd scratch the entire "tournament reqs" concept and do what DPP did with only ladder, but if they had to stay I would prefer something like this:

Classic: Top 4 (6). 8 (12) is an option, but I'd prefer the former.
Tour: Top 2-3 each season, maybe a point cutoff, maybe Top X in playoffs.
SPL: 5+ wins with 50% ratio. Fine as it is.
WCoP: 3+ wins with 50% ratio. Could be other options that I'm not seeing, but I think 2+ wins is far too low.

I think that Latios being able to use Trick will open up a lot more anti-stall/defensive core possibilities, thus letting BW retain its identity as a more aggressive, fast-paced metagame that it always has had besides for some recent phases when stall popped up (prior to the trapping related bans, for example).

Don't wanna delve into this too much, but I just wanted to point it out. Why does a tier have to have certain identity? Why is a tier evolving in a different direction negative? GSC evolved from a stall metagame (not entirely accurate, but that's how a lot of people used to view it) into a really offensive metagame. Was this a bad thing? Don't necessarily want an extended discussion on this, but I think this is a strange philosophy that should not be followed when tiering.


Before the mob shows up with the pitchforks, I'll mention again that I support the sleep move ban, but that I think we should take some time to reflect on this potential change before going through with it after less than two weeks of discussion.

 

[Finchinator]

It is a bit quick, but we have unanimous support within the thread and council. In addition to this, I made sure to speak with Hogg immediately after we reached consensus throughout the council, which led to us taking extra measures such as the suspect tournaments and continuously updating this thread. Throughout this process, the BW council has been very active and thorough, even when compared to prior tests that spanned over longer periods of time.

This is not a drastic change and because of that, the metagame will play similarly during SPL. We do not believe it warrants an entire suspect ladder or drawn-out process, especially given the condensed steps we took recently that I outlined above. In addition, I feel strongly that this coupled with our willingness to re-open discussion and have another vote after SPL justifies voting promptly. While it was not a long span of time, we met certain parameters that were set, we had discussion open for enough time for anyone to comment (specifically before the literal last moment), and a vast majority of the prior comments we did receive were in favor in some capacity. The vote will be occurring tomorrow and span over the course of the week as previously planned.

---

I would also like to note that the bit you commented on from my previous post was my personal observation from the tournaments and does not represent the view of the entire council. I was merely offering commentary on the metagame. I agree that this should not be the catalyst for a tiering decision.

 

[dice]

This suspect feels rather rushed. It should never go only 9 days between the first mention of the idea, to the suspect test, especially when it's a change as large as this. While I support the change (ban sleep-inducing moves and removing Sleep Clause as a whole), I think it would be much wiser to let this discussion run through SPL, and then make a decision afterwards. BW is not in such a bad state that we have to quickly enforce this before SPL, it is more than playable with the current ruleset. I would also prefer to extend this to other generations (6 and 7 mainly), but I know this isn't the place for that (and it wouldn't get much support anyway).

I think there should be a suspect ladder too. I'm not sure why ADV and DPP has them when BW doesn't. The ladder is pretty inactive, but DPP wasn't that much better before/after the Latias suspect either. The requirements should be the same to vote for every gen, even if BW has an extra slot in official tournaments. While I'm on the topic, the parameters dice mentioned are too inclusive in my opinion. I don't think going 2-1 in WCoP groups is necessarily more impressive than going 4-5 in SPL. In WCoP, some teams might not have a good slot, and you could get a really favorable group. In SPL you'll play nine of the best players, and everyone will play against the same players (not always true because subs). Top 8 in Smogon Tour points is also a stretch to me. If I got to choose, I'd scratch the entire "tournament reqs" concept and do what DPP did with only ladder, but if they had to stay I would prefer something like this:

Classic: Top 4 (6). 8 (12) is an option, but I'd prefer the former.
Tour: Top 2-3 each season, maybe a point cutoff, maybe Top X in playoffs.
SPL: 5+ wins with 50% ratio. Fine as it is.
WCoP: 3+ wins with 50% ratio. Could be other options that I'm not seeing, but I think 2+ wins is far too low.




Don't wanna delve into this too much, but I just wanted to point it out. Why does a tier have to have certain identity? Why is a tier evolving in a different direction negative? GSC evolved from a stall metagame (not entirely accurate, but that's how a lot of people used to view it) into a really offensive metagame. Was this a bad thing? Don't necessarily want an extended discussion on this, but I think this is a strange philosophy that should not be followed when tiering.


Before the mob shows up with the pitchforks, I'll mention again that I support the sleep move ban, but that I think we should take some time to reflect on this potential change before going through with it after less than two weeks of discussion.

i already responded in broad strokes on discord, but for transparency's sake, i'll let the general public know where i'm coming from.

i recognize the speedy implementation of the vote thus far, and totally recognize how that may seem rushed. however, this is a mechanic that has been seen as highly volatile and has definitely soured bw for a lot of folks. if we were just running with the vote without any actual playerbase agreement, that one be one thing. but, let me reiterate: every top bw'r participating in spl has co-signed the removal of sleep. additionally, we will be hosting a confirmation vote if sleep is banned, much like the latias test, to affirm that it is the right move. we could totally be wrong about removing sleep clause, and the secondary vote acts as a fail safe just in case.

this mechanic ban is far different from the addition of a pokemon, so i am ambivalent about a 'ladder' to test out the metagame. i care about folks who have felt the duress of sleep, not the implications of an afterstory for the tier. comparing this to the dpp latias process a false equivalence.

in regards to your voting specifications: thanks for your opinion, but i don't believe that earning 14+ points in stour is as easy of a feat as you claim, especially since you, yourself didn't do so. we were receptive to feedback in the last vote and adjusted the parameters from then. i believe they are fine.

in truth: it's particularly irking that your reply does agree with the move but instead focuses on appealing to bygone smogon mechanisms of appraisal, which, in other contexts, would be argued as "far too slow" and "reactive". it's a catch-22, really, but i would rather err on the side of doing what i believe is right, even if it's liberal, swift, and quick-paced. i am replying shittily because i care, and i do not think you're coming from a place of earnest critique.

we are legitimately just pushing for the best metagame possible, and i wholeheartedly believe that this is the proper tiering decision and will advocate for its ban throughout this vote. as a final note: what's also incredibly infuriating, though, is the trend of you posting in a very last minute, underhanded fashion in policy threads to point toward clerical issues instead of focusing on the actual pokemon. i have taken notice of how your posts often aren't in support of a certain ideological slant or care about pokemon; instead, they are rooted in reactionary troublemaking in order to try and get a rise out of folks truly invested in the website. the process is important, yes, but the game is moreso. and you evidently do not care about either.

 

[Finchinator]

The BW council is ready to proceed with a vote on this matter.

The vote will determine if we will:

• Ban Spore, Hypnosis, Sleep Powder, Yawn, Dark Void, Sleep Powder, Grass Whistle, Lovely Kiss & Sing AND remove Sleep Clause from BW OU (Ban)
• Do nothing (Do Not Ban)

The voting requirements are the same as dice mentioned previously:

• BW Cup top 8
• 5 or more games and 50% or more wins over the last 2 SPLs
• 3 or more games and 50% or more wins over the last 2 WCOPs
• 8 best BW records in the last 2 Smogon Tour seasons

BW Cup: dice, Twixtry, Raiza, Kingler12345, Roseybear, M Dragon, Zokuru, elodin (8)
SPL 2019: SoulWind, FLCL, We Three Kings, Ojama, Finchinator (5, all new, 13 total)
WCOP 2019: Pearl, Conflict, BK, dice, SoulWind, FLCL, The Grand Babido, Finchinator (8, 4 new, 17 total)
SPL 2018: SoulWind, BKC, dice, ZoroDark (4, 2 new, 19 total)
WCOP 2018: lax, Finchinator, Asuya, Ace-11, dice, Posho, Sand Castle, SoulWind, McMeghan (9, 6 new, 25 total)
Smogon Tour 28: Malekith, John W, Finchinator, Sacri', Zokuru, ABR, BIHI, (tie for 8th) ima, Empo, McMeghan, Bloody Alfa (11, 8 new, 33 total)
Smogon Tour 27: Finchinator, SoulWind, ima, McMeghan, Lavos (banned -- does not count), St. Tyrannus, Pohjis, (tie for 8th) Santu, Eternal Spirit (8, 4 new, 37 total)

Final voter list: dice, Twixtry, Raiza, Kingler12345, Roseybear, M Dragon, Zokuru, elodin, SoulWind, FLCL, We Three Kings, Ojama, Finchinator, Pearl, Conflict, BK, The Grand Babido, BKC, ZoroDark, lax, Asuya, Ace-11, Posho, Sand Castle, McMeghan, Malekith, John W, Sacri', ABR, BIHI, ima, Empo, Bloody alfa, St. Tyrannus, Pohjis, Santu, Eternal Spirit (37 total)

Please forum PM me ( Finchinator ) your vote formatted as: Ban or Do Not Ban. The deadline will be 11:59pm GMT-4 on Sunday December 29th. This vote will require 60% ban votes in order to result in a ban (meaning 60% of total votes, not submitted votes).

 

[elodin]

Ban Spore, Hypnosis, Sleep Powder, Yawn, Dark Void, Sleep Powder, Grass Whistle, & Sing AND remove Sleep Clause from BW OU (Ban)

 

[Slimmer]

I'm surely coming late to the party but I approve the removal of Sleep Clause together with Sleep Moves ban. I'll give this gen the chance of being (for the moment) the only gen without Sleep Clause. If we ever see Effect Spore/Relic Song/etc. being somehow gamebreaking we will always be in time to review this tiering decision, adding those moves/abilities to the banlist. I'd honestly be upset to see a mon being banned (Meloetta-Piroette) - even tho useless - due to the consequences of a 20% sleep move while we can run mons that can 20% freeze every Pokémon without a single complain (yes, Jirachi, and I'm obviously not discussing it).
Sleep users viability post-ban, assuming the process will end in favor of banning, shouldn't ever be an argument in favor of no-ban. We do not need to have Breloom/Amoonguss viable, while rather the whole gen, without those stupid choicestalk users we get due to unusual weird sleep mechanics this generation gave us. This will be surely one great step forward the fixing of this gen, hope the council won't stop here, although BW is far from being a new gen.

 

[Finchinator]

Ojama, Conflict, BK, The Grand Babido, Asuya, Sand Castle, Malekith, Bloody alfa, St. Tyrannus, Santu, FLCL -- please remember to vote!

 

[Finchinator]

Ban (23): Raiza, Posho, Empo, Finchinator, Kingler12345, ABR, dice, Sacri', BKC, M Dragon, Twixtry, SoulWind, McMeghan, elodin, Roseybear, Pohjis, Pearl, BIHI, ima, Zokuru, We Three Kings, Eternal Spirit, Asuya
Do Not Ban (4): lax, Ace-11, John W, ZoroDark
Did not vote yet (10): Ojama, Conflict, BK, The Grand Babido, Sand Castle, Malekith, Bloody alfa, St. Tyrannus, Santu, FLCL

23 of 37 total voters is 62%, surpassing the 60% threshold needed to ban. Moreover, with 23 of 27 total registered votes being in favor of ban, 85% of voters voted to ban.

Because of this: Spore, Hypnosis, Sleep Powder, Yawn, Dark Void, Sleep Powder, Grass Whistle, Lovely Kiss & Sing will be banned AND Sleep Clause will be removed from BW OU.

Thanks to everyone that voted; we will be having another confirmation vote after SPL! Tagging The Immortal for this to be implemented.

 

[Posho]

Woke decision

 

[Pira]

Cool