Implemented Revisiting the Sleep Clause for SV OU

[Mario With Lasers]

If the issue is that Sleep Clause is a mod, then just change it to "You cannot choose a sleeping move" and grey out the sleeping move if the opposing team already has an asleep mon. This covers Relic Song, Effect Spore, Encore etc and any other silly exception no one really cares about.

(EDIT-- It covers Relic Song because it's not an sleeping move, but an attacking move with a low chance of causing Sleep. Yes, I'm being pedantic on purpose)

Now, if the issue is that there are broken elements even with the Clause in place, then yeah I don't know. Would we rather have a complex ban to keep the condition around and ban the most broken pokemon, or throw the Clause and the condition into the shadow realm? I'd rather ban the pokemon tbh, even if out of tradition, but I can see the argument against Sleep itself.

 

[w_r]

First of all I’d like to thank ausma for making this thread. Reading through the op it’s clear that status conditions like sleep, paralysis, burn have been normalized through the subsequent generations after initially being introduced in RBY. It’s all a matter of perspective and all three have the randomness factor in accuracy, number of turns it comes into effect etc and becomes broken according to the players subjective experiences with some having greater distribution compared to the other meaning it’s more likely to make it into a viable Pokémon’s moveset. By all means someone is likely to make a thread on paralysis next going by the logic to ban sleep which again doesn’t have a clause that limits it, the effect prevalent throughout the battle unlike 1-3 turns like sleep, decrease speed and the chance of the Pokémon not moving on any given turn (sounds worse than it actually is, no?). That’s exactly the vibe I get from this thread.

• Moving on it would seem obvious to include replays in the op from high level tours demonstrating the brokenness of sleep but it’s missing for some reason or any actual evidence for that matter, just words quoting a bunch of fringe pkmn that has access to sleep.
• Darkrai and Iron Valiant seem like the main abusers of sleep. Does that mean banning the sleep move would fix the problem??.... obviously not. What if we bring Koraidon into OU and limit it to using special moves or bring Kyogre into OU and limit it to non stab moves. Well it’s a slippery slope from there, if we continue making concessions and start removing some undesirable aspects of a Pokémon just to keep it in OU. As for Iron Valiant it seems it is slightly pushed into broken territory only while factoring in ghost Terra paired with hex which again comes with the opportunity cost + probability of hypnosis hitting + target staying asleep for “x”number of turns something like choosing between hydro pump or surf as your desired stab on Greninja (well not exactly ;D).
• As long as there’s support for Tera staying in the tier, the broken abusers should be banned to keep the metagame as competitive as possible not latch onto fringe elements to cope with the situation.

Tldr; keep sleep as it is along with the current sleep clause. Don’t try to fix what isn’t broken instead ban the Pokémon pushing the boundaries of sleep. Hope no one gets inspired for a paralysis thread next

in the situation where sleep is broken on certain specific abusers despite the existence of sleep clause, why should sleep be the element kept over the Pokemon abusing the mechanic?
(edit: by that I mean: why couldn't this be interpreted as sleep clause failing to do its job?)

The same reasoning on why tera (limited to one pkmn) is preserved and the abusers getting banned instead applies here. From your post it can be assumed you believe sleep should be banned instead of the pokemon, if that's the case in the context of sv ou, please provide replays of multiple pokemon w access to sleep abusing sleep in high level tour replays so it can be established sleep is indeed the culprit. I'd be willing to reconsider my opinion then.

 

[R8]

Darkrai and Iron Valiant seem like the main abusers of sleep. Does that mean banning the sleep move would fix the problem??.... obviously not. What if we bring Koraidon into OU and limit it to using special moves or bring Kyogre into OU and limit it to non stab moves. Well it’s a slippery slope from there, if we continue making concessions and start removing some undesirable aspects of a Pokémon just to keep it in OU. As for Iron Valiant it seems it is slightly pushed into broken territory only while factoring in ghost Terra paired with hex which again comes with the opportunity cost + probability of hypnosis hitting + target staying asleep for “x”number of turns something like choosing between hydro pump or surf as your desired stab on Greninja (well not exactly ;D).

Banning sleep moves would not be a limitation to a specific Pokemon: you are banning them from everything that could use it, like baton pass or kings rock - and there is no slippery slope to be found here in my opinion. Considering that, I do not think the comparisons with Koraidon and Kyogre here make much sense.

I think the post also misses the point that sleep already is heavily nerfed by the sleep clause mod in the first place. Genuine question: in the situation where sleep is broken on certain specific abusers despite the existence of sleep clause, why should sleep be the element kept over the Pokemon abusing the mechanic?
(edit: by that I mean: why couldn't this be interpreted as sleep clause failing to do its job?)

 

[Tea Guzzler]

half this thread seems to be "is sleep broken in OU" and the other half "do we remove sleep clause mod as a whole" which i think are 2 different questions on the whole and should probably be separate threads (let alone old gens). thought i'd just give some insight into the second question because that's the bit i care about:

1: sleep clause mod stays as-is
darkrai either gets banned or is judged to be fine, but the current system stays because it was working before. obvious benefit is that basically nothing changes for tiers that use sleep clause mod. obvious drawback is you're still using sleep clause mod which is ultimately a deviation from cart mechanics (bringing up the question of if PS is actually a simulator in this case or not).

2: grey out the sleep move button
i'll be honest i don't understand why this is even being discussed. the positive is that you aren't modding the cart anymore but still have access to sleep. the negative is that there are multiple edge cases that, no matter how minor, are still just laughing in the face of your "solution", with encore, effect spore, and sleep talk being the main (but not only) 3. this also raises the question of "does every move with a sleep chance get banned when the clause is active", meaning you have situations where meloetta is not allowed to transform because you already spored something on the enemy team.

3: sleep moves clause
currently this clause bans all the status moves whose sole job is to sleep the opponent. there are still ways around it (dire claw, psycho shift, effect spore, relic song, wicked torque if that counts for anything), but with the latter 3 being only being effectively 20% odds or lower + effect spore and relic song being attached to a whole one potential user each, these loopholes seem largely non-problematic. this has the widest ramifications, as sleep will likely disappear from OU on the whole + it will likely have an effect on both all current gen tiers and on old gens where sleep is perhaps not an issue. while this is the best solution imo, there's still going to be the side effect of basically axing sleep in SV OU regardless of whether it's actually broken or not, but this is beyond me to pick apart.

 

[HANTSUKI]

I only started to question myself about Sleep Clause in recent years. The status quo was always fine and I'm way adapted at handle the risks of a mon being put to sleep (played too much RBY where sleep actually deletes a mon and also played BW in current gen with broken sleep available), so I never really thought too much about it. But now that's the conclusion I've reached: sleep moves don't add anything good to the game.

All sleep moves except by Spore are RNG based to hit. The amount of turns your pokemon is sleeping is RNG decided. One of the things you can use to counter sleep is Sleep Talk, which again is another RNG roll to pick a move (usually). Pokemon immune to sleep (like Insomnia) are just bad. All those dices rolling for a situation that can be really hurtful in modern gens.

Different from something like paralysis, sleep don't play a real role outside of keeping a mon useless for a random number of turns. Paralysis still play a vital role as speed control and the chances of not moving are good but still low. It's a risk management you can take in a healthy way and nowadays we have plenty of resources to play around it - many viable immunities as example. We also have many moves with side effects that are RNG based, but they are useful for other purposes and the risk management is way more easier to handle.

Nowadays direct sleep moves are no different from Double Team or Confuse Ray in my opinion, and we should just ban them. No reason to ban any pokemon for being broken with a mechanic that is just bad from a competitive angle and that needs a mod to even be viable. If the mons are broken after a sleep ban, so ban them for being actually broken. This status quo is just outdated and we should move to a healthier alternative.

tl;dr I don't think sleep moves are broken but they don't add anything good to the game. We should ban them not for a few pokemon being broken with it, but for adding unnecessary RNG. Then if the mons are still broken, axe them.

 

[MeepBard]

2: grey out the sleep move button
i'll be honest i don't understand why this is even being discussed. the positive is that you aren't modding the cart anymore but still have access to sleep. the negative is that there are multiple edge cases that, no matter how minor, are still just laughing in the face of your "solution", with encore, effect spore, and sleep talk being the main (but not only) 3. this also raises the question of "does every move with a sleep chance get banned when the clause is active", meaning you have situations where meloetta is not allowed to transform because you already spored something on the enemy team.

as one of the bigger proponents of grayed out move clause in this thread, i appreciate seeing some discussion about this particular proposal! i'll go over the arguments in this post to make a case for it.

On Encore: this rather complex move has had a few solutions proposed over the years in previous threads where the grayed out clause was mentioned:

1. the first would be to simply allow the move to go through regardless since it'd be the player's own decision to encore a sleep move. on cart, this could be seen as intentionally trying to trigger sleep clause for the opponent and i'd imagine would not result in a DQ for either player
2. the other option would be to force the encored pokemon to switch; if a switch is not possible, the move goes through.
3. the final option is simply to prevent encore from being clicked should it trigger on a sleep-inducing move.

On Effect Spore: in my opinion no particular restriction should be placed on effect spore since it's out of the hands of both players whether or not it activates; if the ability proves to be problematic, banning effect spore seems fine and can be justified for the same reason as banning bright powder in that both elements have nearly the same chance to trigger (10% for bright powder vs 11% to inflict sleep for effect spore), and while it doesn't activate often, it maintains the same probability to swing games. the other more controversial approach would be to make effect spore have a 19% chance to activate (9% chance of poison / 10% chance of paralysis) if an opposing pokemon is already asleep. this is more in-line with a mod, but unlike current sleep clause mod it doesn't result in any game state that can't be replicated on cart (the cart justification would be to replay the game until the game state is exactly the same and effect spore doesn't trigger sleep that turn)

On Sleep Talk (and similar moves that call other moves like Metronome): i think these moves can be handled in the same way as the second proposal for effect spore:

• if an opposing pokemon is already asleep, sleep talk cannot call sleep inducing moves, which was a solution proposed by DaWoblefet regarding assist in the gen 8 sleep clause thread. the cart justification would be to replay the game until the game state is exactly the same and sleep talk doesn't call a sleep-inducing move.
  • if a pokemon only knows a sleep inducing move + sleep talk, the pokemon is forced to switch if it falls asleep.
  • if the pokemon can't switch, the move goes through.

On Relic Song (and other moves that inflict sleep as a secondary effect): i believe if sleep clause mod is abolished entirely in favor of a ban on sleep moves as some are making an argument for in this thread, relic song would maintain its ability to put two pokemon to sleep anyways since i think the proposed sleep move ban would only be a ban on moves that inflict sleep 100% of the time (correct me if i'm mistaken). so my preferred solution would be to do nothing! but if this is not satisfactory enough, another approach would be the sleep talk proposal of simply preventing relic song from sleeping a pokemon if one of the opposing pokemon is already asleep. the cart justification would be to replay the game until the game state is exactly the same and relic song doesn't inflict sleep.

and to bring full clarity, a grayed out sleep moves clause as i would draft it would be written as something like...

Gray Sleep Clause: Limit one foe put to sleep, unless there are no other available options

..."other available options" in this case including switching. it's not a perfect proposal! but i do think it's worth some consideration for those who wish to ban sleep moves solely because sleep clause mod is antiquated and a tiering policy violation - there is room here to improve what's already there.

one more thing i wanted to bring up is the beginning of the post:

half this thread seems to be "is sleep broken in OU" and the other half "do we remove sleep clause mod as a whole" which i think are 2 different questions on the whole and should probably be separate threads (let alone old gens).

i agree entirely with this because i do think most people in this thread are arguing about three seperate topics and i don't think there's much of a focused discussion going on at all. i believe that creating a seperate thread about what action (if any) to take on sleep clause while keeping this thread up to discuss sleep/darkrai/valiant's overall impact in SV OU would be wiser as a lot of people here are arguing if darkrai/valiant are broken in SV OU or if sleep is broken in SV OU or if sleep should be banned just because we're playing on a modded version of the game and i think it'd lead to more productive changes if the thread was split to allow discussion to continue on both subjects seperately, rather than treating them as a whole

 

[Dorron]

Personally Sleep Clause Mod shouldn't exist. It's literally changing how the game works to keep an unbalanced mechanic that nobody likes and adds nothing to any tier (not looking at you, RBY GSC). I've always been more of a Sleep Clause guy since I believe that cartridge accuracy should always be the main objective regarding ruling metagames, which is why i also believe than any of the other proposals here in the thread that isn't Sleep Clause or Sleep Clause Mod is unrealistic.

However, I don't really like the approach of the thread and how people started talking about it. We get a new mon whose signature feature is to abuse sleep (something we were already very aware of), and when it does it successfully, we look at the sleep mechanic and not the mon (who had been banned since its release before 2010)? I can accept Valiant also abusing sleep with Hypnosis, but there have been countless mechanics that were abused by a (few) Pokemon, but not every specie that had access to the mechanic, and the Pokemon were banned. The Tiering Philosophy is a bit flawed in this end. See how we treated Annihilape with Rage Fist, an obviously broken move that should have been banned instead of the full user. I think we can work on this in general.

As usual I like talking about anything but the topic. So basically, I support Sleep Clause (from Gen 4 onwards, haven't played Gen 3 enough) since we shouldn't change cartridge mechanics, but I don't like the approach of the thread.

 

[elodin]

I talked more in depth about Valiant and Lilli-H in my posts in the other thread, but I felt that at least some of it needed re-iterating, since certain people still seem to be going with the Darkrai narrative. In my opinion as a council member, I seriously doubt that any argument for banning Darkrai actually stops at banning Darkrai. Normally we have to wait for the original threat to get banned for people to explore alternative options, but in this case even a hint of HypnoRai being banworthy allowed people to instantly start spamming sleep on other mons and successfully cheesing opponents. Each of the sleep users mentioned in this post have their own advantages over the other, and all of them have the capability of stealing games, so I think it's pretty naive/out of touch to suggest that this problem just goes away with a Darkrai ban.

gonna quickly reply to this since it was, in my opinion, the best post made in this thread, and it also directly responded to my post.

initially, i'd like to question how exactly can we justify banning sleep in sv ou but not have the same logic portray to previous generations and tiers. yes, we are only arguing about sleep in sv ou in this thread, but how can we claim the mechanic itself is broken as it is in gen9 but not in previous generations where it is much, much stronger? i'm not arguing that we should therefore ban sleep across all gens, but i am questioning how is it that we can see sleep as not broken in all of rby, gsc, rse, and dpp, gens in which a pokemon can be put to sleep for twice the amount of turns compared to sv, but we see it as broken in sv? how exactly is this possible?

in my opinion, when it comes to answering this question, it's evident that sleep in itself (which really can be translated as the % of your pokemon not moving for a turn, much like infatuation, paralysis, flinching, freezing, and confusion), is not broken at all. what becomes a problem is when sleep is abused in a way that makes it uncompetitive. a timely example would be vivillon in ag (something mentioned previously in this thread), which is not really viable/broken because of the sleep mechanic itself, but because of a combination of multiple things that make it overpowered. the very existence of vivillon as a viable pokémon in anything goes actually proves that sleep in itself is not broken, because there are n pokemon with access to sleeping moves, most of them much, much better than vivillon, yet this nu mon is the only one that's able to be played in ag, because it abuses the mechanic in an uncompetitive way. this isn't because sleep in itself is uncompetitive, but because of other elements particular to this individual pokemon that make it op in conjuction with sleep (and no sleep clause).

when we take a look at what i said above i think it becomes clear why we don't really see sleep as broken in gens 1-4 when the mechanic in itself is a lot stronger compared to gen9 - less tools to abuse it. even if you put a pokemon to sleep, how exactly are you abusing the sleeping turns effectively to the point of making the mechanic uncompetitive? i'm not gonna go in-depth on each of these gens' ou tiers to analyse them individaully, but there's a very clear difference in having your jynx be put to sleep by the opposing jynx in rby and having your ting-lu be put to sleep by a darkrai/valiant/lilligant-hisui in gen9, even though the latter might end up sleeping 6 turns less than the first. to me, this makes it very evident that sleep itself is not broken. it's the combination of sleep with other individual elements carried by these pokemon that make them strong (and potentially broken), not the mechanic itself. i think this also becomes evident when every single "problem pokemon" mentioned in this thread have certain elements in common, most noticeably ridiculously high speed tiers and strong setup moves...

As a sidenote, since we all agree that sleep as it was originally intended in the game (no clause) needed action, I don't see why it's somehow so much worse to have a sleep ban than a sleep clause. Sleep Clause may have made sense as a compromise in the past, where implementing the clause basically ensured that there would be no broken activity from sleep users, and you actually got positive effects in the form of more mons being viable, but for Gen 9 this doesn't really apply anymore. For SV OU, the most viable sleep users are doing broken mon things, while the non-broken sleep users are barely relevant, so if having the clause doesn't stop otherwise balanced sleep users from being broken, AND it doesn't even preserve a larger portion of the metagame than what we would lose through bans, it kinda begs the question - what does Sleep Clause even do for us at this point?

this paragraph felt a bit odd to me after reading it. if you're saying "most viable sleep users are doing broken mon things", that to me is a very clear indicator that these mons are broken themselves, not sleep as a mechanic. this is further reinforced by you stating that "the non-broken sleep users are barely relevant", which is another strong indicator that having a sleep-inducing move is not really something broken or inherently uncompetitive.

the answer to your final question is within your last paragraph as well - increasing viability to pokemon that would otherwise be much worse without them. maybe this isn't necessarily effective in gen9 as it is in its current format, but increasing viability is not something that needs to be seen immediately for it to be healthy for a metagame. i think if we start seeing sleep on breloom, toesdcruel, and amoonguss instead of darkrai and iron valiant we might get to notice that the status itself is not really as broken as its being portrayed in this thread. and even if these pokemon remain bad with sleep clause, having access to sleep-inducing moves definitely makes them closer to ou-viable compared to not having them, which increases diversity and creative teambuilding as well, making it healthier overall for the metagame.

 

[zioziotrip]

outside of the discussion about the ban, what is the specific plan of action on a potential sleep ban/restriction? meaning will sleep moves receive a suspect test, quickban, or qualified voting process similar to oldgens. to me, the timing of all three of these couldn't be worse. there are much more pressing issues to sv ou than sleep moves and a quickban to a game mechanic which does have massive metagame implications (despite insistence to the contrary, the loss of sleep moves would remove viable mons from circulation and hurt mons that are currently reliant on them like torkoal) would be a disservice.

I understand this thread is more about the discussion of the Sleep Clause in SV OU but it would be nice to have a timeline and plan for the recommended action.

 

[Finchinator]

The plan is to include a question on sleep with the upcoming tiering survey, which will take place later this week as we see how the start of SPL goes. I am willing to discuss how anything pertaining to this will be worded and other related topics here in the interim as well if people have suggestions.

Given this: the sentiment of qualified players (including those playing SV OU in SPL) will help dictate the direction of our metagame as it previously has.

 

[Finchinator]

See how we treated Annihilape with Rage Fist, an obviously broken move that should have been banned instead of the full user.

I just want to point out two things because your conclusion and this comparison are not in-line with the current tiering policy or the history of SV OU tiering.

• Banning Annihilape over Rage Fist was the only possiblility. Implying the move should be banned provided current distribution/context is flawed.
  • Suggesting otherwise would require a noteworthy tiering philosophy overhaul that goes way over OU's scope. Any implication that we should have banned Rage First up-front is out of line with the current tiering framework. You can disagree with the framework, but that would need another thread altogether that impacts every format, would shift numerous other bans historically, and so on.
• This is a false equivelancy. Sleep moves are not limited in distribution to the degree Rage Fist is and no users have the same support that Annihilape did when it was banned.

to me, the timing of all three of these couldn't be worse. there are much more pressing issues to sv ou than sleep moves and a quickban to a game mechanic which does have massive metagame implications

I also want to point out that "much more pressing issues" is one of the reasons why we have things like surveys and can see things in relation to each other. It is important that the tier is handled in a way that benefits the informed and active players of it.

However, I think your framing of collaterail and "massive metagame impliactions" is not relevant to this discussion. Collateral can come as a byprduct of any ban, but it should not be a deterrent of one. We will not preserve anything strcitly because of existing Pokemon with related niches -- that is not how tiering works.

 

[kd458]

Sleep in SV OU

Interesting topic and glad to see pretty open discussion around this, my position was initially a very clear-cut "this is pointless as sleep is clearly not broken on anything other than Darkrai, which even then is questionable" but having spoken to some other users on this with knowledge of the metagame (on both sides of the debate) I think there's a lot more nuance to it than that, and the main point that lies at the centre of this question more than anything is how we approach Pokemon Showdown as a whole, how consistent we should be in applying consistency, what we're willing to allow that isn't explicitly broken but is uncompetitive and how we feel about what is now a somewhat archaic modification to cart that we apply to the game to enforce sleep clause.

With this post, I aim to take a look at not only the sleep users in OU right now but also the sleep moves, discuss things which are clearly problematic, things with the potential to be problematic and things which aren't too much of an issue right now. I'll also take a quick look at our current Tiering Policy along with some comparable scenarios in past such as the Baton Pass and King's Rock ban. Thanks for taking the time to read this, let me know of any inaccuracies or missing points that deserve inclusion here!

1. What sleep moves do we have and who uses them?

1.1. Spore, 100% acc

Notable users:

Spore's perfect accuracy has always been balanced by its poor distribution, with its fastest relevant user being the otherwise pretty abysmal Smeargle that only uses it on Focus Sash hazard lead sets - Toedscruel has a faster Spore, but its ability Mycelium Might always forces it to Spore last in its priority bracket and so won't really be discussed here. Here is the first instance where we can draw a line between two variants of Sleep users, offensive and defensive. Amoonguss is a defensive Sleep user with clear ways to be taken advantage of, stonewalled hard by Gholdengo and Gliscor and not posing any significant threat to its switch-ins outside of Sludge Bomb to hit the Grass-types that also have an immunity to Spore. The most uncompetitive thing about Amoonguss is Red Card + Spore which can be hard to deal with for certain offensive teams, but even then it's a mechanic with clear counterplay that only has any issue regarding competitiveness because of Sleep itself being RNG-dependant for the number of turns slept. On the other hand, Breloom and Brute Bonnet are offensive Spore users that can put checks to sleep and use this to break through teams, which will be a topic discussed further later in this post. This is again balanced by the users; it's not hard to stack checks to Breloom due to its limited coverage, frailty and lack of speed, and Brute Bonnet has more bulk to make up for its even lower speed but a just-as-limited movepool along with an inability to set up makes this far from an overwhelming threat. Although not as egregious as some of the other sleep moves here, this does also raise the first issue with our current implementation of the Sleep Clause Mod, as on cartridge these mons are significantly more free to click Spore and not worry about things being sacrificed to sleep, a concept entirely invented by Sleep Clause that has no relevance to the actual games. There are definitely no broken Spore users though, and so this move alone in current gen OU is not really enough to suggest any drastic changes to tiering policy.

1.2. Yawn, 100% acc

Notable users:

Yawn is hard to argue as broken, since it is a move with clear counterplay that doesn't tend to involve using Sleep Mod to pick a sacrifice and most actually relevant Pokemon with access to it such as Clod, Slowking-G, Dirge and Dozo don't even opt to waste a moveslot on it. This is an almost purely defensive move and it's hard to argue that this is broken in any way, which raises the question - would Yawn be included in a sleep move ban and what justification is there for this aside from consistency?

1.3. Sleep Powder, 75% acc

Notable users:

Sleep Powder is where the mechanic begins to get more of an RNG than a skill check; 75% accuracy is not bad and is still more reliable than Hurricane or Focus Blast, but both for the user and for the target it's inherently more risky to play around. This, along with only marginally better distribution than Spore and the same drawback of Grass-types being immune, means that defensive use of Sleep Powder is very limited outside of in the lower tiers on mons like Vileplume. It is the offensive uses of Sleep Powder where this shines though, particularly on Chlorophyll users, as forcing a switch-in and being given opportunities to put them to sleep with a faster Sleep Powder both on the switch and on the turn they come in can make these far harder to check, Hisuigant being the primary example of this although Venusaur also has access to this option. Again, the poor distribution limits how broken this is along with the mons individually struggling to fit them in their movepools, with Venusaur having to drop either important coverage or the setup option of Growth, but Lilligant-H can often find a place to slot this into its moveset and remain a threat which is only really handled well by Gholdengo due to running Ice Spinner (pre-DLC2) / Triple Axel (post-DLC2) to threaten Grass-types and Gliscor. Sleep starts to feel a little uncompetitive around this point due to not only the inaccuracy of the move but also the number of turns slept being random, but again, the limited distribution here makes this more of a fringe option that by itself doesn't need serious addressing outside of whether Sleep Clause Mod making the answer "sac one mon to sleep then go into the counter" is a reasonable thing for us to manually add to the game.

1.4. Hypnosis, 60% acc

Notable users:

Finally, we get to the main pont of the issue and the mons which sparked this discussion in the first place. Ninetales-Alola is a quasi-defensive Hypnosis user with its access to Aurora Veil and solid speed tier giving it the opportunity to spend multiple turns on the field fishing for a Hypnosis land, with the odds of putting a target to sleep going 60% -> 84% -> 94% -> 97% depending on the number of turns spent clicking Hypnosis. This is balanced by Ninetales' weak offensive stats meaning that many mons are completely free to sit on it including the Hypnosis-immune Gholdengo, along with the fact that spending those turns trying to fish for sleep wastes turns of Aurora Veil that sweepers would otherwise appreciate, but sleeping common switch-ins like Slowking-Galar can later give teammates like Raging Bolt and Volcarona safer opportunities to sweep. The other two Hypnosis users, however, are far more problematic simply by virtue of being offensive sleep users that can incapacitate their counters and use this to break through teams single-handedly essentially off a coin flip; Darkrai is a powerful offensive presence with a near-unmatched speed tier and access to Nasty Plot to take immediate advantage of sleep turns, while Iron Valiant outruns the entire tier bar Boulder and can flip its matchups into bulkier checks like Slowking-Galar while also generating turns to boost with Calm Mind. Darkrai in particularly functions as a nasty Focus Sash lead, often forcing opposing leads to switch out by merit of being a faster offensive threat and getting 2 or even 3 chances to click Hypnosis, enabling it to get set up opportunities while doing Magma Storm-esque chip damage with its ability Bad Dreams. This is not a competitive mechanic whatsoever, but Darkrai on the whole doesn't feel like a broken, unbeatable check and on every turn it clicks Hypnosis it has a 40% chance of giving the opponent a free turn. This is particularly bad for Iron Valiant who gets less opportunities to force switches and click Hypnosis for free with its one-time use Booster Energy. How do we tier things which aren't exactly broken, but create uncompetitive, luck-based situations? I'll touch on this more later. One huge thing that this has brought to light though is the Sleep Clause Mod. We are so used to using a completely artificial mechanic to balance sleep that now the use of 60% accurate moves actually feels cheaper than the 100% accurate Spore, as you cannot consistently predict a Hypnosis, switch out into a fodder mon and then back into your counter as that runs the risk of a 40% miss that will leave you in an objectively worse spot. Is this the fault of the move or the mons using it, or is this because Sleep Clause is a poor modification of the game that makes this worse while also taking us further from cartridge?

1.5. Other sleep-inducing effects - Sing, Dark Void, Relic Song, Dire Claw, Effect Spore

Notable users:

Sing is a 55% accurate sleep move with no real users, several viable mons have the option of using it but none have any reason to over a better move, while Dark Void is a 50% accurate move exclusive to Darkrai which only serves any purpose if Hypnosis is banned independently. What is the justification for banning these moves? Where do we draw the line with calling a mechanic balanced by accuracy, when it's clearly an intentional design choice by Pokemon? A big part of what these questions lead to is the Sleep Clause Mod in general. Is it just that sleep moves in general are broken and should be removed altogether, with a patch fix in a mod that cartridge doesn't even support being an insufficient answer? That's the only solid justification I can give for these terrible moves being banned. Relic Song and Dire Claw are Meloetta and Sneasler's signature moves respectively (with the latter only being relevant if Sneasler ever drops in a future OU, although technically Smeargle could use it in OU right now) and they have 10% and 1/6 chances to sleep the opponent, while Effect Spore gives an opponent a 10% chance to be put to sleep on contact. This currently can lead to one of the most egregious examples of the Sleep Clause Mod being different to cartridge, as (to my knowledge as an avid Sneasler user) if a first mon is asleep and a second gets hit with a sleep proc from these methods, this does not go through. This is much more than emulating a simple handshake at the start of the game to not put more than one mon to sleep, and is a pretty solid part of why the Sleep Clause Mod may be worth examining. If the mod is removed though, these ways of applying the effect should not be removed in the same way that Freeze chance is still retained on many Ice-type moves (and Tri Attack!), and they will simply happen as they do on cartridge with the users tiered accordingly with their movepool / ability in mind.

2. The Sleep Clause Mod

2.1. What is the Sleep Clause Mod?

For anyone who needs some explanation of the Sleep Clause Mod, this implementation of Sleep Clause artificially modifies the game to prevent you from putting two of your opponent's Pokemon to sleep. This, in turn, inadvertently balances sleep by allowing you to sacrifice a member of your team to sleep on purpose, letting you send in another mon on the target without risking them being put to sleep. This has been part of online Pokemon battle simulators for over a decade and is regarded as pretty standard, with very limited criticism of it within SV until Darkrai's drop into OU in DLC2. This elicits the question, is sleep only broken because of Darkrai? Or is Darkrai just something that has pushed the community towards thinking about sleep in general more, leading to this discussion? If the former is true, then the mon should be banned first and foremost, but I don't know if that's the case.

2.2. Why is this only being seen as problematic now?

As has been said before in this thread, this is actually not the first time the Sleep Clause Mod has been brought up as problematic, with suggestions of an overall sleep ban in mid-SWSH that ended up amounting to nothing. This still raises the question though, why now? Without Darkrai to make use of the mechanic, sleep was mostly a non-issue - should we not just ban Darkrai? This is a very important thing to answer, as such a drastic tiering / ruleset shift based off the addition of one Pokemon to the metagame seems like a very clear-cut case of "This thing is broken, we should ban it and our problems are solved". However, even if Hypnosis Iron Valiant and Ninetales-A are non-issues in a post-Darkrai world, are they options in the tier that improve not only competitiveness but fun? HypnoHex CM Valiant has been picking up usage recently, with a good general matchup spread that also gives it a chance of beating some of its otherwise solid checks like Slowking-Galar, Toxapex and even Unaware Clodsire with good enough fortune. Even if this isn't a consistent strategy, its counterplay is also inconsistent and it's hard to justify this as fair or adding anything to the tier.

Although I mentioned sleep being seen as problematic before, there has never been any push strong enough towards a ban for it to have seriously been considered a top priority. To understand why this is, it's important to make the distinction between defensive and offensive sleep users. Regardless of how hard people try to argue it here, I don't think any amount of convincing will make me see Amoonguss with Sleep Clause Mod as uncompetitive, as it has clear counterplay in Grass-types immune to Spore (not to mention Gholdengo and Gliscor) and does not exert any pressure itself other than putting something to sweep and allowing a free switch. In contrast, offensive sleep users can incapacitate their answers - think Darkrai using Hypnosis to beat Ting-Lu, or CM Iron Valiant beating Slowking-G without needing to Tera. This loops back to the initial question though, why only now and not SWSH or before? To work this out, let's take a look back through the past couple generations and see why this hasn't been an issue before (aside from with BW sleep mechanics), and why it's not a good idea to apply this retrospectively without the debate being raised independently within the generation.

2.2.1. SWSH

Access to sleep:

Amoonguss and Tangrowth are both defensive sleep users with clear counterplay in Grass-types immune to Spore and Sleep Powder, neither being oppressive presences in the tier. Venusaur is a solid pick, but sun is not particularly high in viability and Venusaur already struggles for moveslots to pose any offensive threat at all. Gengar is an already somewhat uncommon mon that typically opts to run Choice Scarf to have any OU niche, while Blacephalon is almost exclusively Choiced and so Hypnosis does not make sense here. Ninetales-A is, again, a quasi-defensive sleep user that can run Hypnosis, but no high-tier offensive threats in SSOU are capable of using sleep well to cheese through defensive answers and Tapu Fini / Koko exist with abilities that block all sleep entirely, leading to much less of a need for action in this tier.

2.2.2. SM

Access to sleep:

Mega Venusaur is an addition to the list of defensive mons with access to sleep moves, but here it's hard to justify it over other options like Leech Seed on most teams. Breloom exists in this gen, but the high power level of the format along with abundance of defensive switch-ins means that it cannot take full advantage of Spore to operate as a solid offensive threat. Gengar does have more of a potential here to use Hypnosis but note that it does not yet get access to Nasty Plot or any form of setup whatsoever, so it cannot exploit sleep turns in the same way that SV Darkrai and Iron Valiant can. Xurkitree can run a gimmicky Z-Hypnosis set that gives it a speed boost while having a chance of getting a free setup turn, but again, Xurk is not a high-tier mon in the meta and it does not have the good speed or natural bulk to get the opportunities to click Hypnosis. Mega Gardevoir is heavily outclassed in OU by Tapu Lele while also only having passable speed and bulk, while Mega Gallade is more usable but needs the coverage along with having a worse speed tier. Tapu Koko and Tapu Fini are again present with their Electric / Misty Surge field effects blocking sleep moves entirely, while Mega Diancie and Mega Sableye bounce back attempts at sleeping them with Magic Bounce; this is not a tier where sleep is problematic.

2.2.3. ORAS

Access to sleep:

This is a similar story to SM, where several defensive mons have the option of running sleep moves but opposing high viability Grass-types provide counterplay to the extent of MVenu not even opting to run Sleep Powder on defensive sets. Politoed is somewhat relevant in ORAS as a rain setter, but again, this mon exerts no offensive pressure and it mainly exists to try and fish for a free switch into a sweeper while wasting turns of rain. Breloom is walled by Amoonguss, Celebi and Mega Venusaur and Spore doesn't help with this, limiting its viability greatly and preventing it from leveraging sleep to get past its counters. Again, Gengar does have Hypnosis as an option, but no Nasty Plot along with preferred options like Taunt and Will-O-Wisp for some of its key matchups make it hard to justify even considering. Mega Gardevoir is better in ORAS, but even on CM sets you need Focus Blast for the Steel-types of the tier and Psyshock to break through Chansey while counterplay is often through faster mons and priority attackers like Mega Metagross and Mega Scizor that cannot be slept once in, so Hypnosis has not been seriously explored. Mega Gallade again cannot afford the moveslots while being a very fringe and outclassed pick at best, and again Gliscor and Mega Diancie both exist to block most offensive sleep strategies entirely. Despite this tier not having forms of terrain present to grant sleep immunities, there are no real issues here with sleep and it makes sense for Sleep Clause Mod to remain unchanged and unchallenged in the tier.

2.3. What is different about SV?

A quick look at the past few generations of OU reveals why Sleep Clause Mod has not been considered as much of an issue in past, as counterplay to sleep has been much more direct while the sleep users have not been nearly as much of a game-ending threat as both Darkrai and Iron Valiant can be in SV OU. One important thing to note is the quality of the sleep immunities in the tier, both independently and in relation to the offensive sleep users.

Terrain -

In both generations 7 and 8, Tapu Koko and Tapu Fini have existed with Electric and Misty Surge respectively to block sleep moves entirely. These abilities are relegated to Pincurchin and Weezing-Galar in SV, and Pincurchin is a very niche, low viability pick while Weezing-G gets much more value from both Levitate and Neutralising Gas as an ability. These mons were a common sight in SM and SWSH, but without either being present sleep is much more of a viable strategy.

Status Immunity -

Gliscor existed for generations 6 and 7 to block sleep moves, and has returned for SV; however, the quality of offensive sleep users has increased drastically, and Darkrai threatens Gliscor with an unboosted OHKO from Ice Beam while the aforementioned HypnoHex Iron Valiant still takes it out with a +1 Tera Ghost Hex unless you run full SpDef.

Magic Bounce -

Similar to previous generations with Mega Sableye and Mega Diancie, we do have Hatterene as a strong Magic Bounce user; however, it cannot switch in hard to Darkrai as it is 2HKOd by Life Orb Dark Pulse, while it does make a somewhat solid Iron Valiant check if they are running Hex - it loses to Shadow Ball variants however as +1 Tera Sball will OHKO even max HP Hatt.

New Immunities -

Gholdengo and Garganacl are completely new options that stonewall the defensive sleep users in SV OU, with Ghold in particular also having a good matchup into some of the offensive users such as Breloom, Lilligant-H and most variants of Iron Valiant. However, Darkrai threatens to OHKO Ghold with Dark Pulse and Iron Valiant can snowball into too much for Ghold to handle after a Calm Mind and with Tera available, while Garganacl is struggling to find a solid spot in OU with the prevalence of hazards along with often being forced to Tera itself in case of the Darkrai or Iron Valiant running Fighting coverage.

Defensive Grass-types -

Regarding defensive Grass-types that would typically be used to handle Sleep Powder users like Lilligant-Hisui, this tier is surprisingly devoid of those, with both Ferrothorn and Tangrowth absent from SV. Even then, Lilligant-Hisui has a great toolkit to threaten Grass-types, with the Ice coverage that Breloom always dreamed of - Triple Axel threatens a 2HKO on Amoonguss, while OHKOing all but max bulk Hydrapple.

2.4. What does this mean?

As can be seen, SV is a unique issue with regards to sleep counterplay being unable to handle the offensive threats with access to sleep moves in the tier. It has been stated before in this thread, but I wanted to provide justification for sleep and the Sleep Clause Mod being tackled in SV while left unchanged in previous generations, along with examining why exactly sleep has arose as this much of an issue past Darkrai just being a threatening new addition to the tier.

3. Past examples of tiering

This is not the first time we have seen a mechanic or set of moves be banned, with Shed Tail and Last Respects being controversial issues earlier in the generation - both were clearly broken moves, but the users were banned until proof was provided that they would break multiple users, with Cyclizar only being freed from Ubers once Orthworm rose significantly in usage post-Lizar ban and Last Respects staying unbanned due to it only being on the Uber Houndstone until Basculegion entered the tier. These decisions were not without criticism, but do provide some context as to why such a solid argument is necessary to even consider a blanket ban on sleep moves and why the suggestion of simply banning Darkrai is not without merit. However, it is clearly true that the Sleep Clause Mod is a completely invented concept that does not currently balance the sleep mechanic as it is intended to and causes more issues than it fixes with inaccurate sleep moves like Hypnosis, and so a large-scale shift in tiering is also a reasonable suggestion. Here we will take a quick look at some past tiering decisions and their relevance to sleep moves in general along with Sleep Clause Mod.

3.1. Baton Pass

Although a pretty different situation, Baton Pass is a wide distribution move that breaks a selection of Pokemon to the extent of it being deserving of a ban - no one would really argue that dry passing is uncompetitive on mons that cannot boost their stats such as pre-Flip Turn Alomomola, but stat passing is clearly broken on certain viable mons and so it is banned across all users. Similarly, sleep moves don't feel broken whatsoever on certain defensive users, but offensive threats that can leverage it well provide the main argument for a ban. Is this the fault of broken sleep users or sleep moves being broken in general? Without the Sleep Clause Mod, sleep does seem clearly broken, so we already acknowledge that it's a broken mechanic, while Sleep Clause Mod no longer actually provides artificial balance it as well as it once with the prevalence of inaccurate sleep moves that actually get rewarded by missing if you use this invented counterplay. Why don't we give it the Baton Pass treatment and remove it from the tier entirely? Then again, is this really necessary with how few sleep users pose a large metagame threat compared to how many mons Baton Pass breaks?

3.2. Evasion Boosting

Evasion is an inconsistent strategy that often requires turns to set up and adds variance to the game by making countering an offensive threat an RNG check, while other times being completely useless and wasting turns due to the RNG not going your way. Sounds familiar? Although the ban of evasion abilities and items is a little different, the blanket ban of evasion boosting moves is a very similar situation - no one is arguing that Double Team Raichu would be an overwhelming threat, but the uncompetitive nature of the mechanic adds nothing to the tier and is not only unbalanced but unfun. Is sleep on a level where it needs a blanket ban though, or is Sleep Clause Mod enough for us to comfortably deal with it?

3.3. King's Rock

King's Rock was a controversial ban in SSOU that still holds today, introducing an element of inconsistency into the tier that made multi-hit move users like Cloyster perhaps not broken but frustrating and unfun to deal with. Although many argued at the time that the ban was unnecessary, I think it was pretty clearly a good decision mostly contested by people without any desire for the tier to actually be competitive. Should it be unbanned now that Cloyster is all the way down in NUBL and our other Skill Link mons are Cinccino and Ambipom? It's a somewhat similar situation where it only makes a select range of mons uncompetitive and doesn't even make them explicitly broken, but it does add nothing positive to the tier and only serves to make counterplay more of an RNG check - is sleep this much of an issue in its current state?

4. Solutions and Conclusions

What can we do about this? Several suggestions have been discussed both here and in the opening post of the thread, and I will cover those here along with how they relate to what I've covered here and my personal thoughts on them.

4.1. Ban Darkrai, leave sleep unchanged

This is the most simple solution and makes sense, as sleep was not seen as so much of an issue before Darkrai's drop in DLC2. This may also address the issue of the Sleep Clause Mod to an extent, since without Darkrai clicking Hypnosis the issue of the mod's artificial balancing effect leading to counterplay that fails when Hypnosis misses may be less of a problem. However, that issue will still exist - Hypnosis Iron Valiant, while previously explored and not seen as much more than a gimmick that loses to Gholdengo, is now at a stage where it's actually seen as a pretty solid pick that has a good chance of RNG-ing past its checks, while Sleep Powder Lilligant-H has proven itself both on ladder and in tours as a consistent sun mon that has a 75% chance of putting opponents to sleep for both itself and for strong physical partners in the back to later luck through with sleep turns, while picking a sleep sacrifice risks a 25% chance of just giving the opponent a free hit. Are we fine with keeping these around and leaving the Sleep Clause Mod as it is, not following how games actually play on cartridge and introducing counterplay that should not exist and isn't perfect in that it rewards the sleep user for missing?

4.2. Ban Hypnosis, leave sleep unchanged

This would fix the two most relevant sleep users in OU right now, and makes the Sleep Clause Mod much better counterplay to sleep as it allows for you to sacrifice something to sleep much more easily and then be safer to switch in your counter - with this change, it is likely that OU would be fine with sleep in its current state. However, this is not a good solution whatsoever, as Hypnosis is an objectively worse move than every other sleep move barring the low-relevance Grass-type immunities of Spore and Sleep Powder. There is no solid justification for banning this move on its own, and so this is not at all a reasonable solution to sleep in the tier despite being an easy patch fix that would solve most of our issues.

4.3. Do nothing

Is Darkrai really that much of an issue right now? Is Iron Valiant packing a low accuracy move to try and beat some checks but instead wasting turns and opportunities to set up or do damage 40% of the time actually problematic? Are we really having issues with Lilligant-H sun when it's forced to commit Tera to not be completely walled by our most prevalent sleep immune mon, Gholdengo? I don't agree with this take on the issue, but this all has to be proven wrong for us to take action here. So many things are clearly not broken by having sleep right now, so the burden is on people asking for change to prove that sleep is a clear issue on more than just one mon - I think it is, but how do we prove this?

4.4. Remove Sleep Clause Mod, ban sleep moves

On the other end of the scale, the most drastic change possible to solve this is a complete removal of the Sleep Clause Mod and ban of sleep moves that Sleep Clause Mod already acknowledges as broken in their cartridge form by its existence. This would be a massive change and, as previously discussed, would make SV unique due to the change not being easily blanket applicable to the past few generations despite sleep as a mechanic being unchanged; BW is similarly unique, but that is entirely due to the sleep counter resetting on switches which makes it clearly broken in that generation. Of course, this change could be implemented in generations 6-8 too, but this would likely require large amounts of internal discussion and consideration within those gens due to differences in how sleep moves interact with the tier. This would balance not only Darkrai but also remove any potential future issues with Iron Valiant and Lilligant-H, coming at the expense of gutting clearly balanced mons like Amoonguss and Breloom that incorporate sleep as an integral part of their movesets and function much worse without them. This also brings our battle simulator significantly closer to cartridge. Does our metagame actually benefit from sleep moves being around?

4.4. What do I think?

I personally like the removal of Sleep Clause Mod and ban of sleep moves the most. I would like to see a mod that we've had for over a decade, before any sense of consistency was really applied for tiering, removed in place of an actual cartridge-accurate solution to sleep as a mechanic being clearly broken - if it wasn't broken, we wouldn't have Sleep Clause Mod in the first place. We don't aim to tier with the end result of letting niche picks keep their niches because they have limited access to an otherwise broken mechanic, and every problematic mon that has an issue with sleeping its checks is not at all an issue without their sleep moves lacking safe and consistent counterplay.

Sleep Clause Mod is an archaic mechanic that has no place in modern tiering and adds more problems than it does solutions, and the cleanest and most elegant, cartridge-accurate fix is to remove Sleep Clause Mod entirely and ban sleep moves altogether.

 

[Finchinator]

I am in favor of banning sleep moves from SV OU. If this option lacks the support on the upcoming survey, my second option would be banning the Pokemon Darkrai and then reassessing. No other solution should be considered (unless you belive there is no problem, in which case no action is fine of course) given current tiering conventions.

Why do I support banning sleep moves? They have an uncompetitive place in the format. While Sleep Clause has mitigated this to some extent over the years, that specific extent is arbitrary, the clause is an incomplete solution, and there is clearly some outcry for more. This is depicted by the recent outbreaks with Darkrai and even Iron Valiant. I implore people who support action on sleep to respond accordingly on the upcoming tiering survey.

You may note that both Darkrai and Iron Valiant use Hypnosis, which is a particular sleep move that you can isolate as a crosssection between those two, thus leaving other moves like Spore or Sleep Powder as is. However, I do not think this is something we can do -- isolating Hypnosis and only banning it -- because it leaves open a major can of worms. Banning Hypnosis only would be a lazy, incomplete solution that will cause more lingering issues in the tier and procedural issues in the policy department.

For starters: this does not solve the full problem and just wipes the slate temporarily clean for these lone abusers. For example, Darkrai can use Dark Void with 10% less efficiency, leaving us in the same Dugtrio suspect --> people use Diglett --> Arena Trap ban torture chamber as we once were in. This is just one small example of other applications that can and will pop up when we isolate one specific move strictly because of current distribution. I do not like basing policy on theory, but some common sense has liberty when something 10% less accurate can do the same exact thing and beyond this there is also the concept that should be kept in mind here.

The fact of the matter is that the correct policy decision is to simply reform sleep clause to a ban on sleep moves like what was done in BW and articulated in various prior posts in this thread. Any other decision is simply being made to minimize collateral, preserving elements of the status quo. We do not tier here to be preservationists, but rather to be consistent with the practices that are put before us within tiering policy.

If you wish to take a deeper dive into tiering policy mechanisms, be my guest, but that spans far beyond sleep or individual precedent and would mandate reassessment a whole network of other topics in a separate thread that covers far more than SV OU. Working on the assumption fundamental change does not occur because I doubt this is pursued, the solution that both tackles the issue of this thread and reforms the banlist in a way that jives with tiering convention would be banning sleep moves. If this is seen as too big of a leap, then the default in general is to ban Pokemon regardless of anything else and Darkrai is a perfectly fine solution IF it is deemed broken in that scenario (obviously this is all support dependent and hypothetical in the meantime). I do not mind either solution, but I much prefer tackling sleep moves, which will be included in upcoming council discussions and the tiering survey.

 

[Ctann]

This whole argument can be simplified down to the following thought experiment:

what pokemon, can take advantage of limiting itself to 3 move slots, in exchange for a 0.67*(accuracy) chance to get “at least 1 free turn” in a matchup?

and furthermore,

how is this 0.67*(accuracy) different from other pokemon that can dedicate a move slot, in some cases without the trade-off caused from limiting coverage? In particular those pokemon may also have an x% chance to get at least 1 free turn in a matchup.

Simplifications

for simplicity, let’s disregard sleep, status or powder immunity, as well as sleep counterplay like sleep talk.

in an attempt for further simplification, let’s disregard pokemon that are mostly defensive such as amoonguss. For reasons explained above.

Breloom is the fastest of the OU viable “offensive” threats that gets 100% accuracy. It gets 0.67*1.0 = 67% chance to get at least “one free turn. The problem for Breloom with its STAB options, 3 move slots is inefficient. It’s also lacking the BST to trade hits.

Darkrai is the fastest of the OU viable “sleepers”, whilst it gets a shitty 0.67*0.6 = 40% chance to get at least “one free turn”. However with darkrai, that one free turn can turn into a 2 for 1 trade if it goes off well, against the right matchup. It has the coverage options to deal with a large percentage of counterplay in the 3 slots it has left, and the BST to trade hits against some neutral, it also gets a bonus 25%+ damage boost when it rolls the “at least one free turn”. Others above have gone into more detail about how it can make use of sleep.

-

Analogously, let’s look at paralysis. In older gens, there was thunder wave + flinch/confusion. In newer gens it’s Glare + substitute. Let’s focus on glare + substitute

Paralysing a check, and then fishing for at least 1 free turn with substitute can be done by two examples presented below

Paralysis can be pretty OP, especially with a pokemon like serperior, who might dedicate a slot to it, and can use the other 3 slots to fish for free turns and/or cause damage or boost on those turns. Serperior, as ridiculous as it might potentially be in those % of matches that paralysis goes your way, isn’t ultimately too much of a problem. There’s big flaws like coverage and BST, as well as convenient small details about the OU environment it plays in, such as Volcarona and Skeledirge naturally checking it and naturally bypassing substitute with STAB attacks. Without dedicating significant resources to beating it.

paralysis was super OP when it was used by Zygarde, it was deemed one of the primary reasons Zygarde couldn’t be balanced in OU. Because the % chance of a free turn was enough for Zygarde to bypass its checks. And it has the BST and coverage options with its 3 slots to take advantage of this chance.

Due to the above differences between Serperior and Zygarde in the most recent metas they existed in. It was deemed reasonable to ban the pokemon that could do more with the 3 slots, and not do anything about the one that could be bypassed. The idea of banning “moves that cause paralysis” wasn’t a topic.

It’s reasonable to continue to apply the same logic to the few pokemon that can actually become “OP” from chance.

Note

but smogon is not really about this concept of consistency. As we have brought up before, kings rock was banned when cloyster was a problem. Understandably, it’s not possible to always be consistent as people want an enjoyable experience

-

the concept of trying to use chance to get “one free turn” isn’t exclusive to chance based moves. There’s also chance based matchups + game mechanics like terastalisation. I don’t need to go into detail on this, most people intuitively understand that some matchups can be won simply because you have the right Tera on the right OP threat.

-


TL:DR sleep in its current gen 9 form, is a status mechanic that can be used by pokemon in an attempt to fish for “one free turn”. Pokemon that can afford to fish for “one free turn” with 1 moveslot, and be OP with the other 3, may be deemed as OP in general.

If there’s anything gen 9, with its terastalization mechanics has taught us, it’s that apparently fishing for at least “one free turn” isn’t inherently broken - according to the majority of voters at least.

If fishing for “one free turn” is inherently broken, then sleep is analogous to other techniques to fish for “one free turn” and there’s many more mechanics that need to be banned. Otherwise ban the threats that can do too much with that “one free turn”

 

[Bluwing]

The policy we have as I understand it is to stay as close to the cartridge as possible, so if sleep is uncompetetive or not is then deemed irrelevant considering this policy as it is part of the game and has been since the start of pokemon. Banning sleep in itself as a mechanic no matter how uncompetetive will break these rules, in my opinion complex bans or not, you should stay as close to cartridge as possible, doing this perfectly wouldn’t be possible in a singles metagame, but banning a core mechanic would for me be taking it too far.

If Darkrai is the true issue at hand then ban the pokemon, banning a core mechanic is not the way. If one wanna improve on the current sleep mechanics then do so, but take your time and come up with something that will truly fix the issue or leave it alone.

 

[Finchinator]

The policy we have as I understand it is to stay as close to the cartridge as possible, so if sleep is uncompetetive or not is then deemed irrelevant considering this policy as it is part of the game and has been since the start of pokemon. Banning sleep in itself as a mechanic no matter how uncompetetive will break these rules, in my opinion complex bans or not, you should stay as close to cartridge as possible, doing this perfectly wouldn’t be possible in a singles metagame, but banning a core mechanic would for me be taking it too far.

I just want to point out that this paragraph contradicts itself. Do you realize that Sleep Clause is not possible to enforce on the cartridge at all? Sleep Clause is the status quo and it functions in a way that entirely contradicts cartridge play.

If you try to sleep a second (or third etc.) Pokemon in-game, it will allow you to and there's no way to prevent it or have the pop-up text that happens on PS. In situations where PP stall exists, a player misclicks, or someone predicts a slower opponent to wake up, it is very feasible a sleep move can be clicked while one Pokemon is still asleep, too. Given that you said "The policy we have as I understand it is to stay as close to the cartridge as possible", you would be incorrect to have any opinion other than to want Sleep Clause removed from SV OU.

On the contrary, banning Sleep Moves is a simple ban of moves that is enforced via the same tierlist mechanism that is used for the ban of any other Pokemon or move. If you do not want us to ban moves that are uncompetitive, then establishing tiers and banlists simply would not be possible as it is in the modern day. In the end, if your sole goal is to remain as close to cartridge as possible, then you should absolutely support the abolishing of sleep clause in SV OU. And that has to come alongside sleep moves being banned if that is the stance you wish to take.

Finally, claiming something being deemed uncompetitive as "irrelevant" (your words, not mine) when this game is...competitive...Pokemon and the ban is perfectly fine conceptually, even having precedent from BW, is silly.

 

[BigFatMantis]

I understand Bluwing 's point, I think. They agree that Sleep Clause is not possible to be replicated on cartridge, but banning an entire mechanic (i.e. Sleep) is going to start moving away from actually adhering to cart play because you are removing an entire status condition. When we talk about "staying true to cartridge" I think it's possible to interpret it in slightly different ways - we can ban all status moves and stay true to cartridge because we can "technically" make gentlemen agreements to only use damaging moves, but that doesn't mean the spirit of cartridge play is actually being respected. So in a sense, removing Sleep Clause and banning all Sleep moves can be seen as moving further away from how the game was meant to be played on cartridge than removing Sleep Clause and then banning Sleep moves, even though the current situation cannot be replicated technically by cartridge, because it at least preserves one of the essential status conditions that has been present since Day 1 of Pokemon. So when we say, via tiering policy framework, that we play to the best of our abilities with the mechanics given to us on the cartridge, the argument being presented here is that Sleep is a core mechanic that is being removed and therefore we are not actually adhering to this.

It's not a perfect argument, but I think it makes sense and shouldn't be dismissed so easily. However if Sleep is deemed uncompetitive to the point where it "reduces the effect of player choice / interaction on the end result to an extreme degree, such that "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant," then, only if this is satisfied, should it be banned per the framework. Whether or not it actually is appears to still be up for debate, as well as whether removing Darkrai instead can fix the main uncompetitive issue.

 

[R8]

Wasn't "staying true to cartridge" brought up specifically just because sleep clause breaks game mechanics? Isn't the tiering policy framework explicitly referring to game mechanics? I think it is very misleading to say it can be reinterpreted, as it might just erase what was originally meant.

On top of that we already have official precedent, not only by removing sleep from BW but also Dynamax from SS, and a Tera ban was a possible option in the SV suspect test dedicated to the mechanic, so I don't see why the argument would suddenly be applicable here. I personally believe that sleep being labeled as a core mechanic - which is already an arbitrary appellation - should not be relevant. Granted, I understand the argument a bit more when it is about a generational mechanics, but this is not what sleep is.

 

[BigFatMantis]

On top of that we already have official precedent, not only by removing sleep from BW but also Dynamax from SS, and a Tera ban was a possible option in the SV suspect test dedicated to the mechanic, so I don't see why the argument would suddenly be applicable here. I personally believe that sleep being labeled as a core mechanic - which is already an arbitrary appellation - should not be relevant. Granted, I understand the argument a bit more when it is about a generational mechanics, but this is not what sleep is.

The argument is more that, if there was one pokemon that was breaking Dynamax in SS, then that pokemon would have been banned and not Dynamax. If there was only one pokemon breaking tera in SV, then tera would not have been on the chopping block because the pokemon breaking it would have been. If only one pokemon was breaking Sleep in BW, then that one pokemon would be banned (there were multiple users there). So, similarly, if there is only one pokemon here that is breaking Sleep in SV, then that pokemon should be banned and not Sleep. Sleep is definitely not a generational mechanic, nor do I think it's a "core" mechanic (that term is kinda strange anyways), but it's definitely a mechanic, as all status conditions are mechanics in pokemon.

Not saying it shouldn't be banned because of this, but I do think we won't get anywhere arguing about the mechanics of it all. If it's uncompetitive on a variety of pokemon, to the point where tiering policy dictates it should be banned (such that "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant etc. etc.), it should be banned, otherwise if it's one pokemon pushing it over the edge then that pokemon should be banned.

 

[Finchinator]

They agree that Sleep Clause is not possible to be replicated on cartridge, but banning an entire mechanic (i.e. Sleep) is going to start moving away from actually adhering to cart play because you are removing an entire status condition.

This is just making up what is important and what is ok to disregard based on personal views though.

One thing (sleep clause) cannot be adhered to on cart, but the other thing (banning sleep moves) adheres to the same logic as every other ban: adding something to our banlist due to it being broken or uncompetitive. There is no clause or condition in tiering that prevents bans if they tackle a major subject matter and what is "major" is entirely in the eye-of-the-beholder since this is not codified at all. Sleep has been banned before, generational mechanics have been banned from a prior generation, and entire categories of moves (evasion) have been banned. To put it bluntly, you cannot just draw the line here unless you wish to reevaluate a whole lot more -- it would be arbtirary and inconsistent to do so.

When we talk about "staying true to cartridge" I think it's possible to interpret it in slightly different ways

As a tier leader and someone who has been dealing with tiering for many years, I can say with confidence that the intention and spirit of that phrase is to keep our formats playable in-game, not to avoid bans of signifigance. And the history of bans/tiering prove this repeatedly.

 

[Karxrida]

By Bluwing's logic we shouldn't have banned Evasion boosting moves and abilities or OHKO moves either because those are technically their own mechanics that we have effectively removed from the game. Evasion in particular is a type of specific stat boost we cannot achieve when playing in most of our metas. But Evasion and the ability to just randomly delete a Pokémon are supremely uncompetitive (and arguably outright broken) so we banned them.

 

[Ctann]

Can we look at it from a smogon logic point of view. Trying to focus on the most recent decisions possible.

• shed tail, last respects and rage fist weren’t “inherently broken” unless it was demonstrable that they broke a majority of the pokemon they’re available on. It’s now split, with 2 of the 3 banned and 1 deemed okay, if its main abuser was banned.
  
  
• tera (widely accessible by all pokemon) wasn’t deemed inherently broken in its suspect, dynamax was (all OU-permitted pokemon could dynamax).
  
  
• Kings rock (available to hold on almost every OU-permitted pokemon) was deemed uncompetitive on at least 1 pokemon, and was subsequently banned. This may directly contradict the standard approach, the justification was focused on how any pokemon could take advantage of the fflinch chances.

The last time I can think of, where a ban happened due to widespread uncompetitiveness/brokenness was baton pass. Sleep isn’t baton pass.

sleep is definitely not kings rock, you’re committing a move slot and a chance to do nothing. It’s not net neutral/additive like kings rock.

 

[Karxrida]

A sleeping Pokémon (henceforth referred to as Pokémon A) is guaranteed to do nothing for at least one turn. Realistically more -- unless the underlying RNG system is weird -- because the other potential outcomes are a 2 turn sleep or a 3 turn sleep that Pokémon A has to be active in battle for if you want to cure it. This creates a massive momentum swing for the sleep inducer (Pokémon B) as the owner of Pokémon A is either forced to sit there and pray for the 1 turn sleep or switch out to something that might not be able to even check whatever Pokémon B is. This also prevents Pokémon A from waking up until much later in the match, if at all. Neither of these outcomes are desirable, especially if Pokémon A was supposed to check/counter something else on Pokémon B's team but got baited.

A single successful Sleep can have massive implications for a match at the cost of a successful hit and one moveslot. Hell, nothing is stopping more sleep to happen if Pokémon A wakes up (possible with current Sleep Clause if the owner of Pokémon A does stay in) or is knocked out. I would thus argue that the mechanic is indeed broken due to this overbearing influence -- even with its current mod nerf -- and think it should just be banned outright.

 

[TTK]

I'm finally ready to write my thoughts on all this sleep stuff, I kept thinking about my opinions on it, then to wanting to write and then end up forgetting the way I wanted to word it or what I wanted to say. So excuse me if the post feels a bit weird to follow, I just wrote down in my notes anything that sounded right in my head.

From what I've read across 3 threads: Views From The Council, this thread, and the OU metagame discussion thread, there were 2 main points I could interpret as "Removing Sleep Clause Mod into banning sleep moves" and "Banning Sleep because it is uncompetitive". What I believe is getting muddled up in this discussion on policy is the combination of these events which I find to be mutually exclusive events. If we look at them individually, we will reach the path where I believe the best action will be taken.

Removing Sleep Clause Mod into banning sleep moves
​

This is the main argument at hand so focus on it only right now. The logic that is presented to remove Sleep Clause Mod is right. It is a mod of the mechanics of the game we play and that does not align with tiering policy. No one can refute this fact if you are a person who doesn't want sleep to be banned. Now we remove Sleep Clause Mod and what happens next? Well, we have unrestricted sleep which no one wants to deal with in singles so we will have to ban sleep. Sounds fine right?

"Sleep is uncompetitive"
​

Unfortunately, I personally do not find this to be the case whatsoever and anyone arguing this in our current state of how we play the game has a hard time proving this. Regardless of Sleep Clause Mod being around, you would still have to use Tiering Policy to outline an argument for banning sleep on uncompetitive grounds but let's just say sleep's RNG surely isn't as egregious as 60% Jirachi flinching anything slower and it also has a speed reducing move and can stack 60% flinch + 25% para and I do feel like this was an accelerated reaction due to Darkrai dropping as well as already present sleep strats being frequent with Iron Valiant.


So what do you suggest TTK? Like I said earlier, removing Sleep Clause Mod in its current form is what should be the cause. However, viewing the metagame as it is now, banning sleep doesn't sit right with me when frankly there's insufficient arguments for its alleged uncompetitiveness. Sleeping 1 mon max has never felt like an issue and I think the burden of proof for banning non-Pokemon elements has always been higher than banning individual pokemon. What I propose is Revising Sleep Clause Mod to Sleep Clause. I've liked ideas being thrown around of automatically losing if you sleep more than one pokemon. No mod required (you don't even have to grey out a move since that's not cart accurate, just have a line that reads "more than one pokemon asleep, user loses by default" and automatically forfeit them). There are some issues with things that have a chance of sleeping (Effect Spore, Relic Song, Dire Claw etc) and my response for that? Might just to take it on the chin. Back to my proposal though, surely this has the least amount of collateral compared to banning all sleep moves and cutting strategies like yawn on certain mons. This is also the best way to evaluate Darkrai which obviously contributes to sleep being controversial and removing our "tiering policy issue with mods".


Tiering Policy Assumption IV: Probability Management is part of the game.

I've accepted sleep is part of the game, I've accepted paralysis as part of the game, I've accepted freeze is part of the game and sleep had the most counterplay out of them. If darkrai and valiant are running away with games thanks to Lead Hypnosis, perhaps look at darkrai and valiant.

 

[Bluwing]

This is just making up what is important and what is ok to disregard based on personal views though.

One thing (sleep clause) cannot be adhered to on cart, but the other thing (banning sleep moves) adheres to the same logic as every other ban: adding something to our banlist due to it being broken or uncompetitive. There is no clause or condition in tiering that prevents bans if they tackle a major subject matter and what is "major" is entirely in the eye-of-the-beholder since this is not codified at all. Sleep has been banned before, generational mechanics have been banned from a prior generation, and entire categories of moves (evasion) have been banned. To put it bluntly, you cannot just draw the line here unless you wish to reevaluate a whole lot more -- it would be arbtirary and inconsistent to do so.

As a tier leader and someone who has been dealing with tiering for many years, I can say with confidence that the intention and spirit of that phrase is to keep our formats playable in-game, not to avoid bans of signifigance. And the history of bans/tiering prove this repeatedly.

I have a question then, if sleep is then fully banned, how will this exactly work? Will rest, yawn and relic song be banned? Same for abilities that can cause sleep like effect spore, if so wouldn’t this both affect abusers and the healthy part of the mechanic (yawn, rest)?