Implemented Sleep in RBY UU (Again) [Sleep Unbanned]

[Sabelette]

Guess who's back​

I'm going to keep this short because everyone on the voter list probably has already made up their minds in the last couple tournaments. The RBY UU council decided to test a sleep unban in the wake of other meta changes including banning Hypno and Lapras with heavy support from the community. We have had two tournaments with this change, RBYPL IV and UUSD IV. With those tournaments concluded, most are in favor of immediately voting and deciding on a path forward for this tumultuous tier.

Proponents of unbanning sleep point to the fact that Hypno was likely the most broken user of it, the fact that sleep inducers often offer relatively low value beyond landing the status, and that the fastest user of the status, Haunter, is inconsistent and frail, while the more consistent users offer far less offensive power and their own slew of weaknesses. They also point to the fact that the metagame quickly becomes paralysis spam from turn 1 with Clefable when there is no threat of sleep against slow targets. Opponents of unbanning sleep point to the fact that sleep as a status is incredibly powerful in RBY and hard to play around; switching into most sleep inducers is hard, since Haunter has amazing coverage and Explosion while Tangela offers Stun Spore, which can be very hard to take without losing momentum. It can also create "swingy" conditions where a game depends on a Hypnosis hit or miss, which can add to variance.

Qualifications set by the RBY UU Council for this suspect were 2 or more wins and 3 or more games played in either RBYPL IV or UUSD IV.

Voter List:
Amaranth (UUSD)
Ice Yazu (RBYPL)
Melbelle (RBYPL)
MrSoup (UUSD)
royzin (UUSD)
Sabelette (UUSD)
Torchic (UUSD)
Tree69420 (RBYPL)
Unowndragon (RBYPL, UUSD)
Volk (RBYPL)
YBW (UUSD)

A 60% majority - 7 unban votes - will be required to officially re-legalize sleep in RBY UU.

This thread will be open for two weeks to allow players to gather their thoughts and discuss, after which a voting thread will be made for the qualifying players to cast their votes. Voting will open on December 24th!

 

[Amaranth]

The tier, as it was in UUSD, is pretty miserable to play, but I would say sleep in itself feels fine to play with and against.
Banning Hypno was a huge mistake, it used to stabilize the tier a lot, but what's done is done - I think we should now free sleep and start poking at the worst offenders in terms of offensive potential (Articuno first probably?). Meta after sleep is freed definitely needs more changes, but sleep itself is not the problem

 

[Tree69420]

What thread do you want access for?
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/sleep-in-rby-uu-again.3732438/

Please submit the post you intend to make.
I feel like this meta feels far more balanced and fun to play than the previous meta. Obviously luck will be a factor, as it inevitably is in a RBY lower tier, but this meta feels like it rewards good lines and gameplanning better. It seems inevitable that we will have a near unanimous vote to free sleep, but I feel we can let this meta simmer for a while as it is the most balanced RBY UU has been in a while. Playing around sleep adds far more depth to the game and we should unban it ASAP.

 

[phoopes]

Didn't get reqs because I bustered hard in RBYPL but hopefully my opinion means something.

The meta with sleep banned was just like... so unfun. Admittedly it was pretty unoptimized but the lead meta was basically just whose Clefable could win the mirror, unless you led with Dewgong which people did occasionally but I always felt like that was unoptimal. From there your heavy hitters just swung and there wasn't a ton of defensive counterplay. Idk, someone correct me if I'm wrong here because I haven't played with Sleep banned in awhile because of RBYPL allowing it, but that's how I remember it.

The reintroduction of Sleep has been great IMO. Unlike Amaranth I feel like the meta is pretty fun and won't need many changes after this voting cycle (assuming Sleep gets unbanned). At the very least I'd personally like to let it settle/develop before we go through with suspecting anything. It's been awhile since we've really had a stable meta and I think everyone would appreciate it if that happened, and I think this is the meta to do it. There's a varied lead metagame and I feel like defensive counterplay isn't dead. I feel like in general more aggro play is better but it's not braindead like it was before the reintroduction of sleep.

So yeah, if it wasn't obvious, if I had a vote I would unban Sleep.

 

[Fc]

Missed reqs since I didn’t play enough but I still had 1 set in rbypl and uusd, from that and helping out our main slots I felt the tier is fine w sleep. Lead meta actually exists now which I think is good and sleep never feels too overwhelming with it both all being inaccurate and not that hard to punish sleepers who’ve already used it up on something else. Tangela is a nice addition to the meta where dugtrio can hax through half of it w crits and normals are super strong, haunter also helps w the latter. If there are concerns about the meta still or stuff like articuno being broken just free lapras, bro did nothing wrong and was balanced imo. Soft checks so much that it opens up a lot of room for outplaying, but aside from that as is I think sleep meta > no sleep meta post bans.

 

[Volk]

I will most likely be voting to unban sleep.

Banning Hypno was a huge mistake, it used to stabilize the tier a lot, but what's done is done - I think we should now free sleep and start poking at the worst offenders in terms of offensive potential (Articuno first probably?). Meta after sleep is freed definitely needs more changes, but sleep itself is not the problem

I'm of the opinion that Hypno is more worthy of a ban with sleep illegal than with sleep legal. Obviously it depends on community opinion, but I personally would want to reintroduce Hypno alongside sleep. I know this restores a past version of this meta, but I think that version was probably ultimately better than what we have now. This is not to say that I think this meta right now is awful, by the way. While I think Hypno did a lot to keep the tier stable, I think the builder has been freed up a fair bit without it, for the better. As such, I'm more than happy to allow this meta to develop for a moment or go after something else, if need be. I'm partial to the former though, as I think this tier would really benefit from the opportunity to just sit and grow. Reflecting on past decisions, I'm unsure if going after sleep was worthwhile. Removing sleep did arguably temper Normal Spam, but it's hard to say whether Normal Spam would have cooled off regardless. The sleepless meta also really did not develop for very long either, because Lapras drowned the tier for a huge chunk of its runtime. Hypno got caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time, because, at least to me, it was only in need of a ban during that specific meta in which sleep was illegal.

 

[Sabelette]

Sleep is now unbanned in RBY UU!

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/rby-uu-sleep-re-suspect-voting.3733225/#post-9907780