Metagame Views From The Council

[pixelpenguin]

"Hypnosis and Sleep Powder are worse moves than Spore, so ban Hypnosis and Sleep powder but not Spore"

That's not the point I'm making. You can play around your mon going to sleep. You can play around the move missing (duh that works great for you). The point I'm making is the counterplay isn't the same for both. Spore never misses and the counterplay exists in sleep fodder or if you want, playing the RNG wake up game. The OP points out that sometimes you can sack something to sleep and then suddenly Hypnosis misses, and now you're facing the Hypnosis abuser with a presumably useless pokemon. This is what I'm getting at. If the goal is to address the issue with the least complex ban, then banning Hypnosis instead of sleep is a better choice and that's what I'm advocating for. Ultimately if sleep is banned then that's fine, whatever. Same outcome in that Hypnosis abusers can't cheese wins anymore, I'm fine with that. Please actually engage with my point instead of just ridiculing it.

seriously, it's like saying "skymin would be less uncompetitive if air slash was 100% flinch chance instead of 60 because there's less randomness"

Not really a fair comparison. Skymin's counterplay is literally only being faster than it. Sleep with sleep clause/mod has actual counterplay which has been seen before with Spore. I'm all for banning Hypnosis, Sleep Powder, even sleep as a whole. I'm simply offering an idea and I don't appreciate being mocked for it.

 

[DaDucIsDaKey]

I feel like there should be a limit for what we ban for uncompetitiveness. If we ban sleep, why not ban flinch or freeze or paralysis or make an additional effects clause or make all moves have 100% accuracy? All of those would reduce the amount of luck in the game, thus improving the "competitiveness" of the meta. You should only ban things if they are a problem, and only reduce chance if you harm nothing else. (Also minimize clauses in general)

The way I would improve sleep would be to make a "harmless clause", which could be merged with the sleep clause. This clause would make sleep always last two turns, which does not reduce the value of sleep but lowers its variance. If moves like hypnosis or sleep powder end up unbalanced, making pokemon have significantly less checks, that pokemon or that move should be banned. Expect a hypnosis to land once if used twice. (36% of both hitting, 16% of both missing, 48% of one hit, one miss). For ladder, you will play many games, so individual variance does not matter. (Most Tournaments are bo3 i think).

 

[Shinto7654]

I feel like there should be a limit for what we ban for uncompetitiveness. If we ban sleep, why not ban flinch or freeze or paralysis or make an additional effects clause or make all moves have 100% accuracy? All of those would reduce the amount of luck in the game, thus improving the "competitiveness" of the meta. You should only ban things if they are a problem, and only reduce chance if you harm nothing else. (Also minimize clauses in general)

The way I would improve sleep would be to make a "harmless clause", which could be merged with the sleep clause. This clause would make sleep always last two turns, which does not reduce the value of sleep but lowers its variance. If moves like hypnosis or sleep powder end up unbalanced, making pokemon have significantly less checks, that pokemon or that move should be banned. Expect a hypnosis to land once if used twice. (36% of both hitting, 16% of both missing, 48% of one hit, one miss). For ladder, you will play many games, so individual variance does not matter. (Most Tournaments are bo3 i think).

Trying to fearmonger about slippery slope stuff, then trying to pitch a whole ass game modification as something neat and reasonable is kinda amazing, especilaly with it being a completely sincere and unironic suggestion

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

I feel like there should be a limit for what we ban for uncompetitiveness. If we ban sleep, why not ban flinch or freeze or paralysis or make an additional effects clause or make all moves have 100% accuracy? All of those would reduce the amount of luck in the game, thus improving the "competitiveness" of the meta. You should only ban things if they are a problem, and only reduce chance if you harm nothing else. (Also minimize clauses in general)

The way I would improve sleep would be to make a "harmless clause", which could be merged with the sleep clause. This clause would make sleep always last two turns, which does not reduce the value of sleep but lowers its variance. If moves like hypnosis or sleep powder end up unbalanced, making pokemon have significantly less checks, that pokemon or that move should be banned. Expect a hypnosis to land once if used twice. (36% of both hitting, 16% of both missing, 48% of one hit, one miss). For ladder, you will play many games, so individual variance does not matter. (Most Tournaments are bo3 i think).

that's an interesting idea, but it's straight-up modding the game in a way that has no precedent and we can't even pretend to enforce on cartridge. sleep clause is only a thing in the first place because it was an optional rule in stadium and battle revolution, so there's at least some official foundation for its existence

 

[Heatranator]

I feel like there should be a limit for what we ban for uncompetitiveness. If we ban sleep, why not ban flinch or freeze or paralysis or make an additional effects clause or make all moves have 100% accuracy? All of those would reduce the amount of luck in the game, thus improving the "competitiveness" of the meta. You should only ban things if they are a problem, and only reduce chance if you harm nothing else. (Also minimize clauses in general)

The way I would improve sleep would be to make a "harmless clause", which could be merged with the sleep clause. This clause would make sleep always last two turns, which does not reduce the value of sleep but lowers its variance. If moves like hypnosis or sleep powder end up unbalanced, making pokemon have significantly less checks, that pokemon or that move should be banned. Expect a hypnosis to land once if used twice. (36% of both hitting, 16% of both missing, 48% of one hit, one miss). For ladder, you will play many games, so individual variance does not matter. (Most Tournaments are bo3 i think).

That could potentially get it to be even more broken, as your opponent always know how many sleep turns there would be and could just put you in a cycle of sleep. Let's say ammonguss, it would just swicth out on the first turn, come back in on the second, and spore you once again on the third. This is a very dumb example, but my main point is that it would become not a guessing game, but a favourable thing for the opponent to do to set up repeatedly and win the game. Plus, people would cite it as not cart accurate, which everyone seems to be spouting now despite smogon literally not ever being cart accurate due to stuff like evasion clause.

 

[Divine Retribution]

The way I would improve sleep would be to make a "harmless clause", which could be merged with the sleep clause. This clause would make sleep always last two turns, which does not reduce the value of sleep but lowers its variance. If moves like hypnosis or sleep powder end up unbalanced, making pokemon have significantly less checks, that pokemon or that move should be banned. Expect a hypnosis to land once if used twice. (36% of both hitting, 16% of both missing, 48% of one hit, one miss). For ladder, you will play many games, so individual variance does not matter. (Most Tournaments are bo3 i think).

The main point of the current Sleep Clause discussion is to phase out a clause that requires modification to game mechanics and therefore can't be recreated on the carts. This suggestion would actually make that worse.

 

[TCTphantom]

If you want the most brutal argument against sleep, just picture if Sleep moves were introduced in Gen IX and we did not have close to two decades of Sleep clause. How different would the discourse be on sleep?

Honestly, the main argument against action on Sleep is that it's "fine" historically. Sleep in my opinion is no different than Kings Rock flinches or Baton Pass. Is it broken on every mon? No, not even close. But the gameplay pattern they bring is super cheesy and MU fishy. Getting your check hypnotized or sleep powdered is just as dumb as Cloyster hitting you with a flinch and winning the game off of that. If we did not have close to 20 years or so of Smogon sleep clause in effect, would people even be willing to tolerate the amount of RNG it brings?

I just hope Game Freak eventually reworks Sleep to the Drowsy status from Legends Arceus, that would be far less uncompetitive.

 

[zioziotrip]

this feels like a fairly cut and dry case of darkrai being the issue as opposed to anything else. amongus is fine but it putting something to sleep isn’t a massive issue, most competent teams have something to block it passively anyways. hypno val is bad, val with two attacking moves and no encore/dbond/taunt is incredibly limited in how it can help and clean not to mention incredible gliscor/gholdengo food.

don’t think the uncompetitive argument holds much water practically. just completely disregards the ability to play around status via sleep sacs, smart doubles, free turns with sub/lum, teams being too fast to care about slow sleep users, etc. sleep is interactive from a playing perspective and the games in which odds come into play aren’t frequent enough to warrant botching the mechanic entirely. also this is pokemon yeah sometimes u will run into jennyfromthepokeblock running up on u w jumpluff and going for max sleep turns but this isn’t much different from other form of rng abuse, it’s an unnecessary can of works to block a mechanic which isn’t very strong in its current state.

if it were up to me darkrai would be banned and no other change is made. darkrai is already arguably bogus without its hypnolead set and it’s not worth banning sleep to preserve it.

 

[Red violet blue]

I think that sleeping moves are uncompetitive because these are completely random:
1) The main problem is that sleep can last 1, 2 or 3 turns, it just depends on luck. The number of sleep turns completely changes a game.
2) Many Sleep inducing moves aren't 100% accurate, so once again, it depends on luck. Hypnosis has a very bad accuracy, but, if you're lucky, you can just win the game because of this move.
Lots of things can happen in 2 or 3 turns.

Therefore, I think sleep-inducing moves should be banned.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

this feels like a fairly cut and dry case of darkrai being the issue as opposed to anything else. amongus is fine but it putting something to sleep isn’t a massive issue, most competent teams have something to block it passively anyways. hypno val is bad, val with two attacking moves and no encore/dbond/taunt is incredibly limited in how it can help and clean not to mention incredible gliscor/gholdengo food.

don’t think the uncompetitive argument holds much water practically. just completely disregards the ability to play around status via sleep sacs, smart doubles, free turns with sub/lum, teams being too fast to care about slow sleep users, etc. sleep is interactive from a playing perspective and the games in which odds come into play aren’t frequent enough to warrant botching the mechanic entirely. also this is pokemon yeah sometimes u will run into jennyfromthepokeblock running up on u w jumpluff and going for max sleep turns but this isn’t much different from other form of rng abuse, it’s an unnecessary can of works to block a mechanic which isn’t very strong in its current state.

if it were up to me darkrai would be banned and no other change is made. darkrai is already arguably bogus without its hypnolead set and it’s not worth banning sleep to preserve it.

i do support a darkrai ban at minimum, but sleep clause vs sleep moves clause has been talked about back and forth for over a decade and i think it's finally time to put the issue…

to rest

 

[malomyotismon]

i do support a darkrai ban at minimum, but sleep clause vs sleep moves clause has been talked about back and forth for over a decade and i think it's finally time to put the issue…
View attachment 590475
to rest

Darkrai is no where near as over bearing in the meta to warrant a ban. Relying on hypnosis as a sleep move is an almost 50/50 gamble, and those frail defences that have only seen power creep leave much to be desired. Time with darkrai is better spent setting up a np and going for a sweep with it's excellent move pool okay offensive typing, fast speed + SpA, and of course terra. If you are going to punish with sleep and darkrai let it come in on a sleeping Pokémon than forgo essential coverage and risk a 40% chance it's gonna get crippled or koef

 

[blunder]

darkrai sparked this discussion so its clearly darkrai that should be looked at in my opinion. made a vid with my overall thoughts on my channel but this was never a discussed issue before darkrai came around and it is very clear that that is the pokemon that has created an imbalance

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

after some reflection, i think it makes the most sense to look at darkrai first, then reassess how we feel about sleep. if it's not banned, we can get back to the discussion right away; if it is, we can pick up the topic sometime later after giving things a chance to develop without it around. i still think the ultimate problem lies with sleep itself and that sleep clause is outdated, but it's pretty clear from the timing which mon is responsible for this discussion happening right now. we should approach sleep like we've approached tera—we should look into the abuser before the mechanic, but keep in mind that the mechanic deserves a look eventually too

 

[Heatranator]

after some reflection, i think it makes the most sense to look at darkrai first, then reassess how we feel about sleep. if it's not banned, we can get back to the discussion right away; if it is, we can pick up the topic sometime later after giving things a chance to develop without it around. i still think the ultimate problem lies with sleep itself, but it's pretty clear from the timing which mon is responsible for this discussion happening right now. we should approach sleep like we've approached tera—we should look into the abuser before the mechanic, but keep in mind that the mechanic deserves a look eventually too

See, that's what we should do. People say that sleep is the problem but don't mention any other abusers besides darkrai. Maybe I'm overlooking some others, but we should ban darkrai if it is the problem. I think it is going to die down over time and focus sash hypnosis darkrai will fall behind, but we shall see.

 

[TCTphantom]

darkrai sparked this discussion so its clearly darkrai that should be looked at in my opinion. made a vid with my overall thoughts on my channel but this was never a discussed issue before darkrai came around and it is very clear that that is the pokemon that has created an imbalance

Honestly, I see this the same as Kings Rock with Cloyster or BP with GeoPass.

Did one mon bring the topic to the forefront in particular? Yes, but that doesn't erase the issue being present still. Whether Darkrai is or is not in the tier, sleep introduces a lot of rng into the game. Darkrai has dumb cheese with Hypnosis, but the rng sleep brings and the cringe play pattern still remain. I'd compare it to stuff like Smeargle on BP and Cloyster with King's Rock because even if we kick Darkrai out of the tier, sleep will still be stupid.

People say Darkrai is the reason we are having this discussion, but the bigger reason is that we are dealing with the ramifications of Sleep clause. Sleep was attempted to be perserved over two decades ago when it would have easily attracted tiering action if it was left unchecked. Sure, we are discussing this right now because Sash lead darkrai is the current hotness on HO, but we have seen Sleep be dumb and cheesy plenty of times both this gen and in other gens. Mons like Venusaur and Valiant do similar cheese strats to darkrai, you are forced to sack a mon to Amoongus often.

Acting on Darkrai doesn't change the fact you have games that can be decided on massive RNG swings. Sleep in its current form is a massive RNG headache, and it has been for ages. It has been grandfathered into our tiering system because of clauses made almost two decades ago at this point. If Sleep came out in Gen IX as a new status condition and we did not have Sleep Clause and our history with it, it would have gotten tiering action unbelievably fast. We try to avoid complex bans as much as possible, so why should we bend over backwards to enable a massive rng mess like sleep? Sleep clause is already not representative of what's on cartridge; the only way it is is if two people shake on it as an informal agreement. The reason sleep clause even exists is because without it, sleep would be so obviously busted. Even without it, its clearly uncompetitive with how much RNG it brings to the table. If we were willing to act on Cloyster/King's Rock solely due to that, we should evaluate Sleep and its problematic aspects.

Sleep at its core is uncompetitive. Darkrai being in the tier is good because it finally gives us a good enough excuse to finally take down sleep clause, rip the band aid off, and just go after Sleep itself.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

See, that's what we should do. People say that sleep is the problem but don't mention any other abusers besides darkrai. Maybe I'm overlooking some others, but we should ban darkrai if it is the problem. I think it is going to die down over time and focus sash hypnosis darkrai will fall behind, but we shall see.

darkrai should be tested first, but i would like to note that in this thread alone i've seen mentions of valiant, atales, amoonguss, venusaur, and brute bonnet as being some level of potentially problematic/cheesy with their sleep moves, and that this is far from the first time this argument has come up

 

[Heatranator]

darkrai should be tested first, but i would like to note that in this thread alone i've seen mentions of valiant, atales, amoonguss, venusaur, and brute bonnet as being some level of potentially problematic/cheesy with their sleep moves, and that this is far from the first time this argument has come up

I don't think that brute bonnet should even be in the discussion, it can't even boost it's speed without trailblaze and is weak to the common u-turn. Amoonguss I don't think really is a problem with sleep as while it has 100% accuracy, it is not fast meaning it has to take a hit first. Venusaur can be problematic, but it would be giving up a coverage move in earth power or weather ball, or growth which severly reduces it's power. Atales does cause some problems with veil, but it has to set up veil first because that is it's primary job meaning that it has to take a hit, and veil doesn't seem to be broken right now. It can cause problems, but that would be more with veil than sleep.
Valiant is the only one close to being broken with sleep and even then, it has to give up on coverage moves to slot in both hypnosis and set up, which is doable, however it means that it loses one of its biggest upsides, it's vast coverage.
I think that while there are mons that can use sleep moves effectively, they either are giving up coverage, or are not problemaic in my eyes.

 

[peepeepoopoo722]

unban darkrai they said it will be fine they said

its more than fine it is through its darkness actually illuminating a multi generational flaw- that we're playing in a way carts don't support.

Just ban direct sleep moves- keep secondary effect moves. Probably even yawn IMO.

If there was a move that a lot of pokemon learned that directly froze we would im sure have a clause, mod, or more appropriately ban on those moves. but there isn't.

 

[SittinGamer]

I didn't keep up with SS OU even a little bit, but what was the meta context behind the linked Policy Review thread on Sleep Clause back in late 2021-2022? Evidently Darkrai is pushing the needle, but its clear sleep has been a point of contention for a LONG time, and in conditions where Darkrai was not available.

 

[BolTingBlazie]

The sleep clause should probably now also ban direct sleep moves that aren't 100% accurate to limit variance in the game, because banning stuff like Darkrai when the cheese hypnosis sash set isn't even that good of a set sounds dumb from a tiering perspective when we can just ban moves like grass whistle, sleep powder, and hypnosis that hold too much variance to really be healthy in a meta like this

 

[FCKNfuego]

this feels like a fairly cut and dry case of darkrai being the issue as opposed to anything else. amongus is fine but it putting something to sleep isn’t a massive issue, most competent teams have something to block it passively anyways. hypno val is bad, val with two attacking moves and no encore/dbond/taunt is incredibly limited in how it can help and clean not to mention incredible gliscor/gholdengo food.

don’t think the uncompetitive argument holds much water practically. just completely disregards the ability to play around status via sleep sacs, smart doubles, free turns with sub/lum, teams being too fast to care about slow sleep users, etc. sleep is interactive from a playing perspective and the games in which odds come into play aren’t frequent enough to warrant botching the mechanic entirely. also this is pokemon yeah sometimes u will run into jennyfromthepokeblock running up on u w jumpluff and going for max sleep turns but this isn’t much different from other form of rng abuse, it’s an unnecessary can of works to block a mechanic which isn’t very strong in its current state.

Agree with this take entirely.

This response to sleep is clearly because of Darkrai which regardless of being annoying likely still isn't banworthy. This discussion on sleep happens every gen and the conclusion is generally always the same at this point. The mechanic is fine as is and is not inherently broken. It's only ever a small part of the player base that is very vocal about it's current implementation that keeps raising the issue, while others who just don't like sleep as a mechanic constantly cherry pick points around it try to push for a ban.

The most valid argument around it has aways been around it's implementation as it is a mod of the game and that is clearly a fundamental issue for current tiering policy, but for those that haven't read the other thread linked R8 had suggested an amendment to the clause that states:

Sleep Clause

If a player has already put a Pokemon on his/her opponent's side to sleep and it is still sleeping, said player can't use a sleep inducing move unless it is the only possible action.

To further quote his post.

The pros are pretty obvious: we avoid an unecessary sleep ban while making formats enforcing this clause compatible with cart, plus we remove one of the very few exceptions to our tiering policy framework. There is a net positive doing that, and little to no costs

This essentially fixes the loophole while not losing out on the benefits of the clause with their being minimal adjustment on the player side.

 

[malomyotismon]

The sleep clause should probably now also ban direct sleep moves that aren't 100% accurate to limit variance in the game, because banning stuff like Darkrai when the cheese hypnosis sash set isn't even that good of a set sounds dumb.

This 100% I guarantee at this point that no hypnosis darkrai would never even come up for ban nomination, while hypnosis is just cheese, sink or swim darkrai is too frail to often afford the 40% miss and the 60% is cripple and chip giving it set up chance but it again is very luck dependant more than it's other luck move shout out to focus miss XD

 

[Divine Retribution]

It's worth pointing out that even a gentleman's agreement not to use Sleep moves if the opponent already has a sleeping mon isn't a perfect recreation of Sleep Clause. On Showdown, you can, for example, Spore a sleeping Pokemon if you're slower and think it might wake up on that turn, or to waste PP or stall out weather or Trick Room or whatever without being forced to use one of your other moves. Only situationally useful but still an irreconcilable difference between the carts and Showdown.

I would support Sleep Clause being modified to outright disallow the use of Sleep moves if the opponent has a sleeping mon already.

 

[ianlazerbeem]

"it seems like everyone is just talking about Darkrai, clearly Darkrai is the issue, it's all Darkrai, everyone's just saying Darkrai, the only example is Darkrai"

the person who introduced the topic, in the very first post about it:

- Amoonguss did what it usually does for a while, and to some extent it still does that. However, as people realised the power of neutralising mons in SV, "lead Amoonguss" was discovered - it'd run Red Card and just lead off, click Spore, and you didn't have much of a choice but to sack something to sleep. Red Card obviously had the side benefit of being great against Booster Energy users.

- There were a few popular Hypnosis Iron Valiant teams at various points in the metagame. It'd turn beating it with any non-Gholdengo check into a slightly weighted coinflip, Games against this thing got ugly really fast, especially because Iron Valiant is so versatile that you didn't necessarily see it coming unless you knew the team, as opposed to Amoonguss.

- Alolan Ninetales, at its peak, was super high in usage, and a lot of its variants ran Hypnosis. Considering it was supporting the incredibly broken Baxcalibur, it's not hard to see why this would become a problem very quickly, and it's not like Ninetales-A does a ton of damage on its own, so it didn't lose much by clicking it. Its bulk and typing also gave it plenty of fishing opportunities.

- Venusaur's new popularity has led to a decent amount of Sleep Powder sheananigans, which is very dangerous considering its threat level. Hisuian Lilligant has been fringe in OU since it dropped but its antics on Sun teams with Sleep Powder are incredibly frustrating to play around. Brute Bonnet was much the same thing. All of these were also incredibly threatening to everything that could hope to absorb Sleep.

---

To address the obvious question of "why not Darkrai?" - we have a few reasons;

a) Darkrai is certainly moving the needle here, but we have seen enough examples of this throughout the generation;
b) Sleep's layers of RNG - between 1 vs 2 vs 3 turn sleeps and whether or not the moves actually hit to begin with - are undesirable regardless of Darkrai's presence;
c) The mod we currently use for sleep is unfaithful to cartridge mechanics, which would *maybe* be okay in exceptional circumstances to keep the game playable (such as the various RBY desync patches on sim), but we do not necessarily feel that this warrants such a mod.

Any and all feedback from here is appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Bakugames]

My take is either ban sleep or ban nothing. Darkrai is annoying but not that bad and I'd rather keep it than letting it go, especially over hypnosis of all things + the fact it wouldn't change the annoyance of val hypnosis cheese