Metagame Views From The Council

[BigFatMantis]

I think we are splitting enormous hairs on what is "uncompetitive" at this point. Sleep is definitely uncompetitive. Paralysis is also uncompetitive. Flinching moves are also uncompetitive. Baton Pass is also uncompetitive. Quick Claw and King's Rock are also uncompetitive. Evasion boosts are also uncompetitive.

It is no question that these are are parts of the game with uncompetitive aspects. However, some of these things we ban and others we do not. What defines whether it reaches the point that it should be banned is something you can decide through our Tiering Policy framework. Specifically, a few points I want to copy from there:

III.) The onus of providing justification is on the side changing the status quo.
...

• If a proposal is made to ban or unban a Pokemon, ability, item, or move, the side suggesting this must demonstrate why this is necessary and how it affects the ladder and the tournament scene, as well as provide evidence for both

IV.) Probability management is a part of the game.

• This means we have to accept that moves have secondary effects, that moves can miss, that moves can critical hit, and that managing all these potential probability points is a part of skill.
• This does NOT mean that we will accept every probability factor introduced to the game. Evasion, OHKO moves, and Moody all affected the outcome "too much", and we removed them.
• "Too much" is if a particular factor has the more skilled player at a disadvantage a considerable amount of the time against a less skilled player, regardless of what they do.

II.) Uncompetitive - elements that reduce the effect of player choice / interaction on the end result to an extreme degree, such that "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant.
...

• This can be probability management issues; think OHKOs, evasion, or Moody, all of which turned the battle from emphasizing battling skill to emphasizing the result of the RNG more often than not.

Basically by reading all this, I think it's important to focus not on just sleep being uncompetitive (we've known this for years) but rather:

A) Why is it necessary, now, to ban it? Such a big change puts an onus on the people moving to ban Sleep and remove Sleep clause to show "why this is necessary." Do you believe we cannot achieve a stable metagame with Sleep Clause and Sleep moves in place as is? Is the current metagame in a current state the only option is to ban Sleep altogether to salvage it? What is it specifically that has changed to warrant this? Is it Darkrai entering the tier?

B) Why is Sleep considered "too much" with the current sleep clause? Is there no other aspect of the meta that has similar or worse rng based aspects to it?

Personally I'll play whatever metagame is in front of me and banning Sleep wouldn't really affect me on a personal or emotional level, but I think we should still do this correctly and not jump the gun on taking action here unless we are certain that is the way we need to go. I don't really buy into the "doesn't adhere to cart" arguments though because we already do that with other stuff - if there's real change needed, it's because real change is needed with the meta, and we should demonstrate why that is.

 

[Brigtel]

blablabla

Sleep has always been more on the uncompetitive and luck-based side of things. In past generations it was somewhat valuable and interesting, which might justify to some the use of a mod instead of a ban, but in the more modern gens it's hard to see the point of keeping it around. I know some people are very hostile to pushback against modding, but I do think it should be as limited as possible. In fact, I think we ought to consider a mod to be a complex ban (the most complex of bans, in fact) but that is much more controversial. What should at least be the consensus is that modding should only exist in cases of great necessity. Darkrai is in no way broken, but I really don't see any reason to keep sleep around aside from tradition. It adds nothing positive to the tier, is often used on cheesy sets that mean you're accepting to coinflip your win in the teambuilder, before the battle has even started, and requires a mod. At this point sleep should have to prove why it is still worth having a mod to keep it in the tier, rather than us needing to prove that sleep is worth tiering action.

 

[Cuddly]

Ok, let's look at numbers!

Turn	Sleep % of failing to act	Accumulated nº of moves hit	Paralysis % of failing to act	Accumulated nº of moves hit
1	100,00%	0,00	25,00%	0,75
2	66,66%	0,33	25,00%	1,50
3	33,33%	1,00	25,00%	2,25
4	0,00%	2,00	25,00%	3,00

So, by turn 4 (when you are guaranteed to wake up), you are only expected to have missed one additional move compared to being paralyzed.
Let's just remember that you can only put 1 mon to sleep at a time and, If you were paralyzed, you remain paralyzed forever and have your speed reduced by 50%.

January stats:

Pokémon	Usage %	Move	Chance of having the move	Frequency
Iron Valiant	12.314%	Hypnosis (60%)	1.496%	1 in 543 battles
Darkrai (new toy)	11.537%	Hypnosis (60%)	30.526%	1 in 28 battles
Ninetales-Alola	4.422%	Hypnosis (60%)	22.137%	1 in 102 battles
Amoonguss	3.850%	Spore (100%)	96.040%	1 in 27 battles
Venusaur (new toy)	2.011%	Sleep Powder (75%)	2.308%	1 in 2174 battles
Lilligant-Hisui	0.661%	Sleep Powder (75%)	23.415%	1 in 645 battles
Brute Bonnet	0.094%	Spore (100%)	93.348%	1 in 1136 battles

Here, I only put OU (because I'm that nice to you, paralysis lovers) and removed Darkrai, Dragonite, Iron Valiant, Kingambit and Raging Bolt because their Thunder Wave values were too low (not lower than the multiplied % of Venusaur and BrUtE bOnNeT). And let's not forget to compare the moves' accuracies!

Pokémon	Usage %	Move	Chance of having the move	Frequency
Gholdengo	12.314%	Thunder Wave (90%)	8.745%	1 in 63 battles
Hatterene	15.788%	Nuzzle (100%)	43.721%	1 in 14 battles
Slowking-Galar	12.601%	Thunder Wave (90%)	30.166%	1 in 26 battles
Deoxys-Speed	12.246%	Thunder Wave (90%)	2.401%	1 in 340 battles
Archaludon	10.002%	Thunder Wave (90%)	3.299%	1 in 303 battles
Dragapult	9.797%	Thunder Wave (90%)	19.962%	1 in 51 battles
Clefable	8.558%	Thunder Wave (90%)	18.146%	1 in 64 battles
Serperior	8.451%	Glare (100%)	81.566%	1 in 15 battles

And did I mention that Zapdos has Static?
Oh well, let's remove paralysis and freeze from the game too!

Look at my post above yours to see how (un)competitive paralysis is.

Honestly wish all 3 were gone. Evasion moves was banned because it encourages degenerate fishing for misses on otherwise perfectly accurate move. Evasion abilities/items were banned because they encourage degenerate playstyles fishing for misses. King's Rock was banned because it encourages fishing for flinches and allowing you to break past walls through luck. Sleep and Paralysis aren't that different and Freeze is even similar in older gens where Freeze Clause had to be implemented. If I were a director at GameFreak, Paralysis would only slow down Pokemon, Freeze would become special burn, and sleep becomes something other than "lol you can't attack for X amount of turns unless you use specific moves". Unfortunately I'm not and Smogon isn't either so we settle with banning sleep moves and other degenerate strats.

 

[Shinto7654]

. I don't really buy into the "doesn't adhere to cart" arguments though because we already do that with other stuff - if there's real change needed, it's because real change is needed with the meta, and we should demonstrate why that is.

Please actually point this stuff out in gen 9 OU (so nothing like freeze clause in older gens and whatever gross shit Gen 1 has because the playerbase was too entrenched and dumb to ban Counter) that is the same as Sleep Clause. And HP percentage isn't a valid answer because it is a thing that can be done in a battle between two people through methods such as an impartial third party that aren't forcing a cart/game modification (hell, we have other clauses that are self-enforcing anyway). Thats like, the one big reason that Zarel was fine with letting it stay from what I can recall considering they were a big proponent of making the pixel counting the only way of counting HP. Sleep Clause is the only current Gen thing that direcly flies in the face of this by being 100% impossible to replicate in a cartridge setting

 

[Finchinator]

I personally think Darkrai is annoying, but not immediately banworthy, even with the recent surge in the lead set. It has a substantial opportunity cost, but I can admit the upside is big. I think we can include it on surveys to see how the playerbase feels. (fwiw I think Kyurem is easily the most broken thing right now)

I do think it is good hashing out the merits of sleep as a whole vs specific abusers like Darkrai, and I think this should have been done at the start of last generation rather than what actually happened, which stifled any prospect for a discussion. I cannot say I am super motivated to act immediately on either end, but things can change with time and discussion.

 

[Yojimbro]

Been waiting for this to be brought back up in earnest since the BKC debacle.
As long as I've played Smogon singles, the principles of the community abiding by a set of tiers, clauses, bans, etc were all in service of a few ideas.

1: Make the game as competitive as possible. We attempt to minimize luck/RNG and remove as many "uncompetitive" things as necessary. (OHKO moves, evasion in all its forms, king's rock, quick claw, moody, baton pass, etc.)
2: Operate in the framework set by the actual games. Even though many (Perhaps the majority) of us play on sim, the rules are still made in accordance with the limitations and changes that the games bring. (New content, dex and move cuts, type and stat changes, other mechanical differences between gens.)
3: Bans should be simple and straightforward. Complex bans result in rules that are harder to explain, harder to follow and are just generally a sign that a larger problem is at play.

While there are always circumstances where something might bend a rule a little, (Removing acid rain from sim even though the glitch exists in gen 4.) sleep clause as it exists now goes against all 3 of these concepts simultaneously.

RNG/Uncompetitive - Sleep as a status is an RNG heavy and uncompetitive element, full stop. There's plenty of arguments to be made about paralysis and freeze similarly being uncompetitive for their chances to steal turns, but they are different cases (Paralysis has standalone utility in slowing a pokemon and freeze is exclusively accessed through 10% chance effects.) and should merit their own arguments seperately. Sleep clause doesn't actually do anything to prevent this, it merely limits you to imposing the status to one pokemon at a time.

Unique non-cart mechanic - Sleep clause on showdown merely prevents the move from working if you've already put an opponent's pokemon to sleep. No such mechanic exists or can be implemented on cart in the same capacity, it may seem like a very small thing but the existence of altering game mechanics opens up other much more troublesome arguments. (If sleep clause breaks game mechanics in furtherance of competitiveness, then why not also hard code things like 10% chance effects or crits out of showdown as well?)

More complicated than alternatives - For anyone who has played singles, sleep clause might seem very easy to follow but it does have more complexity than something like banning all moves that inflict sleep on other pokemon. A pokemon asleep because it used rest isn't considered a pokemon sleeping for sleep clause, bouncing back a sleep move with magic bounce or magic coat doesn't count as your move for sleep clause and effect spore procs don't count as you putting a pokemon to sleep. Its a deceptively complex clause masquerading as fairly simple.

I think firstly that sleep clause needs to go, its a bag of worms. Secondly, while sleep has its countermeasures, they're often fairly weak options even in the scenario that you are carrying them. An all out sleep inducing move ban is likely for the best.

 

[Heatranator]

There are two issues here: 1) whether sleep clause is itself outdated/incompatible with modern tiering principles (a claim which may affect sleeps present in future gens); and 2) whether sleep is broken in current Gen IX OU, even with current sleep clause, or if it might just be darkrai that is the problem.

1) Should sleep clause be removed entirely on principle, including for future iterations of OU?



^This train of thought is the nail in the coffin for sleep from a self-consistency standpoint, in my opinion. If sleep were a new status, there is absolutely no way we would go out of our way to form a complex ban to keep it around. Sleep clause's blatant contradiction with modern OU tiering philosophy has bugged me for a long time. The fact that it's current implementation requires deviation from cart mechanics is even worse. If it were up to me, I would just get rid of (non self-inflicted) sleep for all current gen OUs going forward.

That said, as much as tiering is based on clear principles and the logic that flows from them, it must be acknowledged to some extent that tradition/nostalgia plays a big part in deciding what things are allowed. To that end, while I do not like sleep clause at all, I do have sympathy for people who would like to keep it around because the availability of sleep moves in some form has historically been a part of competitive singles. If a large part of the Smogon community as a whole thinks that sleep clause is worth keeping solely out of tradition, I don't think it would be wise to remove it for all time, even if I dislike it. For the same reason, I want to be clear that should this line of thinking become policy, I think both I and most others would NOT want this to be a retroactive change to prior generations (this is obviously just an Gen IX thread but when making broad changes like this often eyes soon turn towards making old gens consistent with modern ones). There is no need to go overturning other settled generations to fit with our modern conceptions of what tiering should look like.

To touch on some sleep related odds and ends:
Dire claw can go with sleep, no need to make an exception (I feel likewise with relic song for consistency tbh but no one cares about meloetta so whatever). I do acknowledge that yawn has a more competitive flair than the rest of sleep moves, so I understanding wanting to separate it from the immediate sleep moves (you could imagine a ban on moves that cause instantaneous sleep), but at the same time I also think that the preference for less complex clauses in battle is a good one. So I can go either way here. Now what to do with effect spore causing sleep is a whole other issue; thankfully, right now there is no pokemon which has effect spore as its only ability, so I think it is fine to ban the whole thing, but one could imagine a future where an otherwise balanced pokemon with only effect spore getting booted from OU simply due to its ability (getting frosslass vibes here); I will leave that to future players to deal with this should the problem arise.

2) Setting that aside, is sleep as it currently exists broken in Gen IX OU? Or is it Darkrai?

This is a tough call. I will start by saying that in general, I do NOT think that sleep cause in its current implementation is inherently uncompetitive, in general (although how it applies to hypnosis in this generation in particular will be discussed later) There is obviously a large element of luck in sleep, but even so several previous metagames have managed to remain skill based and competitive, even when sleep is a big part of the ecosystem.

I think generally sleep's power is greater in more offensive metagames, where it is harder to recover from the instant loss of a pokemon due to sleep, and the momentum gained by putting a pokemon to sleep can be immediately capitalized upon. I think the thing that sets Darkrai (as well as to a lesser extent Iron Valiant and A-Ninetales) apart is that these pokemon get you so much immediate advantage from a 60% roll that it gets to a point where the outcome of one or two attacks can be disporportionally game warping, leading them to be uncompetitive. As a result, I do think it makes sense to do something about this mechanic.

On the flipside though, in high power environments, the downside of just wasting a turn due to the low accuracy of most widely distributed sleep moves similarly becomes harder to justify. To that end, I am not sure if hypnosis darkrai (if it is allowed to exist as it does now) will ever take off consistently in a tournament environment; even when the roll is in your favor, missing a hypnosis can be a big risk when you have a lot riding on the line. This is not to say that I don't think that these sets will be used at all in tourneys (there are already some successful tourney results from hypnosis darkrai), but I suspect that should they be allowed to persist, in the long run these sets would fade out of popularity due to inconsistency (in contrast, in a ladder environment, where high variance is acceptable if the expected value is large enough, I think darkrai would remain a scourge). As a result, in the tournament metagame, I think ultimately it is spore amoonguss that will prove the most annoying. However, in the current moment, I doubt amoonguss alone is what is making people call for action on sleep. Iron Valiant and A-Ninetales are similar; I do think they have problematic elements with regards to sleep, but without darkrai I am not sure this issue would have generated as much attention.

On that note, I do think that in this particular instance, it is very difficult to separate darkrai from a total sleep ban. Is sleep clause really just largely uncompetitive in this gen, or is darkrai the one who is really pushing it over the edge? If I am trying to be dispassionate, I would maybe lean a little towards banning darkrai first before going all out on sleep (provided there is not a fundamental alteration towards the tiering policy on sleep, which I would prefer). I do think there is a good chance that sleep may remain uncompetitive even so, but there is no harm in revisiting this down the line and possibly freeing darkrai in exchange later. It just feels unfair to hit all sleep across the board when in this moment it is very unclear where the real source of the problem is. On the other hand though, I just don't like gimmicky sleep stuff lol (in the context of this gen), and if I were redesigning the tier to my own wishes I probably wouldn't include it, not to mention the fact that banning darkrai may just be delaying the inevitable. So ultimately I'm ok with either path.

TLDR
1) Sleep clause as it exists should be abolished in my view; it is bad enough that it conflicts with modern tiering philosophy, it is even worse that it breaks cartridge mechanics. However, I understand the community at large may feel some traditional attachment to sleep as it has been implemented historically, and I think it is ok to violate consistency for the sake of maintaining the status quo, provided that is what the majority feels (once again, if it were up to me, I would kick sleep out altogether

2) If we are not going to fundamentally rework sleep clause, and are just concerning ourselves with whether sleep clause is broken in Gen IX, I do think there is an issue with sleep that darkrai has brought to the forefront, but it is very difficult for me to say definitively whether it is sleep broadly or darkrai specifically that is the problem. I think the most "objective" option is to ban darkrai first, and then revisit this later if sleep remains an issue, but my personal feeling is that I do not enjoy sleep broadly right now and would not mind seeing it go entirely for this generation, so long as most others agree.

This is honestly the best response I've seen to the sleep clause debate as we have multiple issues to deal with. It shows why why might ban sleep, but shows that there are arguments against banning sleep. Also, uncompetitive is kinda a dumb word to throw around as I've seen it thrown around a lot. Part of playing Pokemon is playing around the RNG. Would damage roles be uncompetitive? The player has no control over it, so what is the deal with uncompetitive. It should be that there is no counterplay to it and that one unlucky moment is guaranteed to lose the opponent a game. Sleep has counterplay, stuff like Garg and ghold are immune to sleep, while grass types are immune to spore

 

[June Heat]

Unban Darkrai they said. It’s mid they say. Wait, no, it’s not actually Darkrai it Sleep that’s the problem!

People Sleep was never a problem this Gen until Darkrai was brought down. Annoying? Yes. Uncompetitive? Maybe a little. Broken? No. In fact interesting enough Sleep moves do have a healthy component. Yawn is a move that would be effected my this proposal, and as many people have pointed out it’s used mostly as a phasing move than a sleep move. Amoongus with Spore largely offers the same effect. It’s so slow and passive that the opponent can switch freely into their least useful mon/Gholdengo/Gliscor without really getting punished too harshly if at all.

It’s only when combined with fast speed, high attacking stats, a wide and varied movepool, and an ability that turns sleep into poison as well do we start having problems. If you wanna take care of SV OU’s sleep problem look towards Darkrai first.

As far as the whole cart modding thing go’s. I’m pretty unfamiliar with how cart handles sleep in a competitive setting. If it’s just preventing a Pokemon from clicking a sleep move after putting something to sleep then I see no problem.

 

[knexhawk]

I think its a bit dumb to generalize "sleep moves" as a problem. No one has ever complained about amoongus this generation before today. Its a healthy part of the metagame. The only sleep moves people ever complained about is darkrai and iron valiant's hypnosis. Even stuff like ninetales-a is just annoying, if it sleeps you, all it does is click weak attacks or screens, then switch. Odds are it would be able to get that screen anyways.



On darkrai, hypnosis is a safe option, due to its naturally high speed allowing it to consistently run a focus sash, along with decent natural bulk and solid defensive typing. Hitting a hypnosis with darkrai also gives you much more of an advantage with darkrai than any other pokemon, for a few reasons.
-You get a free 12.5% damage per turn your opponent is asleep. Assuming you hit, and the 1-3 sleep turns, this averages 25% chip.
-You get to fish for 20% dark pulse flinches as your opponent has a chance to wake up. (Nothing else can reliably do this)
-You have a move that can boost your stats to +2 which can capitalize on the free turn(s) you will recieve.
-You are incredibly fast and very little can outspeed you, and most things that do, are deathly afraid of switching it. Bar max speed zamazenta, and occasional booster iron valiants, there is nothing above 383 speed that can switch in without risking an OHKO.

So, darkrai will take the 60% coin flip. If it hits, at minimum, darkrai gets one free turn to do whatever it wants, and it also gets a free 12.5% chip.
If the enemy decides to say in and try and wake up (say, ting lu, fairy toxapex, clodsire, blissey), then darkrai will get between 1/8 and 3/8 of damage on them, along with 1-3 free turns.

A typical scenario will go like this.
Turn 1: hypnosis hits. Opponent sleeps, and takes 1/8.

Turn 2: darkrai nasty plots, if the opponent cannot OHKO it or cripple it in another manner. If it can, darkrai switches, and the opponent still has a 66.7% chance to continue sleeping. Often will give a free turn to any sort of defensive pivot to do whatever it wants.
If the opponent is sleeping, darkrai gets a free +2 and the opponent has taken 25% at this point.

Turn 3: darkrai attacks. Nothing wants to switch into a +2 darkrai, even resists take a solid chunk. And odds are you would have went to your zamazenta, valiant, enamorus, earlier. Not every team can afford to slot multiple of these offensive dark resists.
There are only 3 options on what will occur next.
The opponent continues to sleep, darkrai fires off a +2 dark pulse/icebeam/focus blast/etc. Very strong attack. Almost nothing in the game can stomach 2 of these plus the 25% from sleeping to this point. If you have one of the few pokemon capable of this, then you take 12.5% more from bad dreams. (37.5% so far, along with taking a +2 attack.)
The opponent wakes up, assuming it survives said +2 attack, it has to gamble with the 20% chance of getting flinched, starting this entire cycle over again. Nothing in the game can take 2 sleeps back-to-back along with the attacks from darkrai.
If, and only if, the opponent wakes up, and does not get flinched, does it have a chance to fire back. Remember, darkrai has solid natural bulk, a focus sash, and a decent defensive typing. If you do not OHKO darkrai or cripple in another manner you are coinflipping hypnosis again.


Looking at iron valiant, another occasional abuser, where hypnosis is only a niche high risk-high reward move, where valiant will often just faint or gain nothing if hypnosis either missed or got a 1 turn sleep. Valiant cannot capitalize from these free turns in a similar manner darkrai can, due to any choice of 2 attacks and a setup move having essentially ironclad counters, along with not getting a free spike chip for every turn your opponent doesnt roll a wakeup.

I have lost a +6 spdef leftovers clodsire to this hypnosis darkrai set before, and multiple +1(or higher) blisseys. All darkrai needs is 2 hypnosis hits in a row, or one 3 turn sleep, and it can break through essentially anything slower than it. That is far from uncommon. What are these defensive pokemon supposed to do? Hope they dont get flinched as they wake up so they can recover? Risk hypnosis again? If something like clodsire toxics, it will just die, and often its responsible for checking darkrai's teammates as well.

Hypnosis on this pokemon was the reason I gave this pokemon a "5" on every survey so far and have advocated for it to NOT be unbanned, it just took a few weeks for the OU tier to slow down enough for people to stop using the terrible revenge killer scarf set and pivot to flipping coins to break anything slower than it.

Notice how this ISNT a hypnosis problem, its a uniquely darkrai problem, due to its combonation between blistering speed, bad dreams, wide movepool, and its ability to outspeed and drop any pokemon designed to eat status (gholdengo, garganacl, gliscor). Hypnosis as a high risk-high reward move is fine on everything EXCEPT darkrai. Darkrai turns it into a moderate risk-massive reward coinflip.

Banning sleep will just pointlessly ruin and neuter other pokemon. No other generation has a problem with the sleep clause thing (except 5, but the sleep mechanics were totally broken, so that doesnt really count), so why should it be a problem now? Its effectively only darkrai abusing here, and it seems like a simple solution. Make a suspect test to ban darkrai. (frankly it shouldn't have ever had the chance here to begin with)

 

[BigFatMantis]

Please actually point this stuff out in gen 9 OU (so nothing like freeze clause in older gens and whatever gross shit Gen 1 has because the playerbase was too entrenched and dumb to ban Counter) that is the same as Sleep Clause. And HP percentage isn't a valid answer because it is a thing that can be done in a battle between two people through methods such as an impartial third party that aren't forcing a cart/game modification (hell, we have other clauses that are self-enforcing anyway). Thats like, the one big reason that Zarel was fine with letting it stay from what I can recall considering they were a big proponent of making the pixel counting the only way of counting HP. Sleep Clause is the only current Gen thing that direcly flies in the face of this by being 100% impossible to replicate in a cartridge setting

Cancel button. Just sayin. That whole point was probably the least important from that whole post tho tbh

 

[Go Go Nihilego]

Sleep Clause Mod is a dinosaur of a mechanic that should be removed out of principle. And if you’re gonna remove that, I guarantee nobody wants to play in a meta where Amoonguss is sleeping half your team, so the natural conclusion is to just ban all sleep moves. I’ve felt this way for the past decade or so I’ve been following competitive singles and none of it has to do with Darkrai. Just get rid of the mechanic instead of grandfathering in a mod that has no business existing outside of the Stadium games it was introduced in.

 

[GT89]

I personally don’t feel like sleep is any more uncompetitive than paralysis since they’re both RNG mechanics. Sure, paralysis has other utility but it still brings with it RNG side effects, Based on that alone, i don’t see how you can target one mechanic but allow the others that have RNG concepts attached to them. But that’s just me.

If sleep is an issue because of a move’s unpredictability like hypnosis accuracy, then i’d target that move specifically rather than sleep as a mechanic. At least with the spore users, you already know what’s going to happen and it’s guaranteed to happen so you can adjust and play accordingly.

 

[Shinto7654]

Cancel button. Just sayin. That whole point was probably the least important from that whole post tho tbh

Was the most important part the badly formatted quoting of the tiering policy shit you did? Or trying to act like banning sleep requires it sleep to be having cataclysmic levels of meta ruining power in order to be a legitimate thing to discuss? Because neither one of those are very good points either lol

 

[Hydrametr0nice]

I agree with the arguments about the cartridge, although it's not a dealbreaker.

The uncompetitive arguments fall apart if you don't argue against banning paralysis. Here, you can compare the numbers between sleep and paralysis: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/views-from-the-council.3733223/post-9928082.

I would prefer consistency across generations, so my preferences would be:

1. Remove the sleep clause mod and ban sleep-inducing moves in all generations;
2. Stay as it is - keep the sleep clause mod in all generations (except Gen 5 where sleep is banned);
3. Ban sleep in Gen 9.

It just bothers me to have this generation different from the others. BW is a different case because of the sleep mechanics.

 

[Pinecoishot]

Rng is a part of Pokémon but as seen with the sand veil, kings rock ban back in SS. Aspects that add nothing except for an uncompetitive rng check to the game should be banned. Sleep falls into this, while incapacitating a Pokémon is fine the uncompetitive aspect falls into the 1-3 turns it takes to wake. Amoongus has done this since release but I’m glad darkrai made sleep ban be a topic. I would also like to look into Quick Claw/ Quick Draw/ Focus Band for similar reasons

 

[DiscoDucky]

To echo a sentiment that was expressed in an older Policy Review thread, the "we should be cart accurate" argument is a bit misleading. For example, Showdown's HP bars historically have not been cart accurate (see Zarel's thread and Stratos' thread on the topic here). To summarize, Showdown does HP in percentages while the cartridge does them in fractions of 48th. On cart, moves like Stealth Rock damage, Substitute HP cost, and Leftovers recovery cleanly modify the HP bar by 1/8, 1/4, or 1/16, respectively. The percentage format on Showdown means that we end up with rounding errors (6.25%, 12.5%, 33.3%) that has led players to pursue weird EV spreads that exploit this difference (e.g. Leftovers number, 24% HP Substitutes, HP numbers that minimize SR damage on Showdown). Do you feel dirty using weird EV spreads to exploit the simulator's algorithm?

I think it's pretty clear that the Smogon community has taken creative liberties when creating their version of competitive Pokemon. Combining this info with Smogon's tiering policy, it's pretty clear-cut that Darkrai, not Sleep, should be evaluated. I can't help but feel that those cherry-picking "cart accurate" arguments without considering the other inconsistencies between Showdown and cart are using Darkrai to push a larger (and IMO unnecessary) agenda to significantly modify Sleep for no good reason.

I would assume that if you'd like Sleep to be cart-accurate, then you would also want Showdown's HP system to be too.

 

[Heatranator]

To echo a sentiment that was expressed in an older Policy Review thread, the "we should be cart accurate" argument is a bit misleading. For example, Showdown's HP bars historically have not been cart accurate (see Zarel's thread and Stratos' thread on the topic here). To summarize, Showdown does HP in percentages while the cartridge does them in fractions of 48th. On cart, moves like Stealth Rock damage, Substitute HP cost, and Leftovers recovery cleanly modify the HP bar by 1/8, 1/4, or 1/16, respectively. The percentage format on Showdown means that we end up with rounding errors (6.25%, 12.5%, 33.3%) that has led players to pursue weird EV spreads that exploit this difference (e.g. Leftovers number, 24% HP Substitutes, HP numbers that minimize SR damage on Showdown). Do you feel dirty using weird EV spreads to exploit the simulator's algorithm?

I think it's pretty clear that the Smogon community has taken creative liberties when creating their version of competitive Pokemon. Combining this info with Smogon's tiering policy, it's pretty clear-cut that Darkrai, not Sleep, should be evaluated. I can't help but feel that those cherry-picking "cart accurate" arguments without considering the other inconsistencies between Showdown and cart are using Darkrai to push a larger (and IMO unnecessary) agenda to significantly modify Sleep for no good reason.

I would assume that if you'd like Sleep to be cart-accurate, then you would also want Showdown's HP system to be too.

Thank you. People keep speaking about "but it's not cart accurate". Lots of showdown is not cart accurate. We don't need this 'cart accuracy' stuff because we aren't playing on cart. If you want cart accuracy so much, play on cart. We are playing on a simulator, it is meant to simulate the cart, but not be a one-to-one copy of it. The threads you posted showed that % based HP is not cart accurate, yet nobody complains about that (though most likely because not many people know). Cart accuracy as a concept seems dumb, you are playing on a simulator, you are not going to be cart accurate no matter how hard you try.

 

[Vert]

my preferred action is do nothing

hypnosis never hits but let's say you do and get the free turn to nasty plot (39% odds), darkrai becomes a+ not broken. the 'mon misses out on ko's even at +2 while it has plenty of checks, anti-leads, and trouble picking its coverage move:
ice beam: walled by kingambit, weavile, clefable
focus blast: walled by fairy-types
tera blast: easy to defensively tera into like how we beat fairy gholdengo
sludge bomb: ting-lu, great tusk, kingambit

this also doesn't account for games where clicking dark pulse or ice beam is the superior play opposed to risking 60% hypnosis and potentially playing a 5v6. in fact i've had my own share of experiences where i brought darkrai twice in tournament (fun set i played vs Finch) and frankly i think the 'mon is kind of ass.

this game has a lot of arguably uncompetitive shit like scald, static, flame body, and thunder wave / glare, but none of these warrant serious discussion because smogon loves stall. literally though, red card amoonguss during world cup was just as pussy but the topic was never brought up because y'all like your fat 'mons.

hypnosis darkrai is similar to dire claw sneasler to me, kind of uncompetitive but you can't ban it off that alone. in fact, sneasler wasn't even ban-worthy until rillaboom became real and people starting spamming sd gunk shot + unburden.

there are more pressing issues in this tier, c'mon.

 

[TFS]

Static Zapdos has consistently introduced way more of a luck-based/uncompetitive element to more games than Hypnosis ever has, as have things like Scald's Burn chance, Focus Blast's accuracy, which Pokemon gets called by Whirlwind/etc, Moonblast drops or Dark Pulse flinches preventing a check, or even something as basic as damage rolls. Removing any of these luck-based mechanics from the game - simply because of their pervasiveness - would make the game far more competitive than removing Sleep would. I'm not a huge fan of luck-based mechanics being permitted or banned solely based on how easy they are to tier, and not to what degree they make the actual gameplay better or worse - it just seems like half of a solution to one aspect of a problem systematically inextricable from the game's identity.
Trying to control one aspect of RNG while permitting many others that are drastically worse just seems to me like a fool's errand.

It's also important to note that the layers of RNG behind Sleep aren't consistent between all Pokemon; Amogus is drastically more consistent than Darkrai and treating these two as if they introduce the same amount of RNG to the game / tiering Sleep as a mechanic the same way for all Pokemon is rhetorically dishonest.

I'm not really sold on cartridge parity arguments, either. Turn cancelling comes up far more often than Amogus wasting PP, shouldn't that be a more pressing issue if catridge parity is paramount? What about playing without a timer, which also hasn't been possible on-cart since around the time Sleep Clause was removed? Playing on a simulator inherently concedes parity for accessibility and the game is better for it; I don't think the way cartridge parity has been cited here is a valid argument for or against anything.

(the irony of this talking point coming up immediately after darkrai's unban while simultaneously arguing that darkrai isn't unhealthy also isn't lost here)

 

[grayblood]

Reason 3 is the most stupid thing ever, sure it sucks you can't truly replicate on cartridge, but no one uses smogon rules in competitive battles on cartridge; at best you play with friends or members of the community in a casual match. There is no smogon ladder on cartridge and there is rarely, if at all smogon rulebased tournaments on cartridge in the past 1-2 gens. It is a joke to even consider that (which said person tried to bring up before to campaign sleep ban 2 years ago)

Ban darkrai it obviously was a mistake to unban him, Sleep leads have existed since gen 4 and always had ample counterplay and ways around it and shouldn't be cast aside because of darkrai's sins.

 

[MeepBard]

Cancel button. Just sayin. That whole point was probably the least important from that whole post tho tbh

so the cancel button has been brought up before and it is justified via an "impartial judge" - basically, if you were playing on cart, before you actually select your move in-game, you tell the judge what move you're going to click and provided your opponent hasn't told the judge their move yet, you're able to say "hey, actually, i change my mind" and the judge would allow you to do that. hipmonlee explains this well in this post

Thank you. People keep speaking about "but it's not cart accurate". Lots of showdown is not cart accurate. We don't need this 'cart accuracy' stuff because we aren't playing on cart. If you want cart accuracy so much, play on cart. We are playing on a simulator, it is meant to simulate the cart, but not be a one-to-one copy of it. The threads you posted showed that % based HP is not cart accurate, yet nobody complains about that (though most likely because not many people know). Cart accuracy as a concept seems dumb, you are playing on a simulator, you are not going to be cart accurate no matter how hard you try.

to quote the tiering policy framework:

I.) We play, to the best of our simulator's capabilities, with the mechanics given to us on the cartridge.

this forms the basis of all tiering policy on smogon, so it is absolutely something to adhere to and not something to ignore (sleep clause is explicitly listed as an exception to this rule, but i think that's silly when a non-mod alternative to sleep clause exists as i pointed out in my previous post).

if you ignore cart accuracy, you open the door to modding things from the game that we don't like, such as scald's 30% burn chance and static/flame body's 30% proc chances, and at that point we aren't playing pokemon anymore. HP percentages are justified on the simulator, again, via what would be an impartial judge on cart - the judge looks at the exact HP on each player's screen and quickly calculates the percentage before presenting it to both players.

 

[skippergamez]

The difference between para and sleep is so astronomically large is comical people are bringing up para.

I wonder why more Pokemon have a paralysis move? Maybe cause GF is aware that sleep is MUCH MORE UNCOMPETITIVE.

Also, while you have paralysis, you have a 25% chance to not move, while you are asleep, you have a 100% chance to not move.

stop talking about paralysis, sleep is more uncompetitive, there is no slippery slope

 

[quacc]

I do think there is an inherent issue with sleep as a mechanic.

Alright, sure Darkrai is the most problematic user of hypnosis by far. The chip is pretty nice, but it isn't necessarily going to stop people from running hypnosis Darkrai if it did not have that perk (alright, maybe it would have contributed a little bit, people like to use all the bells and whistles they get on their mon and it is very possible that bad dreams made things more manageable).

However, I do believe that hypnosis is not the best Darkrai set, it's just the cheesiest that has, I don't know, a 20% chance of winning the game on the spot against most teams? This is pretty good, one mon to win a game 1 in 5 times seems really good, but those other times it's just a pretty bad mon. If we had let more tournaments take place, I would not be surprised if these hypno Rai teams do not have a good win rate, it's just that it takes skill out of the equation at times when facing them. I wouldn't know, though, because I don't play tournaments, but I do play a lot of ladder, over 3.5k games (which is probably not a good sign about me all in all tbh), and out of all my games, I don't even do that bad against hypnosis Darkrai with a pretty good WR against it (although maybe hax was involved in some way).

I think the main thing that should be considered is that do the other sleep move users feel unhealthy without the move, and I have to say that it really... doesn't. Maybe Amoonguss, but even that is a bit iffy to me especially when it can just take a mon out of battle entirely. Amoonguss has also fallen off a lot, and maybe it's still good, but I think it would still be a good Rillaboom check and a decent fairy resist without spore. Sure, banning spore makes it harder to justify, but also you can use something else? Amoonguss is pretty much locked into boots as far as items go in my opinion unless you are using an offense team with it, but you can use moves like stun spore, toxic, even stuff like eject button and eject pack which are popular on some playstyles. Also, spore Amoonguss is still annoying as hell to face lol.

I hate A9 lmaoo get hypnosis off this shit

Hypnosis Val is also another thing to mention, and it is niche and maybe it's alright in how you can handle it, you got Gholdengo to reliably handle it and uuh...

Also, I would like to mention that the whole point of Hypnosis Val isn't to provide good utility for your team, it's to quite literally give you a chance, maybe around a coin toss, to have a chance to beat the mons that are supposed to hard counter you. This competitive to you? This healthy to you? Saying that Val can just die isn't a good excuse because at the end of the day, those mons beat all the other sets of Val anyways, it's just that this one has a chance.

Maybe I just want Darkrai in the tier and I'm just making excuses, but I will say that there are genuine upsides in keeping mons like Darkrai in the tier. It offers nice speed control, decent coverage, good ways of forcing progress, nice utility options (especially will-o-wisp, I love will-o Rai), but the main reason I am fine with it in the tier is that I feel like without strong dark types, the ghost type as a whole would be so broken lol, the addition of Meowscarada and Weavile as very viable dark types in the OU landscape is nice, but give people more options aside from fast triple axel dark type thingy, spike setter dark type thingy, and annoying cheese mon thingy. Fast special attacker for a dark type is something we don't have, so it brings something unique to the table. (By the way, I don't even ladder with Darkrai, so I don't have that much of a reason to speak of Darkrai in a positive light unless I truly see good in the mon. Also, I have been 6-0d by lead hypnosis Darkrai twice when I have led Ting-Lu turn 1, and I still don't want Darkrai banned. I promise I am not that biased towards the mon as I seem)

Okay, why not paralysis?

If you are going off of the argument that "paralysis is more uncompetitive than sleep but it isn't broken" kind of misses the mark, no? As someone who has had plenty of wack paralysis encounters and hates Serperior's whole sub glare stuff, you can at least use your mon lmfao, one status is a lot more impactful on hyper offense (it's sleep) and paralysis is fishable on bulkier structures, but it's not like you can't use that mon unlike against other mons clicking sleep moves instead. Okay, burn off the sleep turns if you wish, but let's be real, it's just gonna die in a hyper offense landscape. Paralysis? You can still use your mon lmfao, yes it can be considered uncompetitive but it just doesn't have the same punch to the stomach that hypnosis does (unless you get para'd for like 10 turns, it happens to everyone).

But yeah, I hate the sleep mechanic as a whole, does help alleviate the problems some people have about modding the game and keeping it as close to cartridge as possible, so I would be fine with banning it. Darkrai ban? I would miss Darkrai, but I don't use Darkrai that much. It's still in my opinion healthy for the tier, but it is possible to make a tier without Darkrai, absolutely. It just feels wrong that all of the consistent sets of Darkrai that do add a healthy layer to the metagame just don't feel broken at all, but it's just the sleep move one (not to mention other mons do this too and are still very annoying).

 

[GT89]

The difference between para and sleep is so astronomically large is comical people are bringing up para.

I wonder why more Pokemon have a paralysis move? Maybe cause GF is aware that sleep is MUCH MORE UNCOMPETITIVE.

Also, while you have paralysis, you have a 25% chance to not move, while you are asleep, you have a 100% chance to not move.

stop talking about paralysis, sleep is more uncompetitive, there is no slippery slope

Both are RNG/Luck based. Shouldn’t discredit one while targeting the other in my opinion, even if one is stronger. Just like evasion, it’s all odds, percentages, luck, and RNG.

Once you eliminate sleep, the next logical step would be to eliminate the next mechanic that implements RNG to steal turns and/or swing games in paralysis.

I’m not disagreeing with you on the power of sleep, i just think it’s hypocritical (of anyone) to think one is ok and the other is not if the goal is to minimize RNG and luck deciding turns/games.

 

[Shaymin Sky]

Warning, I mention math.

Sash Lead darkrai is inherently not worth the slot commitment because its statistically unfavorable in majority situations and can be counter played in builder. This is the case because fast sleep, Darkrai goes for hypnosis and you immediately burn the first guaranteed sleep turn. The odds you land the first hypnosis and get the turn 2 sleep needed to make hypnosis a positive play is 40%. If you miss the first hypnosis and proc sash you can go for it again and the odds are now 64% that you gain a turn, however this isn't accounting for people abusing the first turn 40% and using utility (EX: Thunder Wave) to cripple Darkrai so realistically the 64% is not at all consistently possible to reach even with sash because of utility anti leads.

Now assuming Darkrai gets the 40% on turn 1 and gets 1 turn of sleep you are ahead by 1 turn but its a non-item boosted darkrai with limited coverage. If you run NP you have to pick sludge bomb or focus blast (gl landing that with on top of hypnosis) and most teams can wall dark pulse + 1 of those anyways, even if darkrai is at +2. if you forgo NP and you go 3 attacks, due to no item boost the reward is middling and not noteworthy of taking action, I seriously doubt anyone notable is saying no item 3 attacks Darkrai is problematic.

The reward you get for getting the statistically unfavorable turn 1 is not at all impressive and not at all worth the team slot either if you look at it objectively. There are far more leads that give not only guranteed value but also statistically favorable value and lead sash hypnosis darkrai is proven to be statistically unfavorable on the turn 1 (this is not even mentioning that 64% on turn 2 is still not consistent either lol u could just miss/get turn 2 wake up TWICE). I doubt we will even see this Darkrai set in tour given how unrewarding when it works and inherently unfavorable it is, this is not like Cloyster where the luck has game winning potential this is an unboosted Dakrai.

There is the chance of 3 turn sleep but those odds are not at all reflective of the 90% of lead Darkrai battles anyways, and only the NP hypnosis sets can get the value needed off 3 turn sleep lead to win games. This means even if you get unlucky 3 turn sleep vs Darkrai you have decent chances that the opponent is running the non-NP Darkrai and the game is not at all over. There's too much variance that can go wrong for the Darkrai player while still not having game winning reward of past luck mons.

EDIT: Forgot to mention but you also have to land focus blast as coverage when fast hypnosis is already statistically unfavorable, yeah not happening LMFAO.