Metagame Views From The Council

[Smashburn]

To address the current sleep controversy:

To be honest I will never understand the ban sleep side of things. When expected, sleep is easy to manage; Breloom and Amoonguss are prime examples of this because you can expect Spore most of the time. You can plan your pre-game accordingly, and it is unlikely you will be punished by another set. Darkrai however, the main culprit of this discussion, isn't quite as telegraphed. Nasty Plot and Choice Scarf are its most common sets, but Hypnosis and Focus Sash have gained enough notoriety for controversy. Additionally, Bad Dreams Hypnosis in conjunction with Amoonguss and Red Card has been cited as uncompetitive matchup fishing. While I agree with the sentiment surrounding Darkrai, I disagree with the idea that sleep as a whole is banworthy. We cannot set aside the obvious fact that Darkrai is not balanced in any healthy variation of SV OU, it is only here as a matter of circumstance. While the metgame has been relatively stagnant, that is not an indicator that it is healthy. To name some of the most controversial: Darkrai, Deoxys-Speed, Gouging Fire, Kyurem, Roaring Moon, Serperior, and Volcarona only exist in OU to compliment one another and perpetuate the current circumstance. Within no isolated situation would any one of these be considered balanced, but because so many threats are loose in OU we have the illusion of a stable metagame.

Additionally, alternatives being discussed such as Hypnosis Iron Valiant are nothing but cheese. While Iron Valiant has a great number of sets, its Hypnosis sets only work in a select number of situations which are only occasionally rewarding if Hypnosis lands. Otherwise, all is loss.

If you step back and take a wider look at the picture of OU it is fairly obvious to see that Darkrai is the main cause of the sleep controversy. If you are tired of Darkrai sleep cheese you don't ban sleep, you ban Darkrai; If someone plays Beethoven you do not blame Beethoven, you blame the player. This is simple.

 

[udongirl]

As a premise, I dislike anything that is not a cartridge, so the sleep clause mod can go away. Then I thought of an alternative that might keep the clause.
The easiest way is to make it so that if you click on a move while your opponent is asleep, you lose. It would be best if there was some kind of warning when you select it so you don't click by mistake.
This rule would make it easy to understand that the player loses if he/she runs out of PP, and would also maintain a minimum level of functionality.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Additionally, alternatives being discussed such as Hypnosis Iron Valiant are nothing but cheese.

the fact that these sets are "nothing but cheese" is kind of the entire problem:

• valiant, like darkrai, can effectively make an entire game hinge on a weighted coin flip
• atales has a chance to put an opponent to sleep, then set up veil for free more often than not as the opponent either burns their second sleep turn or switches; if the opponent stays in, you can gamble once more and possibly switch out to whatever hyper-offense veil screens nonsense atales is there to enable (currently kyurem)
• red card amoonguss puts one of your mons to sleep at random. better hope you're lucky enough to get forced into a spore absorber or your sorry ass is starting the match with 5 mons
• even with how easy it is to set hazards now, smeargle still has its little niche of being able to spore and then set hazards for free. smeargle is, and i hate to say this because i love coming up with stuff it can do, an objectively bad pokemon. even with the amount of utility things it can do, its stats are too awful to even consider running it for any purpose whatsoever because the best thing it can do is get knocked down to sash, use a single move, and then die… unless that single move is spore. the fact that it's feasible to run a mon with a base stat total of 250 and abilities that don't do shit for it, not because it gets every move in the game but because it gets one specific move, means that there's probably something wrong here

this problem is not germane to darkrai, although i'm perfectly willing to put discussion about sleep on pause and remove darkrai so we can reassess things. it's sleep as a whole that's uncompetitive and needs to go. even if none of these arguments convince you, you have to admit that sleep clause mod doesn't fit with modern tiering philosophy or policy at all and was just grandfathered in because some people 20 years ago decided to implement a rule from a spinoff game. it needs to be replaced and inevitably will be at some point because it's so obviously out of place, so why not make that point now?

 

[tinyranitar]

the fact that these sets are "nothing but cheese" is kind of the entire problem:

• valiant, like darkrai, can effectively make an entire game hinge on a weighted coin flip

Yes, this is the issue that I was touching on. It's because you don't naturally expect these 2 to have Hypnosis, that's why you can't even switch to a sleep absorber in case they get a free NP or SD. This means that Darkrai doesn't naturally have an advantage over other mons' Hypnosis set, it's just one of the mons with enough flexibility that Hypnosis is an option. If you ban Darkrai over this, I think Valiant should go too, but would you ban a mon over a set it barely used?

Someone in the thread mentioned how Hypnosis Gengar doesn't see much success. Gengar is a bit slower than the aforementioned mons, a bit lacking in power that it actually landing the Hypnosis isn't impactful enough that it actually wants that, over more consistent option. Valiant, Darkrai and to an extent, ATales, absolutely swing games if they do land Hypnosis, but they might not, which is why people prefer to run more consistent options on them. This just go to show that even if you are able to receive huge benefit from Hypnosis, it won't be the go-to set of a Pokemon. It just means that one of these days people are going to use it to swing games, and that's just how it is.

 

[nyttyn]

it's kinda dumb sleep's stayed the way it has for generations tbh. Like this gen obviously hypnosis & red card amogus + far fewer cleric options drive it over the edge into discussion territory, but 'oh you can have sleep but you can only intentionally put ONE pokemon to sleep' is a compromise most mechanics would never get, and is kind of a lingering holdover from pokemon stadium having a sleep clause (which is a two and a half decades old format at this point and a wildly different game so holding it as precedent is...odd). like, we didn't save drypass even though that had competitive merit as the most immediate example that comes to mind, sleep remaining in this nerfed state has always been weird imo.

 

[boo836]

the fact that these sets are "nothing but cheese" is kind of the entire problem:

• valiant, like darkrai, can effectively make an entire game hinge on a weighted coin flip

Ban philosophy has always been towards banning things for their consistent capacity to win when applied correctly. Hypnosis simply doesn't win consistently enough to consider as anything other than a pinch move or a hard switch punish for Iron Valiant and Darkrai. I agree that it is problematic that these Pokemon are capable of turning not games, but losing positions into a coinflip. However, this is only possible because of their very high speed stats and I think banning Valiant and Darkrai are much more appropriate responses than banning the Sleep mechanic outright.

it's kinda dumb sleep's stayed the way it has for generations tbh. Like this gen obviously hypnosis & red card amogus + far fewer cleric options drive it over the edge into discussion territory, but 'oh you can have sleep but you can only intentionally put ONE pokemon to sleep' is a compromise most mechanics would never get, and is kind of a lingering holdover from pokemon stadium having a sleep clause (which is a two and a half decades old format at this point and a wildly different game so holding it as precedent is...odd). like, we didn't save drypass even though that had competitive merit as the most immediate example that comes to mind, sleep remaining in this nerfed state has always been weird imo.

It's not dumb at all, we can set lose conditions for games based on rulesets without actually changing how the mechanics of the games work. If it's such a big deal, make imposed Sleep on more than one Pokemon an automatic lose condition instead of an automatic failed move. There's just simply no argument to be made on the simulation side that justifies getting rid of the Sleep mechanic.

 

[Kenpwnchi]

Sleep (Status Condition)
Ever since Gen 1, Sleep (SLP), like Freeze (FRZ), has been a force to be reckoned with. By comparison, they are two of the three Non-Volatile Status Conditions (NVSC), which also includes Paralysis (PAR), that prevent you from moving, except they do it 100% (bar Sleep Talk), while Paralysis is 25% (which is why it is combined with Flinch to increase the chance of preventing the target from moving). In Gen 1, Sleep had a duration of 1-7 turns (not including Rest [which had 2]) and the mon put to Sleep didn't attack on the wake up, while Freeze was only capable of being countered by being damaged by a Fire Type move that could Burn (BRN) (during battle [which is all of them except Fire Spin]) and Haze. Obviously, this is absolutely insane, so GF made it their duty to change both of these NVSC as quickly as possible. By Gen 2, Sleep went from 1-6 turns (despite a 1 turn decrease not being much, it did matter) and allowed the mon to attack upon wake up, while Freeze gained a 25/256 (≈10%) chance of thawing and moves that the user could use to thaw themselves. Sleep and Freeze made it to where the mon could not select a move, but this aspect was removed for both NVSC by Gen 2. By Gen 3, both were significantly fixed, but Sleep still seemed to remain a problem. Sleep got moved to 1-5 turns (another 1 turn drop), but by Gen 5, it was 1-3 turns (with a counter reset whenever you switch your mon out and/or used Rest). As you all may know, I think this is when Sleep became the most controversial because you would get stuck in situations where you would be forced out, but that would reset the counter, and, now, you're in a Counter Reset Loop State (CRLS). By Gen 6, the counter reset was removed, and we were left with 1-3 turns (effectively getting rid of the CRLS and, seemingly, balancing Sleep out).

Flashforward to Gen 9, and, lo and behold, Sleep is being brought up again as a controversial topic. The fact that a Sleep Clause has been put into place should be capable of capturing the scope of how problematic this NVSC can be. Out of the 5 of them that exist, 4 of them have been nerfed to a point of making the game not so much RNG dependent anymore, but Sleep still persists as an overarching detriment to competitive battling. With how most Metas are set up, especially with Hyper Offense as a thing, Sleep goes from being "just Sleep" to "Sleep & Sweep" (and that's no exaggerations; others can vouch for this). At what point do we ask ourselves: should we get rid of Sleep to balance things out? My answer to that question is: no. Thing is, Sleep is a mechanic, and I don't ever thing a mechanic should be tampered with as that ruins the Original Game State (OGS) that the creator of PKMN intended to have. I'm all for banning Sleep moves, as GF gets rid of moves themselves, or maybe even moves that abuse Sleep moves (like Darkrai), but the former seems more fitting as it sticks to what GF would actually do if they find something troublesome. It's been 9 Gens and Sleep still exists as a mechanic in PKMN, so GF, obviously, doesn't see it as too much of a problem competitively. However, again, with VGC (and the Canon Story), they will ban whatever they feel is too hectic to make sure the Gen in question is appropriate. We should do the same.

TL;DR: Keep Sleep. Ban Sleep Moves & Sleep Mons.

 

[Escavalier]

Think it's worth exploring adjusting sleep clause to insta-lose you the game if you purposely sleep a second Pokemon (outside of self-inflected sleep ie rest) (yes this includes spamming Spore or w/e in longer games in PP management wars) rather than a blanket ban of direct sleep-inflicting moves. Hear me out on the reasoning behind this:

- This alone intrinsically nerfs sleep by adding additional opportunity cost to dedicating a moveslot to the status as you're at the risk of an auto-loss rather than the move failing if you click it twice, though admittedly this is less pronounced in cases like Darkrai (though still applies in more niche instances like Sucker mindgames or PP management in drawn-out games)
- Satisfies the crowd who want to preserve cartridge mechanics as this changes it from a mechanic that deviates from cartridge and allows you into situations that you can't on cart, to an enforced gentleman's agreement
- Allows us to preserve "healthy" sleep users with positive metagame impact like Amoonguss, Yawn Torkoal and to a lesser extent Valiant and Ninetales

If under these conditions individual sleep users prove to continually be uncompetitive/broken ala Darkrai then these mons should be traditionally suspect tested as ultimately it is their full kit (combination of power, speed, access to sleep, boosting and coverage) that break the mon rather than the individual move/status. This ban would be more in line with traditional tiering policy (BW aside, which is a famously poorly tiered meta) rather than a blanket ban of direct sleep-inflicting moves.

Even though I'm indifferent to the current implementation of the clause as we already play with mods like HP mod and different timer rules (which afaik next to nobody has an issue with) that already deviate from cart, I do think that sleep clause in its current state is the biggest difference between cart and sim play and am sympathetic to arguments that this shouldn't really be the case. At the same time, not a super big fan of a blanket ban of sleep moves as above because it is at odds with our conventional tiering system.

Don't really see a downside to this change in any case other than an auto-loss being somewhat jarring and am interested as to why it was not implemented this way initially when sleep clause was introduced in old gens - there may be older users than me from adv and older times who have a better understanding of this.

 

[Consignia]

Think it's worth exploring adjusting sleep clause to insta-lose you the game if you purposely sleep a second Pokemon (outside of self-inflected sleep ie rest) (yes this includes spamming Spore or w/e in longer games in PP management wars) rather than a blanket ban of direct sleep-inflicting moves.

This is an atrociously heavy-handed suggestion and I strongly oppose it. We should not have 'alternate win conditions' that involve duping your opponent into sleeping two pokemon. You should not auto-lose a game by clicking the wrong button. I don't think a blanket sleep ban is merited in gen9ou, but I would much sooner see it than open people up to bizarre rules lawyer garbage with choice items, Encore, Torment, pp stall etc to get people to click sleep twice and lose the game. If we're talking about 'adherence to cartridge mechanics', why would we introduce an entirely new way for the game to end which has never had any precedent within cartridge play?

Tiering policy is supposed to serve the playerbase, not the other way around.

 

[Gurkenbrot]

I'd like to have a look at how sleep moves are balanced by Gamefreak.

Yawn is balanced around a 1 turn delay. This one is obvious really, and a lot of things can happen in that one turn

Spore is balanced around low speed, poor distribution and even Pokemon design

• Toedscruel, the fastest spore mon has an ability that gives Spore a -1 priority.
• Brute Bonnet cannot get a speed boost from Protosynthesis at levels you'd see in comp pokemon. You won't get it at Level 100. Also, at Level 50 a low ATK max speed Brute Bonnet has a speed stat of 117 and an Attack stat of 118. Which was definetly was a result of some funky micro optimizations to make sure it never gets the speed boost in VGC (not important for OU but it's the one GF balances around )
• Every Spore user except Toedscruel has Base 75 speed or below and will almost never move first against anything on it's own. You will likely take a hit before clicking on Spore
• Spore is obvious in the team preview. Even if you know nothing about the meta you can likely identify which Pokemon has Spore right away (the one that looks like a mushroom and the funny dog that learns all the moves)
• Also it's a powder move, Grasses are immune to those

Then you have Hypnosis and Sleep Powder and Lovely Kiss and Sign which are all balanced around low accuracy (so RNG). Also an obvious one. The accuracy might be propped up by Tinted Lens Compound Eyes (Thanks Gohankuten , always mix them up) (which is limited to a few mons) and Zoom Lense can also make them reasonably accurate (if you are slower...).

So like, I feel it might be worth to seperate "sleep balanced by RNG" and "sleep balanced by other means". Maybe judge them differently, only ban sleep from sources which aren't 100% accurate. It's a simple ban really, you just ban a batch of moves with a similar uncompetetive design philosophy instead of one single move. Kinda like it's being done with OHKO moves

Tho looking at how Baton Pass went it's perfectly understandable why ppl just want to axe sleep. And wanting to axe Sleep Clause is perfectly reasonable

 

[Gohankuten]

This is an atrociously heavy-handed suggestion and I strongly oppose it. We should not have 'alternate win conditions' that involve duping your opponent into sleeping two pokemon. You should not auto-lose a game by clicking the wrong button. I don't think a blanket sleep ban is merited in gen9ou, but I would much sooner see it than open people up to bizarre rules lawyer garbage with choice items, Encore, Torment, pp stall etc to get people to click sleep twice and lose the game. If we're talking about 'adherence to cartridge mechanics', why would we introduce an entirely new way for the game to end which has never had any precedent within cartridge play?

Tiering policy is supposed to serve the playerbase, not the other way around.

This is why a lot of us are proposing to instead modify the sleep clause to just prevent the player from willingly clicking a sleep inducing move when the opponent has a mon that's asleep so it's much easier to replicate on cart and doesn't alter how you would play on sim versus cart. There would be exceptions baked in for if you are unwillingly forced like via encore or if it's literally the last move you can click on the last pokemon you have(though if it gets to that point you have probably lost already so might as well forfeit at that point) such that it would also still be replicable on cart.

I'd like to have a look at how sleep moves are balanced by Gamefreak.

Yawn is balanced around a 1 turn delay. This one is obvious really, and a lot of things can happen in that one turn

Spore is balanced around low speed, poor distribution and even Pokemon design

• Toedscruel, the fastest spore mon has an ability that gives Spore a -1 priority.
• Brute Bonnet cannot get a speed boost from Protosynthesis at levels you'd see in comp pokemon. You won't get it at Level 100. Also, at Level 50 a low ATK max speed Brute Bonnet has a speed stat of 117 and an Attack stat of 118. Which was definetly was a result of some funky micro optimizations to make sure it never gets the speed boost in VGC (not important for OU but it's the one GF balances around )
• Every Spore user except Toedscruel has Base 75 speed or below and will almost never move first against anything on it's own. You will likely take a hit before clicking on Spore
• Spore is obvious in the team preview. Even if you know nothing about the meta you can likely identify which Pokemon has Spore right away (the one that looks like a mushroom and the funny dog that learns all the moves)
• Also it's a powder move, Grasses are immune to those

Then you have Hypnosis and Sleep Powder and Lovely Kiss and Sign which are all balanced around low accuracy (so RNG). Also an obvious one. The accuracy might be propped up by Tinted Lens (which is limited to a few mons) and Zoom Lense can also make them reasonably accurate (if you are slower...).

So like, I feel it might be worth to seperate "sleep balanced by RNG" and "sleep balanced by other means". Maybe judge them differently, only ban sleep from sources which aren't 100% accurate. It's a simple ban really, you just ban a batch of moves with a similar uncompetetive design philosophy instead of one single move. Kinda like it's being done with OHKO moves

Tho looking at how Baton Pass went it's perfectly understandable why ppl just want to axe sleep. And wanting to axe Sleep Clause is perfectly reasonable

I want to point out that Compound Eyes is the accuracy boosting ability. Tinted Lens is the ability that turns Not Very Effective moves into Neutral Moves.

 

[Jahkem]

I’m a spectator that’s deciding to make a post. I’ve read a good number of posts in this thread regarding Sleep status but I have a question. It’s been said that a discussion about a Sleep ban has happened every single generation since the implementation of the Sleep Clause. If that’s the case, and the ultimate decision since then has been “do nothing” every single generation, then what’s the point in discussing it at all this generation?

The discussion has been going in circles for years with no real end and a historical decision of nothing being done to Sleep or the clause, respectively (outside of BW of course).

Who will bang the gavel to stop the endless retrials of Sleep?

 

[Smashburn]

the fact that these sets are "nothing but cheese" is kind of the entire problem:

valiant, like darkrai, can effectively make an entire game hinge on a weighted coin flip

Valiant only has two free moveslots and one item to make its sweep worthwhile in the case of Hypnosis. Not to mention that you need to bet on the opponent staying asleep, let alone hitting Hypnosis in the first place. Cheese is inherently high risk high reward. Most good teams have answers to it they can expend regardless, and a lot of the teambuilding pressure we're experiencing is coming from outside sources. Elements like Freeze were similar last gen as a subject of hot debate.

atales has a chance to put an opponent to sleep, then set up veil for free more often than not as the opponent either burns their second sleep turn or switches; if the opponent stays in, you can gamble once more and possibly switch out to whatever hyper-offense veil screens nonsense atales is there to enable (currently kyurem)

Again, high risk high reward. If you happen to miss that Hypnosis, you lose your screens setter and your game takes a dramatic turn in the opposite direction. Additionally, you are not clicking Hypnosis first 99% of the time; that is a 40% chance you lose your screens setter on the spot without the benefit of Aurora Veil. Why are those sleep turns so significant in the first place? Perhaps we can see that the screens setter has traits that buff an inherently unhealthy threat to absurd levels? Would any other balanced threat benefit from sleep and screens the same way (consistently)? I think not.

red card amoonguss puts one of your mons to sleep at random. better hope you're lucky enough to get forced into a spore absorber or your sorry ass is starting the match with 5 mons

Amoonguss with Red Card can be annoying, but there are many consistent ways to deal with it. The pressure placed on Amoonguss by Cinderace, Deoxys-Speed, Gholdengo, Gliscor, Gouging Fire, Hatterene, Heatran, Kyurem, Skeledirge, Volcarona, and various other threats with tera means that Amoonguss has to guzzle tera just to guarantee its effectiveness in a significant number of matchups (which is still being generous because I am discounting Taunt, Knock Off, Substitute, and Lum Berry). Even if it does work, you have to bet on an (x) in 5 chance based on the number of answers they have that Spore actually does anything. Amoonguss with Red Card is not a guaranteed sleep machine, it is a cheese strategy usually paired with Darkrai now that can occasionally be annoying to deal with.

even with how easy it is to set hazards now, smeargle still has its little niche of being able to spore and then set hazards for free. smeargle is, and i hate to say this because i love coming up with stuff it can do, an objectively bad pokemon. even with the amount of utility things it can do, its stats are too awful to even consider running it for any purpose whatsoever because the best thing it can do is get knocked down to sash, use a single move, and then die… unless that single move is spore. the fact that it's feasible to run a mon with a base stat total of 250 and abilities that don't do shit for it, not because it gets every move in the game but because it gets one specific move, means that there's probably something wrong here

Smeargle can Spore and set up hazards for free when it doesn't run into the wrong lead and become dead momentum. Even in that case, setting up hazards in the face of Hatterene because of Ceaseless Edge and Stone Axe will always remain useful. Nuzzle means Spore is not the only move Smeargle can click to cripple a lead, which is why it's so useful in the first place. It is almost guaranteed to make some kind of progress.

this problem is not germane to darkrai. it's sleep as a whole that's uncompetitive and needs to go.

I made it very clear that Darkrai is the sole reason for this discussion, but that it is not the only part of the subject up for debate. For every example you provided, sleep was not the only supporting factor making that particular example problematic. Iron Valiant has so many sets its unpredictability makes telegraphing Hypnosis nearly impossible, Ninetales-Alola buffs already bulky threats like Kyurem or Gouging Fire to insane levels even without Hypnosis, and Smeargle makes near guaranteed progress of some kind. Sleep cheese and "uncompetitive" have been mistakenly conflated for forever, extreme matchups in the face of inconsistency does not make for an uncompetitive element. It calls for regulation if possible, which we have.

even if none of these arguments convince you, you have to admit that sleep clause mod doesn't fit with modern tiering philosophy or policy at all and was just grandfathered in because some people 20 years ago decided to implement a rule from a spinoff game. it needs to be replaced and inevitably will be at some point because it's so obviously out of place, so why not make that point now?

Sleep clause was introduced in an identical format to the true games and game emulators like showdown from an official game, spinoff or not. That is precisely why it fit to begin with, it is so cartridge that it predates the modern cartridge. This is a point of contention, but it it absolutely fits the modern tiering policy. It is intended to preserve the game, despite the changes made to definitively uncompetitive elements of pokemon.

For the last 4 generations sleep has been trialed several times, but everything has failed. Sleep itself is not the issue, the source of the problems is often rooted in metagame polarity just like this.

 

[Chlora]

IMO, sleep is outright broken.

Getting slept is extremely ruining. Moves like Spore are essentially riskless if your opponent doesn't have a grass type, which are not particularly abundant at the moment due to the dex cuts, or the new sleep absorbers in Gholdengo & Garganacl. When you get slept, your mon is essentially worse than dead in a lot of cases; if it had died you'd be able to bring something in safely to keep up pressure and momentum, but now you are the definition of set-up fodder.
It's not fun at all to engage with sleep, because on more offensive mons you'll rarely ever get the chance to have them come back, but on your defensive ones you can also get easily overwhelmed by whatever you were meant to check and whether you potentially lose on your spot is down to luck.

At least with Spore you can kinda know it's coming, but Hypnosis is gut wrenching to get hit with. Iron Valiant, Darkrai, Ninetales and others landing it just does not feel like a fair interaction to me, since their last slots are greatly costumizable (at least for Valiant and Tales) and varied in a lot of teams, so you can just run whatever you want. Hypnosis is unreliable, but when it lands it's extremely rewarding, letting you either bring in a teammate for free to keep up pressure and/or continue setting up.
There's no way you know it's being ran, and your only way to play around it (if that's a possibility anymore) is to just pray. It's a roll the dice. It's not fun or even a remotely competitive interaction. It's a lot of the time your opponent getting lucky (because 60% is very unreliable) and invalidating your counterplay. There was no skill involved in clicking Hypnosis. It's just dumb luck being rewarded immensely. In my opinion anyway


Although sleep clause thankfully prevents this from happening repeatedly with hypnosis or breloom completely taking over, it does not solve the core issue that getting out of sleep is a completely based interaction that takes no real effort to enforce on your opponent.


Honorable mention to Sneasler for being absolute cancer to play against defensively, with good part due to it's 1/6 chance to sleep after clicking an 80 BP STAB move :) really fun times to just get cucked on Skeledirge because your opp rolled the "fuck you i win now :3" number on their dice

I'd be in full support of a sleep ban if there was a suspect test. Even if it's unreliable and not seen all that often, it's still sanity draining whenever you have to play against it. I don't think an extra layer of rng bs should be ignored just because it's not the most popular thing. This is not a Darkrai issue, this is a general issue wherever you go

Adding to this post

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2032227235-v31givzai7esvvsfcu0ofzq8lyddbgppw

 

[grayblood]

It is pretty funny how most of the council posted something with very poor reasoning, and then proceeded to argue vs people who had bad arguments that made no sense (Such as the Smogon monarchy post) then dipped. Valid complaints not being humored or even replied to :')

 

[JunkoAJ]

It is pretty funny how most of the council posted something with very poor reasoning, and then proceeded to argue vs people who had bad arguments that made no sense (Such as the Smogon monarchy post) then dipped. Valid complaints not being humored or even replied to :')

I mean, the entire point isn't necessarily to reply but to gauge the general opinion, they don't have to argue and they wouldn't take action if there wasn't substantial support anyway so I'm not sure what the point of this is

 

[grayblood]

I mean, the entire point isn't necessarily to reply but to gauge the general opinion, they don't have to argue and they wouldn't take action if there wasn't substantial support anyway so I'm not sure what the point of this is

If that was the case they wouldn't have bother replying at all but they found a way to reply to people whose arguments resemble paid actors in an audience.

 

[HydreigonTheChild]

Why is darkrai not being tested? Darkrai for ex. has made hypnosis strats worth using and can just bypass its own counters ...

If i miss that hypnosis that sucks... but darkrai can often toss it around and valiant esp when you can like hypnosis -> hypnosis for only a 15% chance to miss it. If i gamble 60% on disabling ur pokemon... if i land it on ting lu for ex. and i put it out of commission for 2-3 turns that is worth it in my eyes.

If sleep has to go im all for it but why is darkrai not recieving some attention? it is the major driving force behind this and im curious why it isnt a darkrai vs hypnosis thing. Darkrai can sleep smth like ... ting lu and setup on it and take advantage of it, even smth like clef doesnt really want to switch into it despite the fact it takes a huge amount from +2.

People have argued in other media that darkrai has only 2 moves but how would u know that? you arent gonna test the waters by sending out ur gliscor and hoping "I sure hope H>L isnt running ice beam on their darkrai". While valiant is also very annoying idt it is over the top even with sleep but darkrai is very annoying and can just turn games on its head by just landing sleep.

Yes... valiant can also 3 turn sleep amoonguss and just turn it into setup fother but iron valiant has more counters that u can play around rather than "gee i sure hope their NP, dark pulse, hypnosis set doesnt have ice beam in the last slot"

 

[Mario With Lasers]

I'm kinda lost here, was Sleep even an issue brought up in the latest survey?

As a premise, I dislike anything that is not a cartridge, so the sleep clause mod can go away. Then I thought of an alternative that might keep the clause.
The easiest way is to make it so that if you click on a move while your opponent is asleep, you lose. It would be best if there was some kind of warning when you select it so you don't click by mistake.
This rule would make it easy to understand that the player loses if he/she runs out of PP, and would also maintain a minimum level of functionality.

I find this unnecessary. Just gray out the move in that situation, no need for warnings. If you try to use an Uber in a OU battle you don't lose the battle on turn 1, you just cannot search for a OU battle at all. Greying out the move would functionally be the same thing here.

 

[Negative Charge]

We all know this is not happening. Sleep clause has existed in some form or another whether on PS or Shoddy or whatever going back decades. There is a PR post every generation about sleep clause. Ban Darkrai and/or Valiant but the burden of proof needs to be incredibly high to change a rule that is older than many PS players.

 

[Brigtel]

The discussion has been going in circles for years with no real end and a historical decision of nothing being done to Sleep or the clause, respectively (outside of BW of course).

Who will bang the gavel to stop the endless retrials of Sleep?

I promise you this will come up again in gen10 if it isn't addressed here. There is pretty much one thing that will "bang the gavel" as you say, and it is to remove sleep clause in current gens going forward. The reason it keeps coming up is because nothing about it's controversial nature has changed. If people have a problem with it, and nothing changes, then they still have a problem with it, so it comes back into discussion

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

We all know this is not happening. Sleep clause has existed in some form or another whether on PS or Shoddy or whatever going back decades. There is a PR post every generation about sleep clause. Ban Darkrai and/or Valiant but the burden of proof needs to be incredibly high to change a rule that is older than many PS players.

why does the burden of proof need to be "incredibly high" simply because a rule is old? it's because of how old the rule is that we're discussing a change. it's outdated. society has progressed past the point where it was acceptable. you're ignoring the reason that there's a pr post every generation about sleep clause, which is that it's a bullshit half-measure that some 4chan dudebros in 2004 plucked from a spinoff game that was old even then. it has no place here anymore, but unrestricted sleep objectively cannot exist in a competitive format, so the only realistic option is a wholesale (or mostly wholesale) ban on sleep moves. every previous generation except bw has decided to kick the can down the road, knowing that eventually the rule would have to go anyway. even from the very beginning of showdown, sleep clause mod was considered unthinkable from a tiering perspective and was only implemented the way it was because there wasn't support for a different kind of sleep clause (a full sleep ban hadn't entered the discussion yet because old tiering didn't work that way; it does now). we have a chance to be the ones who people look back on and say "these guys did something about it". are we going to pass up that chance?

 

[Blue glass]

If that was the case they wouldn't have bother replying at all but they found a way to reply to people whose arguments resemble paid actors in an audience.

Wolf-X got a reply because they are hostile to the council for a long time and they probably got feed up, the OU council are human after all.

Aislinn, Ausma, Finchinator, xavgb, Vert, TPP all responded here that is 6 of 10 from the OU council, xavgb long ass post being called poor reasoning is pretty laughable. In the end the community will lead the way forward, the council did the right move by opening a thread where we can discuss it and they are listening to us.

 

[Wolf-X]

Ive been playing for a while this meta (playing in the 1500-1800 range of testing stuff) and nothing really feels broken, ofc its hard to handle everything and hax will steal games but thats what we have come to accept right, or are we planning on changing that?

Barely have found any sleep strategies and when Ive been running them they feel far from broken or unmanageable (not to forget its incredibly hit or miss) the hypnosis user needs consistent luck to be able to wreck havoc, and it still can be played around.

About removing the sleep clause and stuff like that, its complicated but imo It certainly is a possibility we can explore, although I dont feel sleep is causing any kind of problem that would warrant such a huge shift in action, the current sleep clause seems enough.

 

[gregdawiz]

why does the burden of proof need to be "incredibly high" simply because a rule is old? it's because of how old the rule is that we're discussing a change. it's outdated. society has progressed past the point where it was acceptable. you're ignoring the reason that there's a pr post every generation about sleep clause, which is that it's a bullshit half-measure that some 4chan dudebros in 2004 plucked from a spinoff game that was old even then. it has no place here anymore, but unrestricted sleep objectively cannot exist in a competitive format, so the only realistic option is a wholesale (or mostly wholesale) ban on sleep moves

The claim that its outdated hasn't even been proven. You guys just keep saying 'its old' like that's a reason??? Its like psychotic almost how against sleep clause y'all are when there is very little substatial arguments for thowing it away??? I mean you Mr Buzzwole in this post literally are saying the reason it is outdated is that its old and from a spinoff (as well as an out of nowhere comparison to 4chan) when that has no correlation. Old =/= outdated in every case. You're not even providing a legitimate reason why its bad.

The only substantial claim I've heard against it is regarding "cart-accuracy" which is not something the community even agrees on.

I feel like if we are talking about removing a whole mechanic (sleep moves clause) and not reforming sleep clause, then the burden of proof does have to be incredibly high. This goes back to every other ban in OU, where we have to prove moves even as blatantly broken as last respects are broken on even their worst abusers. If it really is just 3 mons causing the issue, it's they who should be banned.