Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Volcarona Suspect]

[BolTingBlazie]

I think banning Darkrai is a mistake, because it's the symptom of the bigger problem of sleep moves, sleep clause just doesn't cut it in a super hyper offensive gen like this, and I wouldn't mind sleep being gone.

Also banning Darkrai over an uncompetitive set that isn't even its best one is dumb honestly from a tiering perspective, sleep is the problem when we look at lower tiers, as Hilligant could pull the same shit in RU with sleep powder victory dance prior to being banned like Darkrai does up here. Point being it's already proven to be problematic in lower tiers and a sleep ban is the only way this issue is gonna get solved

Anyway I think Kyurem and Roaring Moon need to get out, and while I do not really think Gouging Fire is broken due to the fact it needs a dragon dance and or sun up to threaten a sweep despite being really strong in the meta isn't unmanageable at all, because unlike volc it is pretty easy to tell whether it is Bulky defensive Gouging Fire or the Sweeper variant, and both have different counterplay. It's definitely difficult to beat sometimes, but not unreasonable to beat at all

 

[Joseph Gomes]

I've played Ubers UU, and also made tons of analysis over the last 6 weeks of a tournament. Ubers UU during december lacked both Gliscor, Landorus-Therian, Ting-Lu, Clodsire, Glimmora and Ribombee are all "Ubers by usage", while Skarmory was not allowed up until January due to DLC, and the tier just got Giratina and Corviknigh,t both with defog and good defensive profile, while the best hazard setters are special attacking bulky steel types in Dialga and Magearna, and therefore don't work well alongside Gholdengo.

You think a tier like that would have lower need to use boots and that Gholdengo wouldn't be that good... you sweet summer child.
Gholdengo Spikes HO still became the most popular team composition, using otherwise mediocre pokémon in the tier, most notably Garchomp being top 10 by week 5 because it was basically the Gliscor at home, while Landorus-Incarnate was also a popular stealth rock user because Gholdengo owns the best spinner the tier had in Cyclizar, as well as the two defoggers. CUTIEFLY was a genuine pick for Web teams, even though most preferred Masquerain or leavanny. The problem is clearly Gholdengo enabling those teams via being so good at spinblocking, and while Ubers UU has enough counterplay to the cheese bar due to underwhelming stats for the tier, Gholdengo's stats are average in OU. Similar story in NatdexOU where Gholdengo was seen as too much and since then the hazard counterplay improved significantly.

I KNOW banning Gholdengo won't fix everything about OU's HO being too good, but It'll make removing hazards easier for some structures because Dragapult lacks recover. It's a clear, palpable improvement both in theory and in practice seeing how other tiers handled this issue of good as gold in a ghost type making hazards too easy to stack.
Besides that, Gholdengo is just very uninteractive as a pokémon due to blocking all status moves; no paralysis, no sleep, no burns, no phasing with Roar/whirlwind, no taunt to stop setup or recover, and while Magic bounce does the same, Gholdengo also blocks defog and rapid spin. Is just a very obnoxious one-sided floodgate attached to an otherwise fine pokémon.

I was talking about Gliscor though

 

[Pokenar]

Counterpoint: ban hypnosis, assess, ban sleep if the hypnosis ban doesn't help. One complex ban.

Why must we continue to tip-toe around the issue that the current sleep clause doesn't even work with the standard set by other rulings? Because its been there for years? that is hardly a good reason to continue to keep an illogical exception to the rules, and even less of a good reason to make another exception to the rule to keep an exception to the rule.

 

[Karxrida]

The idea that only Hypnosis should be banned because it has 60% accuracy is so stupid I can't believe people are suggesting it unironically.

I know this teeters on strawmanning, but I have to say it to make a point: would OHKO moves suddenly be fine if they were 100% accurate by this logic?!? No, because their effects are still dumb. I shouldn't have to break down why the move being less consistent makes it more broken than the more consistent options.

Hypnosis does the same stupid things as Sleep Powder and Spore because Sleep is a broken mechanic. Just ban them all.

 

[Unknown Warrior]

Maybe I'm just too small brained for this Sleep discussion but what makes Sleep so fundamentally different from paraflinchers (hello Jirachi) or Encore spam?

It seems to me what most people here take umbrage with is quick, yet not frail, action deniers. If Darkrai had an ability that, I dunno, did 12.5% every time an opponent repeated a move and it had Encore instead of Sleep, would the discussion be very similar or would it be different?

If the former, I do think it's time for this community to do some introspection in regards to its relation with fast Pokémon and moves that lock you in or out of actions since it's seems to be quite contentious.

 

[Mikegengsta]

The idea that only Hypnosis should be banned because it has 60% accuracy is so stupid I can't believe people are suggesting it unironically.

I know this teeters on strawmanning, but I have to say it to make a point: would OHKO moves suddenly be fine if they were 100% accurate by this logic?!? No, because their effects are still dumb. I shouldn't have to break down why the move being less consistent makes it more broken than the more consistent options.

Hypnosis does the same stupid things as Sleep Powder and Spore because Sleep is a broken mechanic. Just ban them all.

This is exactly what I said. Just ban hypnosis because Darkrai is not worth a ban. Hypnosis is the reason why people want a sleep ban. Just rid of it because many Pokémon have this move and you can’t have that rage fist debate of trying to save annihilape but ban rage fist move. If sleep becomes worst with sleep powder shenanigans, it will probably be h-lilligant under sun. I don’t mind sleep staying or getting banned but not at the cost of Darkrai.

 

[Mikegengsta]

I think banning Darkrai is a mistake, because it's the symptom of the bigger problem of sleep moves, sleep clause just doesn't cut it in a super hyper offensive gen like this, and I wouldn't mind sleep being gone.

Also banning Darkrai over an uncompetitive set that isn't even its best one is dumb honestly from a tiering perspective, sleep is the problem when we look at lower tiers, as Hilligant could pull the same shit in RU with sleep powder victory dance prior to being banned like Darkrai does up here. Point being it's already proven to be problematic in lower tiers and a sleep ban is the only way this issue is gonna get solved

Anyway I think Kyurem and Roaring Moon need to get out, and while I do not really think Gouging Fire is broken due to the fact it needs a dragon dance and or sun up to threaten a sweep despite being really strong in the meta isn't unmanageable at all, because unlike volc it is pretty easy to tell whether it is Bulky defensive Gouging Fire or the Sweeper variant, and both have different counterplay. It's definitely difficult to beat sometimes, but not unreasonable to beat at all

Valid reasons and I support it! Great job :)

 

[Komodo_Drogo]

Maybe I'm just too small brained for this Sleep discussion but what makes Sleep so fundamentally different from paraflinchers (hello Jirachi) or Encore spam?

Paraflinch needs setup for the payoff and isn't guaranteed, with ways of punishing it like helmet or becomes even more difficult with status. This is the first I've heard of encore spam. Like what's stopping you from switching and adapting to the revelation of encore?

 

[Ehmcee]

Maybe I'm just too small brained for this Sleep discussion but what makes Sleep so fundamentally different from paraflinchers (hello Jirachi) or Encore spam?

Good question
The main difference with Paraflinchers and Encore is that there's a lot more readily available counterplay to both strategies.

For paraflinching, ground and electric type both are completely immune to paralysis (-glare for grounds), while electric also resists Iron Head from Jirachi. This also is with the fact that Jirachi needs to outspeed to successfully gain these 60% chance to invalidate the opponent. On something like a scarf Lando-T, a Roaring Moon, or a Zamazenta, Jirachi isn't going to be able to do it's paraflinch strats unless it is able to outspeed. This is also ignoring that using Iron Head as Jirachi isn't really "free" either, since it's a contact move, it always gains the risk of getting Rocky Helmet chip from a Corviknight, or a Flame Body/Static Proc from Volcarona, Moltres and Zapdos.

Ultimately, you'll be hard pressed to find a fire, water, electric or steel type that don't completely body Jirachi already, and even then the odds of getting paraflinched to death are quite low for all of them due to resisting steel.

Encore on the other end has fairly obvious counterplay, switching out. Encore is a volatile status condition, contrary to sleep, while you can easily switch out and get rid of Encore, you have to actively invest a random amount of turns to get rid of sleep. Anyway, the conditions aren't really comparable, with Encore requiring correct prediction to pull off on slower Pokemon, and having to get a free switch in on faster frail Pokemon.

 

[Pluim]

I think Sleep Clause Mod should be look at first before sleep as a whole and how sleep is looked at could change without its existence.
If the mod were to be removed, sleep would have to be reviewed and possibly suspect tested. It could potentially (but not certainly) become harder to deal with moves like Spore as there can no longer be a sleep sack.

However if the mod stays in place I don't think sleep is too uncompetitive besides a few abusers. It's on a similar scale as sub glare serp, serene grace flinches, changes games like focus blast and triple axel misses, and is similar to freezes and crits. There is often skilled counterplay, through Gholdengo and Garganacl as well as sleep sac pokemon, grass types for powder based sleep moves etc. Some pokemon such as Amoongus is fairly passive and doesn't even gain too much from the opponent being asleep without switching out and wasting another sleep turn.

Side note: I don't see the comparison with arena trap, as the ability to trap the opponent in was far more uncompetitive. I do agree sleep can and often is uncompetitive but I don't think it is far enough from other things in this game, yet along close to arena trap levels of unhealthy.

If people really think Sleep is miles ahead of the other RNG based mechanics feel free respond, I'm wanting to see "what i'm missing"

 

[Schpoonman]

For paraflinching, ground and electric type both are completely immune to paralysis (-glare for grounds),

Ridiculous nitpick, I'm sorry, but I feel like it needs to be pointed out. Ground-types are not immune to paralysis. They are immune to its 2 most common forms of spreading, Electric-type attacks and Thunder Wave, but in addition to Glare they're vulnerable to Stun Spore, Effect Spore, Body Slam, and a few other moves that are not Electric-type but carry a chance to inflict paralysis. Jirachi itself commonly carried/carries Body Slam just for that purpose.

 

[Just A Shroom God]

precept 40: obey no law but your own. laws written by others may inconvenience you or be a burden. let your own desires be the only law.

you know what my desire is? sleep moves clause

precept 53: do not steal the desires of others.
Anyone else who desires sleep moves clause is a heretic and should be immediately institutionalized

 

[Finchinator]

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

[Finchinator]

Moreover, I am hoping to see support of sleep moves and Kyurem in the upcoming survey. I would love to have enough support for the council to vote on sleep moves and then pivot into a community suspect on Kyurem, allowing both to be tackled cleanly and promptly.

From there, topics like Gouging Fire or Roaring Moon can be asssessed further -- neither needs an immediate suspect as much as Kyurem, but it is important we monitor them as the metagame progresses. We can specifically do this by occasional, but not forcibly repeated, surveys and discussions.

 

[MegaScizor32]

imo there’s been an overreaction to hypnosis ,its not even consistent to be used on ladder as its essentially a coin flip (good players rather have consistency). I feel like the sleep clause mod in singles has made sleep more balanced as only one mon can be slept at a time, allowing for more counterplay.

 

[Floatstonemafia]

consistency is not required to be banned. Swagplay was never really all that consistent. You could just get RNG obliterated out of the game. Same deal with evasion and OHKO moves (at least at the time they were originally banned).

 

[Finchinator]

imo there’s been an overreaction to hypnosis ,its not even consistent to be used on ladder as its essentially a coin flip (good players rather have consistency). I feel like the sleep clause mod in singles has made sleep more balanced as only one mon can be slept at a time, allowing for more counterplay.

the fact that it is inconsistent and yet so prominent arguably highlights the issue here and why it falls under uncompetitive rather than fundamentally broken akin to some other would-be suspect/ban targets

 

[Cuddly]

I feel like some people are just so used to Sleep Clause Mod existing they don't understand how broken Sleep is as a mechanic. Just picture yourself for a moment, playing OU, but there is no Sleep Clause. People spamming Hypnosis getting half your team put to sleep.
Now imagine after playing for a while, what proposed ban would you prefer?
A. Full ban on direct sleep inducing moves
or
B. A complex ban that also alters game mechanics just so you can put a Pokemon to sleep, but only 1
That's my perspective even if I have been playing with Sleep Clause Mod since late Gen 5.

 

[Pokenar]

I feel like some people are just so used to Sleep Clause Mod existing they don't understand how broken Sleep is as a mechanic. Just picture yourself for a moment, playing OU, but there is no Sleep Clause. People spamming Hypnosis getting half your team put to sleep.
Now imagine after playing for a while, what proposed ban would you prefer?
A. Full ban on direct sleep inducing moves
or
B. A complex ban that also alters game mechanics just so you can put a Pokemon to sleep, but only 1
That's my perspective even if I have been playing with Sleep Clause Mod since late Gen 5.

That I feel is a major issue here. We've had Sleep Clause Mod for so long people forget its not actually a natural part of the game. Its an exception to the rule of "playable on cart"

I feel that means the very first thing we should do when more than 1 thing using sleep is broken, is consider if having this exception is even really worth it. It'd be different if sleep mod didn't exist and only Darkrai and Iron Valiant are a problem, but that is not the reality we are under.

That is why I argue the legacy rule of Sleep Clause Mod should be removed, then immediately suspect test or quick ban sleep. After that, if Darkrai and Iron Valiant are still broken, we can suspect test them

 

[MegaScizor32]

consistency is not required to be banned. Swagplay was never really all that consistent. You could just get RNG obliterated out of the game. Same deal with evasion and OHKO moves (at least at the time they were originally banned).

Yeah but theres a huge opportunity cost in running inaccurate moves yet alone 60% accuracy moves. You miss then ur essentially screwed.

There is enough counter play to sleep to know that its not overbearing on the metagame. The player can do things such as: switch out, attempt to wake up early or simply having a sleep fodder/sac. I would say paralysis has a bigger impact than sleep on the metagame.

Swagplay, evasion, and ohko moves also have little to no counterplay and can straight up win you the game. At least with sleep you still have opportunities/options to still win.

the fact that it is inconsistent and yet so prominent arguably highlights the issue here and why it falls under uncompetitive rather than fundamentally broken akin to some other would-be suspect/ban targets

i feel you i just dont believe that hypnosis is prominent enough in the metagame to warrant a ban (a suspect sure). If it had an impact such as then I would be on board.

 

[veti]

Yeah but theres a huge opportunity cost in running inaccurate moves yet alone 60% accuracy moves. You miss then ur essentially screwed.

It's consistent because most "lost" games can just be autowon 60% of the time, while in good matchups you don't have to click hypnosis at all if it's too risky. An option for such a huge momentum swing 60% of the time favoring you to win the game is absurdly good, especially with all the setup sweepers that prey on free turns. Sleep immunities are limited to Garganacl and Gholdengo which do not beat Darkrai.

This is not an argument to ban Darkrai though, we should not ban Darkrai to preserve a mod based on a gen 1 game and all of the uncompetitive rng fishing that comes with preserving sleep.

 

[TPP]

What are you all using as Kyurem answers? Me personally I lost my mind long ago:

 

[KamenOH]

What are you all using as Kyurem answers? Me personally I lost my mind long ago:

If its stupid and it works, it aint stupid.

Big if on that Marill set, but I believe in you.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

If it’s stupid and it works, it aint stupid.

well, there are exceptions. for example, hypnosis darkrai is stupid and it works—beyond anyone's expectations except my own, in fact—and, surprise, it's still fucking stupid

 

[RyukTheDarkrai]

Ice spinner does like 80% to 90%, don't know what you're talking about.

Also note that Gliscor’s gonna heal effectively 24% of that HP back from Poison Heal + Protect.