Big post sorry ahead of time
Heya everyone, some of the council has had a conversation today about sleep and its effect on the tier this generation. Disclaimer that this post does not necessarily reflect every council member's individual view.
Personally, I don't agree with the views of the council here I feel that action on sleep as a mechanic would be pretty dumb. Sleep is a whole mechanic that has counterplay built around it. Grass types/sap sippers to absorb spore and sleep powder, sinking your chesto or lum berry into a possible sleep, insomnia or vital spirit mons in the tiers where those pokemon are viable, and even the niche but surprisingly useful Sleep Talk slot on a pokemon that would counter a common sleep inducing pokemon like breloom. Additionally, most of the sleep-inducing mons attribute their usefulness in higher tiers largely around their ability to sleep. I feel like we can completely kiss Amoonguss and Breloom out the window if we ban all sleep moves.
I think the argument of it being anti-competitive is pretty thin. It is relatively consistent, you know you will wake up after 3 turns of sleep max and those turns can be spent in any order while switching around. The only thing inconsistent is when you will wake up. This is a risk both players choose to make, since youre as likely to wake up first turn and hit the sleep abuser hard as you are to sleep for three turns and give them all that setup. Since this is so inconsistent its unlikely players relying on this strategy will consistently get wins. Most of the time you will wake up after before getting to the third turn, and this is what players like myself largely play around.
I know the argument here is that its the
luck aspect here that makes this uncompetitive. I feel like trying to fix luck in pokemon of all things is a really poorly thought out plan, and I felt this way with the Quick Claw/Bright Powder/King's Rock dicussions as well. I mean Ice Beam has a 10% chance to freeze, and freezing can easily decide whole games. Are we going to wake up one day and decide to ban Ice Beam? Probably not. The argument I would make there is 10% is such a low chance that it cannot be consistently relied on as a strategy, and doing so would lose you games. But that argument holds no wait if we're banning Bright Powder for its 10% dodge chance or Sleep for the potential to be asleep for 3 turns. Instead we would keep Ice beam purely because of its usefulness as an offensive move. But that is absolutely a double standard. To bring it back to Sleep, I know council said they have no plans to ban Relic Song. But that logic makes literally no sense. If we are concerned about getting slept for an inconsistent number of turns, than the method putting something to sleep shouldnt matter, just the mechanic of sleep itself. By this logic, is it not uncompetitive for a Meloetta to Relic Song -> get the sleep on the opponent -> the opponent sleeps for three turns as the meloetta swords dances? Its unlikely, but by the same logic this is as uncompetitive as any other form of sleep!
As much as we want to control it, these games are decided on luck, and that is unchangeable in pokemon's current state. As 'uncompetitive' as it is to get flinched by a King's Rock or slept for three turns, it is also uncompetitive to get frozen from Ice Beam or to be fully paralyzed for 4 turns in a row or to be Dark Pulse flinched repeatedly. Using these arguments of 'uncompetitiveness' pretty much only serves to remove these strategies as a tool from the game. For Kings Rock and Bright powder, this could be fine as its something that can be thrown on any pokemon. But by removing sleep you are removing the niches of many pokemon in the game!
There's also the elephant in the room that PS's implementation of Sleep Clause Mod is exactly that - a mod. It's not possible to recreate on cartridge; the argument of "just don't click Spore after you put something to sleep" doesn't really hold up, considering the PP limitations which honestly aren't even negligible on Amoonguss.
As someone pointed out, bans are as inconsistent to the cartridge as mods are. This is a REALLY strange take. So much of what we are doing is already removed from cartridge, making the argument now that we aren't mirroring the cartridge is almost not even an argument. If we're being consistent to cartridge, give me back Flutter Mane. If you don't want to do that, we really shouldn't be talking about cartridge. Especially since I think most people who play are cartridge understand and even prefer sleep mod clause. Its a nice middleground that allows pokemon whose strategy revolves around sleep to remain relevant without being broken.
To address the obvious question of "why not Darkrai?" - we have a few reasons;
a) Darkrai is certainly moving the needle here, but we have seen enough examples of this throughout the generation;
b) Sleep's layers of RNG - between 1 vs 2 vs 3 turn sleeps and whether or not the moves actually hit to begin with - are undesirable regardless of Darkrai's presence;
c) The mod we currently use for sleep is unfaithful to cartridge mechanics, which would *maybe* be okay in exceptional circumstances to keep the game playable (such as the various RBY desync patches on sim), but we do not necessarily feel that this warrants such a mod.
Any and all feedback from here is appreciated. Thanks!
I know the idea of sleep ban is not strictly to worsen Breloom's viability in OU, and is largely driven by the worse pokemon in the tier such as Darkrai, Iron Valiant a few months ago, and other offensive sleepers. Therefore I really feel like the icky feeling associated with sleep recently is a burden that rests on their shoulders alone. Hypnosis's greater distribution is a reason there are insanely good pokemon that, on top of all their other tools, have sleep induction as a tool for them to win games. But sleep induction is the same as any other tool in my mind. If a combination of tools proves to be too much for a tier, you ban that pokemon. Baxcalibur for instance has many tools in Dragon Dance, Ice Shard, Scale Shot, Icicle Spear, Earthquake, Thermal Exchange. None are broken on their own but combined together are too much for the tier. If hypnosis feels broken on a mon than
the mon is broken and should be banned. Saying 'no Darkrai would be fine if it didnt have Hypnosis' is like saying 'Bax would be fine without scale shot'. Maybe true but close to just theory moning. By past OU logic standards, we don't tend to ban moves unless they are broken on all pokemon that can use them (loading up my team with Rage fist primape). And I really don't think you can make the argument hypnosis drowzee is too much for the tier.
TLDR (focusing on the darkrai claim)
b) like it or not the RNG is an inherit part of pokemon. If this sleep ban does go through I expect to see a post on the banning of paralysis, Ice beam, and dark pulse flinches in the next few weeks. But it ultimately isnt the mechanic thats the problem, its the scariest pokemon that are able to abuse the mechanic.
c) Bans are as unfaithful to cartridge as mods are, which includes bans of moves and pokemon. This is a non-argument.
and finally a) Darkrai may not be the only problematic pokemon with access to sleep but the list of these problematic pokemon is nevertheless very small as compared to the full list of pokemon that have access to sleep. Why are we punishing all sleep-inducing pokemon for the sins of the ones that abuse it the hardest? We could just ban Darkrai, Iron Valiant, and any other pokemon that is broken if it gets a sleep off
If a pokemon is broken with sleep, ban the pokemon. Ban the mon not the mechanic.