Metagame National Dex Metagame Discussion

[R8]

Removing sleep clause would just be making the game worse for weird pointless dogmatic reasons. Who cares if it's technically a mod, it's good because it makes the game better. I really don't have anything else to say about this part tbh

I disagree - entirely removing sleep would actually make the game better imo. There isn't any upside preserving sleep - hypnosis nonsense are still often interactions where whatever happen is out of the control of both players, which is the paper book definition of an uncompetitive element. Even if you go from the assumption that sleep in its current state is not broken, you still would improve the game by banning sleep moves over keeping sleep clause. To me that's a very pragmatic reasoning on you'd want to remove the current sleep clause. I'd go further saying than wanting to keep sleep clause, despite the fact that you can improve it to actually make the tier better and match in-game mechanics - which is what a simulator is supposed to do, even though National Dex is a metagame trying to predict how the game would be without the dexit rather than a replica -, goes from dogmatic motivations.

Something less tiering minded is that National Dex formats would look stupid if they decide to keep Sleep Clause while the rest of the website removes it - sleep clause has been outdated and archaic for a while, and it is time to finally get rid of it.

Assuming sleep clause stays, there's really no basis for banning sleep due to it being overpowered (I don't think anyone was actually arguing this though, I'm just covering the possible reasons), so the only real reason I can see to consider banning it is if you think it is uncompetitive due to the randomness

Moves like spore and yawn aren't really any more random than other game mechanics like paralysis or move accuracy or critical hits, but the low accuracy of hypnosis combined with the random length of sleep does mean that games where hypnosis is used are influenced by rng more than usual

Personally I think that it isn't that big of a deal because this game already has a ton of randomness in it, so no action on sleep is necessary. But I could understand banning just hypnosis (and maybe dark void too ig) if you're concerned about them being uncompetitive

It is completely true that randomness is part of the game. In fact, it is even something explicitly stated in the official tiering policy framework. Does this mean we have to accept every random element as "part of the game", and thus not removing it? Of course not ; you lose nothing worthwhile by removing stuff like evasion, ohko moves, bright powder and kings rocks. Of course you would impact some "legit" super niche sleep users like Amoonguss or sleep powder Tangrowth by banning sleep (honestly I always thought sleep moves were overrated on these but that's an other topic), but I honestly gladly would send hundreds of mushroom to hell if that means we can get rid of a mod that should have never been implemented in modern generations in the first place.

This is not an argument to ban every form of rng from the game, as each case should be looked at individually : if you ask my opinion right now, I'd for example still keep paralysis, freeze or focus blast in the game for a number of reasons I won't devolve into in this post, despite them having some kind of rng factor. However if you can remove an rng element from the game with little to no cost, and without implementing a mod, be my guest!

 

[The N@me User]

This is not an argument to ban every form of rng from the game, as each case should be looked at individually : if you ask my opinion right now, I'd for example still keep paralysis, freeze or focus blast in the game for a number of reasons I won't devolve into in this post, despite them having some kind of rng factor. However if you can remove an rng element from the game with little to no cost, and without implementing a mod, be my guest!

Honestly, I find Paralysis to be a more broken Status Condition than Sleep, unless used by Darkrai.

Sleep "only" lasts two turns at most, and both the user and opponent know how to deal with it and what to expect from it.

Paralysis is different in the fact that unlike Sleep, you have a chance to do nothing every turn, no matter how small, on top of the fact that you lose 2 Stages in Speed.

Now, is Paralysis valuable for the Metagame to shut down sweepers? Definitely. But I don't buy the argument that Sleep is a broken Status Condition when it's limited to two turns and there's currently existing counterplay in Electric Terrain + the currently existing Sleep Clause, which no one had a problem with before Darkrai dropped.

Speaking of Electric Terrain and Darkrai, it didn't escape my notice that Darkrai was nigh-blacklisted from being discussed here when people were giving out reasons for it to drop, until OU decided to drop it. If OU hadn't done it, would we really have Suspected it at all?

Adding on to that, instead of simply caving in to what OU's doing, why don't we take a look at our own Tier to see what makes Sleep overbearing in OU vs Natdex.

1) OU doesn't have any viable Electric Surge users, we have Tapu Koko, who outside of Sludge Bomb, Darkrai does not want to go up against in general.

2) Tapu Fini, another setter of a Terrain that blanks Sleep, does not exist in OU, while in Natdex, it's another sleep-blanker that Darkrai really doesn't want to go up against.

These in combination with the moves in questions accuracy being abysmal makes it questionable to Ban the Status from a Meta that has actually legitimately answers to the playstyle that OU, who originally started the discussion, didn't have.

That said, let's continue to dissect this:

3-A) Only Iron Valiant and Darkrai are being looked to as abusers of Hypnosis from what I've gathered. The problem is being cited as Sleep, but it sounds more like Hypnosis is the only move being targeted by those looking to Ban the Status as it is.

3-B) As the only Sleep inducing move commonly being cited is Hypnosis, and given it's lower accuracy in comparison to the other moves that induce the same Status, it's easy to compare this to the likes of Fissure and Sheer Cold rather than Ban the entire Status altogether. Seeing as Spore and Sleep Powder have the same counterplay that Paralysis has, a Status we haven't ever talked about banning and is potentially worse than being Sleeped.

Now, to clarify the above point, do I think Paralysis should be Banned? Not particularly.

To clarify the point above it, do I think Darkrai should be Banned? Not particularly.

But if we're discussing Banning Sleep, a mechanic that's existed for years with only one Gen where it's gone due to GF themselves buffing it, then I think we should simply discuss whether we want to:

A) Ban the abused move

B) Ban the abusers

C) Compare our Tier to OU, and come to our own conclusion on whether what may be a problem for OU is really a problem for Natdex, particularly in a higher-powered Metagame.

If we do plan a Suspect Test to Ban Sleep altogether, then I'd like to look to Paralysis and ask what makes a 30% Chance to do nothing, the same chance as Fissure has to hit, combined with a 2 Stage drop to Speed, balanced with more widespread and consistent moves than Sleep, whose moves are often niche with awful accuracy or downsides to make up for the power of its Status.

On that point, without a Sleep Clause, I would even agree that consistency aside, the ability to do this potentially do this to the entire opposing team ad infinatum would be uncompetitive, but with a Clause we've had since forever preventing that, I don't think the niche Sleep moves we have are worth Banning the Mechanic when those moves aren't even consistent.

Z-Hypnosis is the only problematic form of Sleep in our own tier, imo. And notice, that problem would still be solved with the alternative method of Banning the move, rather than the Mechanic.

*Disclaimer: I don't actually enjoy Sleep as a Mechanic and wouldn't be mad to see it gone forever. Just don't like the arguments being listed to get rid of it.

 

[R8]

I do agree that paralysis is more impactful than sleep in its current state, here is not my point. My grief with the mechanic is that it is unnecessarily kept through a mod that breaks the game instead of just being banned. I did not suddenly change my mind on it either, if you do some digging in the policy review subforums and in the smogon discord u can find that I've been advocating for the removal of sleep clause across Smogon formats in general for a long while.

Of course I am taking the current discussions going on in SV OU as an opportunity to also discuss the existence of sleep clause in natdex formats. I'm not arguing here that sleep is broken, I'm saying it just shouldn't be here in the first place. It can be 100x times worse than paralysis, my point here stays the same.

 

[adem]

…Speaking of Electric Terrain and Darkrai, it didn't escape my notice that Darkrai was nigh-blacklisted from being discussed here when people were giving out reasons for it to drop, until OU decided to drop it. If OU hadn't done it, would we really have Suspected it at all?

what does this have to do with removing sleep clause? If you think sleep isnt broken then fine, thats your opinion. Your free to voice your opinions to not ban sleep moves once sleep clause is removed.

On that point, without a Sleep Clause, I would even agree that consistency aside, the ability to do this potentially do this to the entire opposing team ad infinatum would be uncompetitive, but with a Clause we've had since forever preventing that, I don't think the niche Sleep moves we have are worth Banning the Mechanic when those moves aren't even consistent.

You missed the point. No one is asking to ban sleep in its current state, the entire argument is that sleep clause should be removed since it detracts from how the main game is and goes against tiering policy.

 

[The N@me User]

You missed the point. No one is asking to ban sleep in its current state, the entire argument is that sleep clause should be removed since it detracts from how the main game is and goes against tiering policy.

Removing the Sleep Clause itself is counterintuitive, since everyone agrees that being able to put multiple Pokémon to Sleep isn't a good thing and that it works how it does now because it helps with counterplay.

Now, it's perfectly valid to want the Sleep Clause removed under the logic of it never having been replicatable in the games or never having made sense, but we all know that it's the only reason Sleep as a Status was never Banned, so it's also valid to discuss whether Sleep is balanced or not since I think it should be a factor in whether to remove the Clause or not.

Why should it be a factor? Because we've had a Sleep Clause since Competitive with Smogon existed, so given that, why are we just now deciding whether or not to get rid of it? The answer is simple: good abusers. That's why the idea that this is only about Sleep Clause feels ingenuine; because we wouldn't be having this discussion at all if we didn't suddenly have (arguably) good Sleep abusers.

Without Darkrai dropping, the conversational topic wouldn't have came up, so it feels insincere to act as if this is only about the Clause in isolation when it's really (in the OU thread anyway) been brought up as a means to justify banning Sleep altogether.

That said, I wouldn't be upset about Sleep being thrown out, if that's the conclusion reached.

 

[Sulo]

Removing the Sleep Clause itself is counterintuitive, since everyone agrees that being able to put multiple Pokémon to Sleep isn't a good thing and that it works how it does now because it helps with counterplay.

I don't get why people are still saying this; what R8 is arguing for is the removal of sleep clause for reasons already mentioned as well as a blanket ban to all sleep moves, regardless of their native users' viability, as sleep itself is an uncompetitive mechanic and sleep clause is a pretty archaic way of dealing with it.

The answer is simple: good abusers.

The only real good sleep abuser is Darkrai; no other Pokemon with access to sleep moves has seen any major success or just isn't that good at taking advantage of the sleep they induce themselves (e.g. Alolan Ninetales, Amoonguss).

 

[Oculars]

On all this sleep stuff, whatever happens I feel like it should be a suspect test rather then just some quick vote from council. Mechanics that have been in the game for 20+ years should not be quick banned and deserve for the entire community to have input. We have a history of holding these mechanics votes behind closed doors such as the "luck items" ban (Cloyster complex ban in reality) which always should have been a suspect test.

Natdex already doesn't exist on cartridge and is a pet mod so I don't think we need to blindly follow whatever the current gen mainers and their councils do with regards to tiering policy. In cg the argument of "not repeatable on cartridge" hold much more weight then it does here and I think we should 100% give the vote to the Natdex community and let them decide.

Imo sleep has been an incredibly minor issue that is occasionally annoying on mid ladder, basically nobody on high ladder is using it and it has had minimal impact on any natdex tour as far as im aware. I cant remember losing a single game to sleep except maybe amoongus spores in doubles.

 

[R8]

Imo sleep has been an incredibly minor issue that is occasionally annoying on mid ladder, basically nobody on high ladder is using it and it has had minimal impact on any natdex tour as far as im aware.

Again, this misses the point being made - it's not about sleep being currently unbalanced, sleep clause is what pple are mad at

 

[Dead by Daylight]

sleep clause is what pple are mad at

Which is where we have to ask "Why?"

Why are we being sanctimonious about a clause that was put in to improve the quality of life for PS! players?
Why do we need to remove this clause, which has become standard across all official Smogon metagames?
Why are we doing this with no official basis from other tiers? (trust me, I'm aware of other metagames' Sleep Clause debates).
Why should we go through with this change that could ripple into lower tiers, where sleep abusers are prevalent?
Why are we taking this leap ourselves, with no test subjects to show its efficacy?

This is a Pokémon sim, after all. We can point to other things, like the HP Percentage Mod, that aren't historically cart-accurate. While I agree that Sleep moves can be annoying, I feel that it's not the right time to radically change the metagame.

 

[Kyo]

Alright fine I'll weigh in on the discussion.

Which is where we have to ask "Why?"

Why are we being sanctimonious about a clause that was put in to improve the quality of life for PS! players?

Sleep clause doesn't improve the quality of life for PS! players any more than the removal of sleep entirely does. We all agree that quality of life and metagame health (at least in the context of 6v6 singles) are far worse with sleep in its unaltered state, but either balancing the mechanic of sleep through a clause or removing it entirely achieve the same quality of life.

Why do we need to remove this clause, which has become standard across all official Smogon metagames?

Sleep clause is a remnant of a point in Smogon's history where the tiering frameworks we currently use were not as strictly applied as they likely should have been and it seems, at least to me, highly unlikely that it ever would have come into existence if it were being proposed in current gen. It doesn't make sense that we have previous examples of poor tiering application like Aldaron's Proposal which came to be widely panned by its respective playerbase, but every time sleep clause comes up it is fiercely defended almost entirely on the basis that we've just had it on PS! for so long that we for some reason aren't allowed to change or address it. Meanwhile, sleep clause has always been more mechanically flawed and egregious than the example I gave above which is only a complex ban approach as it allows for actual impossible/impractical interactions in every tier it exists in.

The most obvious example of this that occurs frequently in any match where sleep is present is that one player is free to spam their sleep move against an already sleeping Pokémon with the intention of re-applying status as soon as it wakes up. If the opponent switches out then sleep clause activates, and the turn is wasted. The only way to apply this on cartridge is for the player spamming sleep to instantly forfeit the match as soon as the opponent switches and a second Pokémon is put to sleep. It should go without saying that said player would never risk this interaction in a cartridge game. However, sleep clause mod has fundamentally altered the game mechanics in this scenario and, as a result, the overall strategy of how some Pokémon (like sub poison heal Breloom for example) are properly played.

To quote previous sleep clause discussion from Gen 8 that sums it up rather succinctly, "If we are battling and agree to not bring ubers mons, showdown enforces that in the team builder. If we are battling and agree not to sleep a second mon, showdown enforces that by altering how a battle plays out. Teambuilder restrictions are 10000000000% incomparable to literal dynamic changes that directly affect a game."

Why are we doing this with no official basis from other tiers? (trust me, I'm aware of other metagames' Sleep Clause debates).
Why should we go through with this change that could ripple into lower tiers, where sleep abusers are prevalent?
Why are we taking this leap ourselves, with no test subjects to show its efficacy?

Well to answer your question... we're not. If any part of the discussion here gave you the impression that National Dex alone was about to implement a change to Smogon-wide clauses exclusively within the confines of our tier then I'd remind you this is only a metagame discussion thread, not policy review. Here's what I told R8 in Smogcord just the other day.

I say that it's quite unnecessary because, as several people have pointed out ad nauseam, sleep doesn't receive all that much play in National Dex OU. Even with Darkrai's introduction to the tier, it's hardly a pressing issue for us to address. What I don't want is for this statement to be interpreted as me saying that sleep clause shouldn't ever be addressed. I have absolutely no issue following the lead of the rest of the Smogon tiering community at whatever point they're finally ready to deal with sleep clause. I've held the opinion that sleep clause shouldn't exist for some time now. I've probably discussed it half a dozen times, but this is just a random example I was able to pull up quickly where I was supportive of it in the context of a discussion about DPP OU's arena trap ban.

tldr; I'm not keen on trying to leverage the (very little) influence I have as National Dex TL to force the removal of sleep clause, but it should be removed as a whole on the basis that it's terrible tiering application that most seem to have grown weirdly complacent to over time.

This is a Pokémon sim, after all. We can point to other things, like the HP Percentage Mod, that aren't historically cart-accurate.

I actually wondered about this as well. In my eyes, HP Percentage Mod is much more accurately described as a quality of life change than something like sleep clause because of the much broader inconvenience its removal would cause to PS! users. Sleep clause removal wouldn't be an inconvenience, it's just an alteration of the strategy's available in affected metagames. HP Percentage Mod removal is a huge change probably requiring an entire overhaul of the damage calculator to the point that calling its removal an inconvenience would be underselling it. This was Eve's input on HP Percentage Mod, although I can't verify if this is entirely correct as I'm just not informed on the topic and won't pretend that I am. I guess take that however you want.

edit: sniped R8 gg no re

 

[R8]

Which is where we have to ask "Why?"

Why are we being sanctimonious about a clause that was put in to improve the quality of life for PS! players?
Why do we need to remove this clause, which has become standard across all official Smogon metagames?
Why are we doing this with no official basis from other tiers? (trust me, I'm aware of other metagames' Sleep Clause debates).
Why should we go through with this change that could ripple into lower tiers, where sleep abusers are prevalent?
Why are we taking this leap ourselves, with no test subjects to show its efficacy?

I've already went over why I want to remove the clause in my other posts so I redirect you to them if you want my reasoning, and you can also read this thread on the topic, which even though is meant to be about SVOU, you can find multiple posts that go over why the clause is outdated and archaic, regardless of what metagame it is present in.

I'm not sure what you mean by being sanctimonious? I'm just sharing my own opinion: I believe the sleep clause is not a good way to handle sleep as it breaks game mechanics, and it should not get a special treatment: just ban sleep moves instead. If we believe nuking sleep clause is the best thing to do, why would we need official precedent for this specific case anyway? I think it is fine for this decision to impact lower tiers as this clause should never have been implemented in the first place imo.

Of course ultimately I'm only a user sharing my opinion on this thread, and I have no direct power on what the council decides to do, as I am not part of the council. I'd like to make this as clear as possible, because I feel like people interpreted my posts like an official statement from the natdex leadership - they are not, everything I posted about sleep clause here are just my own opinions.

This is a Pokémon sim, after all. We can point to other things, like the HP Percentage Mod, that aren't historically cart-accurate.

If u ask me, I don't really care much about the HP Percentage Mod as this doesn't actually generates situations impossible to replicate on cart (or the theoretical game that would host natdex formats). If people wants to change that thing then sure I guess.

While I agree that Sleep moves can be annoying, I feel that it's not the right time to radically change the metagame.

Now this is an enormous stretch. Banning sleep would definitively not radically change the metagame, sleep in it's current state is niche at best.

Trying to make it as clear as possible: I am NOT saying that sleep in its current state is broken. This never was my point.

Natdex already doesn't exist on cartridge and is a pet mod so I don't think we need to blindly follow whatever the current gen mainers and their councils do with regards to tiering policy. In cg the argument of "not repeatable on cartridge" hold much more weight then it does here and I think we should 100% give the vote to the Natdex community and let them decide.

While natdex does not exist on cartridge, pretty much all of its mechanics are determined by actual cartridge mechanics, with a few exceptions involving elements that never interacted in an actual game. If the council wants to gauge community input beforehand they should feel free to - however I am worried people actually are misinterpreting the real motivations behind a removal of the sleep clause. No one in this thread argued yet that sleep is broken but it feels like pple still assumes that, which worries me.

Imo sleep has been an incredibly minor issue that is occasionally annoying on mid ladder, basically nobody on high ladder is using it and it has had minimal impact on any natdex tour as far as im aware. I cant remember losing a single game to sleep except maybe amoongus spores in doubles.

Again, that's not the problem with sleep clause imo.

Why should it be a factor? Because we've had a Sleep Clause since Competitive with Smogon existed, so given that, why are we just now deciding whether or not to get rid of it? The answer is simple: good abusers. That's why the idea that this is only about Sleep Clause feels ingenuine; because we wouldn't be having this discussion at all if we didn't suddenly have (arguably) good Sleep abusers.

Without Darkrai dropping, the conversational topic wouldn't have came up, so it feels insincere to act as if this is only about the Clause in isolation when it's really (in the OU thread anyway) been brought up as a means to justify banning Sleep altogether.

Nuking sleep clause is something that had support for a very, very long time. It is completely wrong to say it only was brought up now, and with some digging you can find out that discussions about it occurred in the past. Here are concrete examples:
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/sleep-clause-in-generation-8.3656311/
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/sleep-clause-in-generation-8.3648649/

In case the portion of the quoted message is also targeting my posts: I, aka the person who brought up the sleep clause topic in this thread, always supported the removal of the sleep clause wayyyyy before even gen9, or at least some kind of alternative replicable on cart. Of course the timing I was posting was not picked randomly, but let's be honest it would have been much harder to convince pple to remove sleep clause from natdex if ou wasn't considering it as well, as stupid as it sounds.

 

[Nish the Great]

Gonna throw my 2 cents in here because god knows it couldn't be any worse than whats already here.

Sleep Clause is completely against how Smogon works is every way. It's a mod, its completely arbitrary, and its to preserve a game mechanic that approximately 3 people actually think improves gameplay. If it was suggested now, it would get laughed at by any serious player.

why are we just now deciding whether or not to get rid of it?

Honestly the question is why hasnt this been a smogon-wide change long ago? For decades sleep clause has been that one weird exception that everyone brings up in tiering policy discussions because its just such a bad system. Its the same as all the ridiculous baton pass complex bans that we've given up on. How long we've kept it around pointlessly isn't really relevant if it's still a really bad thing to have in the game.

 

[Oculars]

Sorry for one liner but a point i would like to add is if we do axe sleep clause (we probably will just knowing how these things go) we shouldnt only ban the offensive use of sleep like hypnosis, sleep powder, spore, etc, it should be across the board, This includes:
- Secret Power (due to 30% sleep chance in grassy terrain)
- Relic Song and Meloetta-Piroette by technicality (10% sleep chance)
- Rest (due to psycho shift being a 100% sleep move if used while resting and a complex ban of rest+psycho shift being dumb)

R8 whats your opinion on also banning rest along with the other sleep inducing moves if we ban sleep as a whole, personally I think its mandatory if were going to ban sleep. Especially since with sleep clause removed, a resting pokemon can sleep the entire opposing team using psychoshift this would be very broken.

 

[Aesiro13]

Sorry for one liner but a point i would like to add is if we do axe sleep clause (we probably will just knowing how these things go) we shouldnt only ban the offensive use of sleep like hypnosis, sleep powder, spore, etc, it should be across the board, This includes:
- Secret Power (due to 30% sleep chance in grassy terrain)
- Relic Song and Meloetta-Piroette by technicality (10% sleep chance)
- Rest (due to psycho shift being a 100% sleep move if used while resting and a complex ban of rest+psycho shift being dumb)

R8 whats your opinion on also banning rest along with the other sleep inducing moves if we ban sleep as a whole, personally I think its mandatory if were going to ban sleep. Especially since with sleep clause removed, a resting pokemon can sleep the entire opposing team using psychoshift this would be very broken.

Firstly, Secret Power sucks and no one will ever use it. Second, Banning Relic Song will result in a repeat of Ash-Greninja, where an entire mon forme is locked out due to technicality. And third, Rest+Psycho Shift will never be viable in any capacity as the only mons who can learn both moves aren't nearly good enough to warrant using them when you could instead use actually good mons like Iron Valiant.

 

[R8]

Sorry for one liner but a point i would like to add is if we do axe sleep clause (we probably will just knowing how these things go) we shouldnt only ban the offensive use of sleep like hypnosis, sleep powder, spore, etc, it should be across the board, This includes:
- Secret Power (due to 30% sleep chance in grassy terrain)
- Relic Song and Meloetta-Piroette by technicality (10% sleep chance)
- Rest (due to psycho shift being a 100% sleep move if used while resting and a complex ban of rest+psycho shift being dumb)

R8 whats your opinion on also banning rest along with the other sleep inducing moves if we ban sleep as a whole, personally I think its mandatory if were going to ban sleep. Especially since with sleep clause removed, a resting pokemon can sleep the entire opposing team using psychoshift this would be very broken.

I believe those should not be looked at right now on the basis that they were not the reason why sleep clause exists in the first place + I doubt they would cause any problems anyway. If any of these proves to be a problem if sleep clause is removed, we can just look at them again and consider banning whatever needs to be banned

 

[Kin+ak (✧∇✧)]

I am NOT saying that sleep in its current state is broken.

then there is basically no reason to ban it. "it breaks game mechanics" is dumb in natdex cause you LITERALLY have Icium Z great tusk. Arbitrary is true, but so is the ban of koraidon. Impossible to reproduce ingame, See Trailblaze Heracross mega or Close combat mcham.

sleep itself is an uncompetitive mechanic and sleep clause is a pretty archaic way of dealing with it.

sleep is competitive; it's just a niche strategy that is countered pretty easely following your archetype. it's by far more competitive than Jirachi ever can be. sleep nerf in gen6 was enough, and sleep clause is really not misrespecting the game any more than sleep ban is.

when you could instead use actually good mons like Iron Valiant.

so valiant can be ran Specs on kokoterrain, swords dance + booster, cm booster, mixed LO w/ or w/o koko terrain and you want to use HYPNOSIS? that lame-ass move that likely doesn't even get u a free turn if you're faster than the target? if it was pre nerf hypno, MAYBE, but it's less accurate than THUNDER and god knows how thunder is shit. because following that logic, you'd rather run thunder over tbolt case anyways it's more than 50% accurate. so basically hypnosis gives you 60% chance to get 1-2 free turns when ENCORE has 100% chance of giving u 3.

Banning sleep would definitively not radically change the metagame

No, and banning sleep thus is irrelevant. why not ban pachirisu by the way? it's niche nuzzle user and voltswitch spammer from lowladd, totally irrelevant at high level, and it being able to use tera blast and a dexit move wrecks the game mechanics. what about raticate? tera normal facade is impossible in game and it should be banned. extend it to other tiers, why should rayquaza mega be able to use U-turn?why do revivecats and teradinja exist? because. natdex. is. fundamentally. not. respecting. ingame. MECHANICS.

Firstly, Secret Power sucks and no one will ever use it

nah i wanna cook some tapu bulu shenaningans now.

sleep clause is what pple are mad at

yes. and it is totally unjustified. No argument is valuable from allof what ive read till now. Darkrai is barely relevant or even viable with hypnosis/Zh sets and imo you can know better than use Z on darkrai except maybe black hole eclipse/ alloutpummeling. sleep clause may be a mod, but if you want to reproduce what in game lets you do, there is regular Anything goes that does it almost perfectly! Tiering policy have no reason to randomly nerf-to-NU stuff like Amoonguss just because John from Nowheretown randomly put an umpteenth "darkrai is broken" post when I doubt it will beat the UU allegations even tho it has been announced as legal dozens of times in important announcements. No team is weak to sleep; all teams are bad payed against sleep. sleep in the form of sing passes substitute, yet just because it skips a check doesnt mean it's broken. sleep clauses is pore of a lwladder regulation, and no high-ground player worries about sleep more than they worry about flinch.

 

[Nish the Great]

then there is basically no reason to ban it. "it breaks game mechanics" is dumb in natdex cause you LITERALLY have Icium Z great tusk. Arbitrary is true, but so is the ban of koraidon. Impossible to reproduce ingame, See Trailblaze Heracross mega or Close combat mcham.

sleep is competitive; it's just a niche strategy that is countered pretty easely following your archetype. it's by far more competitive than Jirachi ever can be. sleep nerf in gen6 was enough, and sleep clause is really not misrespecting the game any more than sleep ban is.

so valiant can be ran Specs on kokoterrain, swords dance + booster, cm booster, mixed LO w/ or w/o koko terrain and you want to use HYPNOSIS? that lame-ass move that likely doesn't even get u a free turn if you're faster than the target? if it was pre nerf hypno, MAYBE, but it's less accurate than THUNDER and god knows how thunder is shit. because following that logic, you'd rather run thunder over tbolt case anyways it's more than 50% accurate. so basically hypnosis gives you 60% chance to get 1-2 free turns when ENCORE has 100% chance of giving u 3.

No, and banning sleep thus is irrelevant. why not ban pachirisu by the way? it's niche nuzzle user and voltswitch spammer from lowladd, totally irrelevant at high level, and it being able to use tera blast and a dexit move wrecks the game mechanics. what about raticate? tera normal facade is impossible in game and it should be banned. extend it to other tiers, why should rayquaza mega be able to use U-turn?why do revivecats and teradinja exist? because. natdex. is. fundamentally. not. respecting. ingame. MECHANICS.

nah i wanna cook some tapu bulu shenaningans now.


yes. and it is totally unjustified. No argument is valuable from allof what ive read till now. Darkrai is barely relevant or even viable with hypnosis/Zh sets and imo you can know better than use Z on darkrai except maybe black hole eclipse/ alloutpummeling. sleep clause may be a mod, but if you want to reproduce what in game lets you do, there is regular Anything goes that does it almost perfectly! Tiering policy have no reason to randomly nerf-to-NU stuff like Amoonguss just because John from Nowheretown randomly put an umpteenth "darkrai is broken" post when I doubt it will beat the UU allegations even tho it has been announced as legal dozens of times in important announcements. No team is weak to sleep; all teams are bad payed against sleep. sleep in the form of sing passes substitute, yet just because it skips a check doesnt mean it's broken. sleep clauses is pore of a lwladder regulation, and no high-ground player worries about sleep more than they worry about flinch.

I think your issue is that you're looking at this as a ban for balance's sake, and not a ban for the sake of "why on earth are we modding the game for the sake of letting sleep be legal?". Sleep Clause is the most random mechanic to be added to this game, is completely unrelated to what National Dex is, unlike the examples you brought up. (how does z-moves being allowed in a gen 7+ format somehow justify sleep clause)

 

[Kin+ak (✧∇✧)]

I think your issue is that you're looking at this as a ban for balance's sake, and not a ban for the sake of "why on earth are we modding the game for the sake of letting sleep be legal?". Sleep Clause is the most random mechanic to be added to this game, is completely unrelated to what National Dex is, unlike the examples you brought up. (how does z-moves being allowed in a gen 7+ format somehow justify sleep clause)

ok nice? the code is there, and I see no reason to just delete it so... this discussion should've been brought up during the coding hase of the mod.




I know your argument. "sleeep mod is not giving anything to the tier" well, false. the purpose of natdex is to give players more options in the teambuilder. it's not the case of OU. Sleep has done nothing to be banned in natdex. you'd just be preventing the use of amoonguss, even if it is irrelevant.

 

[Oculars]

I believe those should not be looked at right now on the basis that they were not the reason why sleep clause exists in the first place + I doubt they would cause any problems anyway. If any of these proves to be a problem if sleep clause is removed, we can just look at them again and consider banning whatever needs to be banned

I believe that if we ban sleep due to it being uncompetitive, we have to ban it entirely including psycho shift + rest and any other niche cases of it. The same way that when we banned trapping, we didnt just ban the most blatant abusers like dugtrio and gothitelle but also diglett, trapinch and gothita, we banned trapping as a whole, including the unused shitmons in LC that cause almost no problems (same as psycho shift rest currently or nature power sleep): I would only support removing sleep clause and banning sleep moves if it includes all of them such as nature power, relic song and rest, along with effect spore for the same reason. If sleep is broken ban it entirely, no move ability or item should be able to inflict the sleep status on any pokemon in the field if sleep is banned imo.

 

[Kin+ak (✧∇✧)]

I believe that if we ban sleep due to it being uncompetitive, we have to ban it entirely including psycho shift + rest and any other niche cases of it. The same way that when we banned trapping, we didnt just ban the most blatant abusers like dugtrio and gothitelle but also diglett, trapinch and gothita, we banned trapping as a whole, including the unused shitmons in LC that cause almost no problems (same as psycho shift rest currently or nature power sleep): I would only support removing sleep clause and banning sleep moves if it includes all of them such as nature power, relic song and rest, along with effect spore for the same reason. If sleep is broken ban it entirely, no move ability or item should be able to inflict the sleep status on any pokemon in the field if sleep is banned imo.

It's something I totally support as long as dondozo doesn't get rest anymore. I'd do anything for that

 

[Nish the Great]

ok nice? the code is there, and I see no reason to just delete it so... this discussion should've been brought up during the coding hase of the mod.




I know your argument. "sleeep mod is not giving anything to the tier" well, false. the purpose of natdex is to give players more options in the teambuilder. it's not the case of OU. Sleep has done nothing to be banned in natdex. you'd just be preventing the use of amoonguss, even if it is irrelevant.

This isnt a coding issue either. It's an issue of "we shouldnt be modding the game to keep broken strategies in the tier". Same reason we don't have the old 10 page long baton pass complex bans anymore. Either amoongus is broken with sleep unrestricted, or we're modding the game to keep amoongus viable.

 

[Kin+ak (✧∇✧)]

lmao even w/o sleep clause amoonguss is mid with grass and substituts existing. The main problem with unrestricting sleep Is that smeargle webs Will just rise in usage and even tho It won't gET high, it'll be annoying to The mid-/low-ladd part of The playerbase. Then There Is AG and BSS. no sleep clause, yet sleep Is totally unrelevant. Banning sleep Is useless. Now assuming sleep clause Is down, no change Will affect The metagame else The a-bit-more annoying play.

There are multiple people arguing here: those Who sAY sleep clause Is dumb and should be removed for a freeer play, those Who sAY The game Is alright, and those Who sAY sleep Is randomly broken. sleep Is far From broken; you're wrong. There Is lotsof counterplay and Is nothing more than a mix between Encore and flinch. sleep clause Is alright. its Not like you'll drastically change The way you play because amoonguss Still Cant kill ferro.

 

[Dead by Daylight]

This isnt a coding issue either. It's an issue of "we shouldnt be modding the game to keep broken strategies in the tier".

There's a bit of cognitive dissonance here. Many pro-removal posts have addressed the fact that sleep is not a "broken strategy", and have conceded this point. The question is "Should we be modding the game to diversify the pool of Pokémon and strategies?" And considering that

Also, the BW Sleep ban shouldn't be a factor in our decisions here. The reason Sleep moves were banned in Gen 5 was due to the inherent nature of how sleep was handled in that gen - putting a mon to sleep effectively meant it was dead, as the sleep turn counter resets every time that mon switches out.

 

[G-Luke]

There's a bit of cognitive dissonance here. Many pro-removal posts have addressed the fact that sleep is not a "broken strategy", and have conceded this point. The question is "Should we be modding the game to diversify the pool of Pokémon and strategies?" And considering that

Also, the BW Sleep ban shouldn't be a factor in our decisions here. The reason Sleep moves were banned in Gen 5 was due to the inherent nature of how sleep was handled in that gen - putting a mon to sleep effectively meant it was dead, as the sleep turn counter resets every time that mon switches out.

I think the real cognitive dissonance is people being so used to Sleep Clause being a thing that they just say things like Sleep isn't broken.

Sleep is a broken mechanic - it is the reason a mod to the game exists. If Sleep wasn't broken, Sleep Clause would not exist, so let's get that argument out of the way.

We have established that unrestricted Sleep is broken, the debate at hand is that the current way of balancing said unrestricted Sleep is conducive to how Smogon tiers as a whole in the moderm era. And it's largely not. It's not replicable on cart, and unlike something like say HP Percentage, its not really done to simplify a mechanic either, its literally just a means to avoid banning moves. It's akin to me making a Fisheous Rend Clause (If you kill one Pokemon with boosted Fisheous Rend, the move fails if the requirements for being boosted are met again) so Dracovish can be legal in the tier. If the clause was presented now, it would be rejected, and has existed as long as it has due to just being grandfathered in. But people are interested in streamlining Policy, and I think Sleep Clause Mod is a perfectly reasonable thing to remove to maintain said streamlined cart accurate functions.

 

[R8]

then there is basically no reason to ban it. "it breaks game mechanics" is dumb in natdex cause you LITERALLY have Icium Z great tusk. Arbitrary is true, but so is the ban of koraidon. Impossible to reproduce ingame, See Trailblaze Heracross mega or Close combat mcham.

National Dex still attempts to work with known game mechanics as much as it can. Icium Z works on great tusk like it worked with any Pokemon before, using a base power table. Megas Pokemon obviously share the same movepool as their base forme, as they basically only are Pokemon holding an item allowing them to change formes. The existence of sleep clause does not find any justification in national dex's identity in any kind of capacity.

Bans are very different from the sleep clause because they literally only are an agreement between players, while sleep clause directly is modifying the mechanics of the game. If there was a National Dex game you could play on on cart, you still couldn't replicate sleep clause through an agreement unless you directly hack the game.

No, and banning sleep thus is irrelevant. why not ban pachirisu by the way? it's niche nuzzle user and voltswitch spammer from lowladd, totally irrelevant at high level, and it being able to use tera blast and a dexit move wrecks the game mechanics. what about raticate? tera normal facade is impossible in game and it should be banned. extend it to other tiers, why should rayquaza mega be able to use U-turn?why do revivecats and teradinja exist? because. natdex. is. fundamentally. not. respecting. ingame. MECHANICS.

Sleep is irrelevant, but the way we are handling sleep is very relevant, and def should be challenged.
-if Pachirisu is not in the main games, it does not learn Tera Blast - this is how movepools works. You can't assume everything learn it either you cannot assume the move would be universal. (And it is not universal anyway - Ditto, Terapagos and Magikarp do not learn it).
-Raticate uses Tera the same ways every pokemon not called Terapagos or Ogerpon does. Of course it involves two elements that never coexisted in an actual Pokemon game - which has to be expected from any kind of legacy format -, however in games mechanics are still used to determine how Raticate is going to use Tera.
-Refer to my previous paragraph @ why M-Ray can use U-Turn.
-Shedinja - same thing than with Raticate.
-Revivecat existed because Revival Blessing literally has the "callable by assist" flag in the game.

Again, unlike the stuff above, Sleep Clause finds no justification in natdex's identity whatsoever. It is not because NatDex isn't replicable on cart that any mod is fair game. Mega-Rayquaza getting U-Turn is absolutely not a reason to keep Sleep Clause.

yes. and it is totally unjustified. No argument is valuable from allof what ive read till now. Darkrai is barely relevant or even viable with hypnosis/Zh sets and imo you can know better than use Z on darkrai except maybe black hole eclipse/ alloutpummeling. sleep clause may be a mod, but if you want to reproduce what in game lets you do, there is regular Anything goes that does it almost perfectly! Tiering policy have no reason to randomly nerf-to-NU stuff like Amoonguss just because John from Nowheretown randomly put an umpteenth "darkrai is broken" post when I doubt it will beat the UU allegations even tho it has been announced as legal dozens of times in important announcements. No team is weak to sleep; all teams are bad payed against sleep. sleep in the form of sing passes substitute, yet just because it skips a check doesnt mean it's broken. sleep clauses is pore of a lwladder regulation, and no high-ground player worries about sleep more than they worry about flinch.

No one in this thread argued that Sleep in its current state is broken. Tiering policy sure has no reason to keep something that goes against its entire philosophy. Amoonguss should not be a reason to mod the game.

ok nice? the code is there, and I see no reason to just delete it so... this discussion should've been brought up during the coding hase of the mod.

This mod was first implemented more than a decade ago lol. It's not because the clause is now implemented that it should stay as is.

I'd argue that modding the game being a horrible way to balance anything ever is a pretty good reason to remove sleep clause, unless you literally have no other options - but fortunately we have one: banning sleep inducing moves.

I know your argument. "sleeep mod is not giving anything to the tier" well, false. the purpose of natdex is to give players more options in the teambuilder. it's not the case of OU. Sleep has done nothing to be banned in natdex. you'd just be preventing the use of amoonguss, even if it is irrelevant.

This is your interpretation of what National Dex is for. NatDex is meant to emulate what the current gen formats could have been if the dexit never happened. This does imply you will have more things to play with, however decisions absolutely do not have to be made with a "keeping as much things as possible" mindset - this is not the point of the tier at all. It is not an "OU with more options" either, as we banned Kingambit and Dragapult while SVOU did not. Also as someone who used Amoonguss both in gen8 and gen9 natdex ou, I can guarantee u that u don't even have to run Spore for it to be effective - I didn't even run it. You don't lose that much by doing so since in gen8 in particular it is used to check Tapu Fini and Tapu Koko, which make their teammates immune to sleep anyway. In my opinion you can get more mileage by running other moves such as Foul Play, Protect (helps to scout choiced stuff, notably Tapu Lele), stomping tantrum (can be considered on certain stall teams that do not want to give Heatran free leftovers turns), or whatever other tech move you could think of. The main selling point with Amoonguss always was the combination of its typing, mixed bulk and regenerator imo, Spore always only was a bonus u could afford to not run.

I believe that if we ban sleep due to it being uncompetitive, we have to ban it entirely including psycho shift + rest and any other niche cases of it. The same way that when we banned trapping, we didnt just ban the most blatant abusers like dugtrio and gothitelle but also diglett, trapinch and gothita, we banned trapping as a whole, including the unused shitmons in LC that cause almost no problems (same as psycho shift rest currently or nature power sleep): I would only support removing sleep clause and banning sleep moves if it includes all of them such as nature power, relic song and rest, along with effect spore for the same reason. If sleep is broken ban it entirely, no move ability or item should be able to inflict the sleep status on any pokemon in the field if sleep is banned imo.

The trapping ban only involved the ban of the two problematics abilities, Shadow Tag and Arena Trap, instead of the list of Pokemon that get these abilities - it was the minimum amount of non complex bans that solves the individual problems.. The immediate problems you will face if you unrestrict sleep entirely are status sleep inducing moves, and are the reason why sleep clause was implemented in the first place: to target these moves in particular. The other sleep inducing mechanics were only collaterals.

You have:
-Direct sleep inducing status moves (Hypnosis, Spore, etc) (Edit: u can make an argument for Yawn to be treated separately too)
-Sleep inducing non-status moves (secret power, relic song, etc)
-Sleep inducing abilities (Only effect spore?)
-Rest + Psycho Shift

I do not believe that, with sleep unrestricted, every way to induce sleep would be a problem - I think it would only be about the direct sleep inducing status moves. You don't have to ban the other ways unless they prove to be a problem down the line - because why would you do that? If you can come up with concrete proof that the other ways are a problem, I'd be more than glad to defend your cause if I am convinced by your arguments, but as it stands right now I am of the opinion it is not a necessary ban, until proven otherwise - which can happen.

TLDR: I personally don't care if sleep in its current state is not broken, and I am not saying that it is. I just disagree with the way sleep is handled, as I think implementing a mod to do that is silly, and is not how any kind of tiering should be done.