Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Volcarona Banned]

[June Heat]

Brand new Pokemon with 600 BST and unique mechanics/moves: I Sleep.
Hypnosis is being spammed: Real shit.

Really goes to show how much people Hate Sleep as a mechanic.

 

[Carl_the_turtle]

I don’t play much of lower tiers so I can’t say for sure, but has sleep ever been especially problematic in any of them? I think if sleep hasn’t proved to be particularly pervasive elsewhere, trickling down a net ban on sleep throughout is weird and the problematic elements are indicative of broken elements of IVal and Darkrai.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

I don’t play much of lower tiers so I can’t say for sure, but has sleep ever been especially problematic in any of them? I think if sleep hasn’t proved to be particularly pervasive elsewhere, trickling down a net ban on sleep throughout is weird and the problematic elements are indicative of broken elements of IVal and Darkrai.

i vaguely recall both lilligants being banned from lower tiers at some point because of their sleep + setup capabilities, so i'm fairly certain it's not a problem that's exclusive to this tier

 

[arnimacarni]

Talking about UUbers since TR is honestly a very strong strategy there. I can see peeps using 2 ursa 2 magearna 2 urshifu

But that's exactly my point, if you were to modify Species Clause, you would need some kind of wording that would disallow the use of forms that are basically the same. Magearna and Magearna-Original look different but are functionally the same (only difference I ever found was that I couldn't use M-O for TR bc it is locked at 31 IV Speed). And we have to act presupposing good intentions here, we want to change Species Clause because e.g. Zapdos and Zapdos-Galar are fundamentally two completely different mons, not because we want to run 6 Kingambits in a team, which would be extremely stupid to face.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Brand new Pokemon with 600 BST and unique mechanics/moves: I Sleep.
Hypnosis is being spammed: Real shit.

shouldn't hypnosis spam also be "i sleep"?

 

[Xufactor]

and you are adding something new or constructive? you led with memes instead of making your points in a serious format, and they're not even good memes. you filled them with terrible comparisons and strawman arguments and tried to paint the community as idiots for wanting to do the right thing (don't lie, you chose patrick for a reason). i wasn't being an ass, i told you what you did wrong and how to be better and you started throwing a fit because you don't believe you can ever do anything wrong. now i'm going to be an ass. and what's this nonsense about the amount of posts i post? how is this relevant to anything ever? i know it's probably difficult for you to keep track of conversations, it's hard for me too, but please try to stay on topic

this is the same bullshit rhetoric that conspiracy theorists spew all the time. you're not being dunked on because you're "challenging the narrative" or because this is some sort of echo chamber, you're being dunked on for using bad-faith arguments, leading with memes instead of actual points, and just being confidently wrong. the fact that you're "self-assured in your knowledge and skill of the game" without having anything to actually back it up is proof of the opposite

"better" how? they're saying the exact same things as i am. they're making the same points, citing the same policy, refuting the clause for the same reasons. you're just crying about mine because i told you directly that you were wrong

calm down, don’t take memes so negatively

 

[willempju]

Sorry if this has been dealt with but I'm at work and can only skim through the posts, but regarding the Species Clause discussion, how would you feel about this wording?

Multiple forms of the same Pokémon with a certain Dex Number can be used, as long as these forms are not interchangeable, have different typing, different abilities and/or different stat spreads, and can be obtained in-game at the same time.

Relevant mons that would not be allowed to be run at the same time:
-In-battle change forms (such as Castform, Meloetta, Wishiwashi, Terapagos, Palafin, Mega-evos, Dynamax...)
-Pikachu
-Unown
-Spinda
-Deoxys
-Gastrodon
-Rotom
-Dialga, Palkia and Giratina
-Shaymin
-Arceus
-Deerling and Sawsbuck
-Tornadus, Thundurus, Landorus and Enamorus
-Keldeo
-Genesect
-Vivillon
-Flabebe, Floette and Florges
-Zygarde
-Hoopa
-Oricorio
-Necrozma
-Magearna
-Toxtricity
-Sinistea, Polteageist, Poltchageist and Sinistcha
-Alcremie
-Zarude
-Calyrex
-Maushold
-Dudunsparce

Would allow:
-All regional forms
-Wormadam
-Basculin
-Pumpkaboo and Gourgeist
-Lycanroc
-Urshifu
-Squawkabilly
-Ursaluna
-Gimmighoul
-Ogerpon

Just throwing my two cents out there.

If there should be a less restrictive version of Species Clause, the one to go for should definitely be:
Multiple forms of the same pokemon are allowed as long as they are tiered separately.

After all, on Smogon we already have been making a distinction in saying that some forms are basically the same mon while others are actually different for years by tiering some together (e.g. Toxtricity), and some not (e.g. regional forms).

 

[Vaporwavvve]

i'm not really "riled up", i just think laugh-react doesn't work because you were trying to be funny and failed spectacularly. i don't want you to get it in your head that "strawman argument in impact font over spongebob image" is what makes a meme

not ad hominems, constructive criticism. i'm giving you pointers on how to make higher-quality memes. "don't make spelling mistakes" is a fairly important part of quality memery because then you can use intentional misspellings to convey certain emotions or tones more clearly. also, it's a matter of convenience—text posts you can edit, but if you mess up while making an image, you have to go back and remake the whole thing. it's inconvenient, so it's best to take the time to proofread before you post a meme

there's a difference between mechanical cart accuracy and non-mechanical cart accuracy. smogon tiering philosophy only concerns itself with the former. half the things you listed don't have any effect on the actual mechanics of the game whatsoever, so they're not relevant to this discussion. freeze clause is only in old gens and is therefore also not relevant to this discussion; even if it were, it's more justifiable than sleep clause because the alternative in early gens (the only ones where freeze is a problem) is banning almost every ice-type move that exists and that would destabilize things so horrifically that the modding is better in that case. battle timer is impossible to code in a way that will perfectly reflect what happens in the game, because the amount of time that passes per turn is way longer on cartridge than on showdown thanks to the animations, and any way of rectifying that is too convoluted to be worth doing

i have a $50,000 piece of paper hanging on my wall that says "this guy knows things about game design". i have taken actual college courses on competitive balance. so yes, i do happen to be just a bit of an authority on the subject of what is and isn't uncompetitive

bruh. are you really gonna pull out the "society marches on" argument in defense of keeping an outdated rule?

lmao no you absolutely could not. the community is in nearly universal agreement that sleep is an uncompetitive mechanic by definition. half the "don't banned sleep" arguments act like sleep clause mod is an actual part of the base game. it isn't. sleep is uncompetitive. it's unfair. it's so awful that even game freak knows how stupid it is. anyone arguing that "sleep is ok" is taking sleep clause mod for granted

when sleep clause was invented, there wasn't really any formalized tiering policy at all. when the initial descriptions were written of what official tiering policy and philosophy are, which is what i mean by "modern policy", they had to put a footnote in saying "oh yeah, except for sleep clause". so the actual policy itself, as written, hasn't actually changed, nor has the philosophy behind how smogon tiering works, but sleep clause has never been in line with tiering policy/philosophy for as long as it's been codified and it's high time to get around to fixing that

there hasn't, but modeling species clause on the in-game species clause is better for consistency. if we have something called "species clause" and they have a different thing also called "species clause" that works almost the same way but not quite, it'll cause no end of confusion

ok you can't just go "yaddah yaddah yah" to the burden of proof. and although i do agree that exclusive moves are becoming a lot more common, the only case of a mon being "banned over a move" that actually stuck (last respects and shed tail were eventually kicked) was annihilape, and that was banned because rage fist is not inherently broken—you can prove this yourself by using rage fist primeape and observing that it sucks. and as common as signature moves are, game freak's new fascination seems to be these weird "not-quite-signature" moves like last respects and revival blessing and shed tail and tidy up, where the distribution isn't quite a single mon/line, so it's actually becoming easier to ban broken moves instead of the mons that own them

actually, the programming part is true, to my understanding at least. from what i know about it. the way our usage stats are calculated is very fucky when it comes to in-game form changes like megas. the algorithm they use can't really measure those at all. the way it gets the usage stats for stuff like megas and zygarde-complete is by measuring the presence of whatever the thing is that they have to run to turn into their forms. so when you see "charizard-mega-x" on the usage stats, what the algorithm is actually measuring is "charizard holding charizardite x", whether it actually mega evolves in a given match or not. same deal with zygarde-complete, mega rayquaza, ultra necrozma, etc. but there's no way it can tell whether a terapagos is going to click tera. so it would have to either assume that every single terapagos is terapagos-stellar, or that none of them are. the way it gets around this is by just ignoring the existence of the form altogether. if we tried tiering them separately, we'd have to either rework the usage statistics algorithm or risk creating a whole new branch of usage-statistic fuckery every month when regular terapagos shifts tiers but stellar form doesn't, or terapagos-stellar shows up in usage statistics in tiers it's banned from, or some other such nonsense. at least, this is what i remember reading from the guy who's in charge of usage statistics in some policy-review thread on it or other. i could be misremembering, but i'm not gonna go hunting down the post to confirm/deny it because i'm about to go to sleep. (see, this is why it should be banned, then i can stay up 24 hours a day)

which policies? there's never been ou precedent for or against tiering an in-battle form separately from its base form. the closest thing was the ubers decision on mega rayquaza, which actually supported keeping terapagos-terastal, but gen 9 ou doesn't formulate policy based on gen 6 ubers. so the banning of terapagos was really not the result of archaic policy but the creation of new policy in a place where none really existed

man do i love bad-faith arguments that come right out and say they're bad-faith arguments. i didn't maliciously frame your argument to appear wrong, you did that all on your own

tl;dr l + ratio + lurk more + read policy + be better

I don’t disagree with you, but saying “I’m not riled” up and then proceeding to write all of War and Peace in response is wild.

 

[gregdawiz]

You wanna talk about precedent? Cyclizar was unbanned when people began to realize that Shed Tail itself was the problem because Orthworm started abusing it. Houndstone was unbanned alongside Last Respects getting banned when Basculegion gained the move. Darkrai, Iron Valiant, and Ninetales-A are only being discussed because of Hypnosis, so all three should be banned? Fuck no. If some Pokemon are being problematic because of a single move, that move is the thing that will get banned. Hypnosis is already neutered too so it should really speak to you what should be banned.

You know the reason Cyclizar and Houndstone were banned in the first place right? It's because there was not sufficient evidence yet that it was broken on anything else. Orthworm seemed fine with Shed Tail and nothing else got Last Respects besides Houndstone. By the same metric, Rage Fist exists and Annihilape stays banned because there is not evidence that Rage Fist is broken on Primeape. This is consistent tiering policy from something as recent as this generation. There has been no evidence to show even a majority of sleep users are uncompetitive with sleep. Literally just 3 pokemon. By this same logic, we should ban Freeze Dry bc Iron Bundle is broken with it. Besides being poorly thought out, its inconsistent with current tiering policy

Removing sleep clause and banning sleep moves makes us actually consistent with the tiering policy.

This is a logical jump. I really don't understand the reasoning here and no one has even made an argument yet why this is the conclusion. If the issue with Sleep Clause mod is that its inconsistent with cartridge, why not reform Sleep Clause Mod to not be a mod and instead be a cartridge accurate? MeepBard suggested a clause that simply prevents the player from clicking a sleep move once an opponent pokemon is put to sleep (perfectly replicatable on cartridge by a simple agreement). Why is this not the solution and instead we have to jump all the way to banning sleep entirely. It kinda feels like a bandwagon people are jumping on because they personally don't like sleep and not because it has any logical basis. We have a solution literally right here, why jump to the total sleep ban?

 

[Xufactor]

You know the reason Cyclizar and Houndstone were banned in the first place right? It's because there was not sufficient evidence yet that it was broken on anything else. Orthworm seemed fine with Shed Tail and nothing else got Last Respects besides Houndstone. By the same metric, Rage Fist exists and Annihilape stays banned because there is not evidence that Rage Fist is broken on Primeape. This is consistent tiering policy from something as recent as this generation. There has been no evidence to show even a majority of sleep users are uncompetitive with sleep. Literally just 3 pokemon. By this same logic, we should ban Freeze Dry bc Iron Bundle is broken with it. Besides being poorly thought out, its inconsistent with current tiering policy

The phrase “not sufficient evidence” is kind of a misnomer. It seems to imply a lack of understanding of what the mechanics do, even though it is obvious what Last Respects and Shed Tail do. I think the moves were banned because there were multiple abusers of the moves. If more mons with up to Blissey level terrible attack stats got last respects and were not broken, the move could be unbanned.

I don’t think having more of these mons legal with the move is evidence that it's not broken. The move hasn’t changed. It’s based on whether the mons currently with the moves are broken or not.

 

[aeladoodles]

I think there is merit to sleep being "uncompetitive" beyond just the discussion of cart accuracy--hypnosis (and other moves, like sing) are just barely better than chance, but being on otherwise very strong and fast pokemon (as opposed to like, spore) gives those pokemon a chance to just win if the RNG is in their favor, without a lot you can do in response. The impact of randomness vs. skill is heavily skewed in favor of randomness, and that's an important factor. sleep turns being random also adds to this aspect.

 

[gregdawiz]

Anything is balanced if you limit it through modding or forfeits, unban evasion but force switch out immediately or lose the game if you don't, unban every uber but only let them attack once, unban kings rock but force a forfeit if it activates, mod flutter mane to have base 100 in all stats.

Even having one turn of evasion boosting can be seen as uncompetitive. Allowing ubers for one turn, aside from being ridiculous, cannot work in situations where the opponent kills every pokemon except for the one uber who cannot attack more than once. Kings rock forcing a forfeit when it activates is basically the same as saying its banned. Flutter Mane modded stats is a much more intense modification of the game than even sleep clause mod ever was.

Arbitrary limitations on sleep shouldn't exist in gen 9, either it's fine unrestricted or it should be banned. Oldgens like RBY are different because of how the tier would be fundamentally different without sleep, but SV would just go back to the state it was not very long ago and nothing of value would be lost.

This logic falls flat when you realize most of what was suggested above has no logical basis. Sleep Clause does have logical basis is being a balanced (for 7 generations at least) way to keep sleep in the game while not being too overpowered. Sleep was useful in keeping several much needed answers in the tier by giving them access to a move that cripples its threats. Describing Oldgens as different kinda puts the cart before the horse, as we have no way to assume what the tier would be like in several years if we do keep sleep. Say we instead ban Darkrai and Iron Valiant; it is possible the shift in meta changes enough such that pokemon like Amoonguss or even Breloom are able to rise to viability within the tier, and be healthy in the meta for their ability to be useful answers to some of the tiers most egregious pokemon. I dislike that logic from the council. Either way, there is nothing logically saying we cannot have something complex for a mechanic.

The phrase “not sufficient evidence” is kind of a misnomer. It seems to imply a lack of understanding of what the mechanics do, even though it is obvious what Last Respects and Shed Tail do. I think the moves were banned because they were multiple abusers of the moves. If more mons with up to Blissey level terrible attack stats got last respects and were not broken, the move could be unbanned.

I don’t think having more of these mons legal with the move is evidence that it's not broken. The move hasn’t changed. It’s based on whether the mons currently with the moves are broken or not.

Afaik, this was the reason the moves were not banned though. Its obvious to most of us that Shed Tail/Last Respects would be broken on most of the pokemon that have it, but from a tiering perspective we didn't ban the moves at first because Shed Tail was not proven yet to be broken on Orthworm (who has had it since the start of the gen alongside Cyclizar meaning there were mulitple abusers of this move at the time) and Last Respects did not have a second pokemon proving that it wasnt Houndstone which was the problem. If Blissey did have Last Respects, it is certainly possible it would still be around as a move.. Although I agree with other's assessments, it should simply be the move is broken on a majority of users that kills the move. Either way that isnt the case for sleep.

I think there is merit to sleep being "uncompetitive" beyond just the discussion of cart accuracy--hypnosis (and other moves, like sing) are just barely better than chance, but being on otherwise very strong and fast pokemon (as opposed to like, spore) gives those pokemon a chance to just win if the RNG is in their favor, without a lot you can do in response. The impact of randomness vs. skill is heavily skewed in favor of randomness, and that's an important factor. sleep turns being random also adds to this aspect.

But why is it sleep that's the issue and not the few fast strong pokemon? Even Venomoth isnt really uncompetitve with sleep. It could be argued what is uncompetitive is just a few pokemon that could easily just be banned on their own merits. It doesn't really prove sleep in general is uncompetitive.

 

[NotDaProGamer]

here's a homemade meme for you jokesters in the OU Metagame Discussion thread
View attachment 594392

Oh my god! This meme is so

 

[Cuddly]

You know the reason Cyclizar and Houndstone were banned in the first place right? It's because there was not sufficient evidence yet that it was broken on anything else. Orthworm seemed fine with Shed Tail and nothing else got Last Respects besides Houndstone. By the same metric, Rage Fist exists and Annihilape stays banned because there is not evidence that Rage Fist is broken on Primeape. This is consistent tiering policy from something as recent as this generation. There has been no evidence to show even a majority of sleep users are uncompetitive with sleep. Literally just 3 pokemon. By this same logic, we should ban Freeze Dry bc Iron Bundle is broken with it. Besides being poorly thought out, its inconsistent with current tiering policy


This is a logical jump. I really don't understand the reasoning here and no one has even made an argument yet why this is the conclusion. If the issue with Sleep Clause mod is that its inconsistent with cartridge, why not reform Sleep Clause Mod to not be a mod and instead be a cartridge accurate? MeepBard suggested a clause that simply prevents the player from clicking a sleep move once an opponent pokemon is put to sleep (perfectly replicatable on cartridge by a simple agreement). Why is this not the solution and instead we have to jump all the way to banning sleep entirely. It kinda feels like a bandwagon people are jumping on because they personally don't like sleep and not because it has any logical basis. We have a solution literally right here, why jump to the total sleep ban?

It’s very easy to break that mod suggestion. Trick a choice item or use Encore against a Pokemon that tried using a sleep move for the first time. Do so when said Pokemon is the last Pokemon the opponent has, now you break the game.

 

[Srn]

Here's me making points in a serious format:





Here's me winning a community tournament that has 250k views:

Here's me getting a 21 match rby winstreak last week after only playing the tier for like two weeks:

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...ts-season-2-now-starting.3705566/post-9927777

Here's me being a part of the community for over a decade:

View attachment 594389



Thank you for the feedback on my memes. I've tried to improve, what do you think?

View attachment 594388

It's great that you have found success in other formats and appear to have solid fundamentals, but none of this is proof that you are in tune with SV OU. Sleep is uniquely problematic in this generation and cannot be compared to how it was in past gens. As the resident forum mainer, I would love to have typed out a 20k word essay on why sleep should go, but my fellow forum mainer (and arguably best SV OU player) xavgb already did. I'm gonna just link them as necessary to respond to your serious points.

Sleep, much like terra, is limited by how good it is by its abusers

This is dead wrong. Sleep is limited BY SLEEP CLAUSE MOD, not by how good its abusers are. If I was able to put all 6 of your mons to sleep but only with Sleep Powder Exeggutor, I would use it and destroy everybody 75% of the time. Exeggutor is not a good abuser of Sleep, that's just Sleep being broken. We've simply been coddled by Sleep Clause Mod for so long that we think it's remotely balanced.

no one was seriously advocating for a sleep ban prior to Darkrai and it seems inconsistent with previous teiring policy in terms of letting the meta evolve to deal with the issue.

It really doesn't matter why the sleep ban discussion started, and if you think Darkrai is the only culprit, you are not aware of meta trends. It is definitely more than darkrai nowadays, and one of xavgb's posts can take it from here.

I would argue that there has never been more counter play to deal with sleep than in the current generation in terms of the leniency of the mechanic relative to other gens and with the introduction of Good as Gold and Purifying Salt on two great mons. Legitimate counter play to sleep, in general, exists.

You would be very wrong to argue that there has never been more counterplay to deal with sleep than in SV OU. We lost tapu koko and tapu fini, which both set terrains which blocked direct sleep moves. These pokemon were incredible counterplay against sleep in SM and SS, and losing them hurts way more than gaining Gholdengo and Garg, especially when both are losing to modern sleep abusers.

In my mind, this is akin to me saying I have no counter play to gen 4 Jirachi; let's ban flinching moves instead of banning Jirachi.

This comparison, and many others comparing sleep to paralysis or missing moves, can only be seriously made because you are playing with sleep clause mod. Unrestricted sleep is so much stronger, so much more uncompetitive than flinching, full paras, etc that even baby Smogon could put two and two together and knew it had to be nerfed or banned. Unfortunately, they chose the option that would come to be inconsistent with modern tiering policy, and our archaic game mod isn't even keeping sleep balanced anymore.

If we're going to treat terra abusers on a case by case basis, rather than outright banning the mechanic (neither pro nor against at this point because of how amped up the power creep is this gen), then we absolutely should do the same with sleep for consistency.

Once again, unlike tera, sleep has already been acted upon to try and balance it. If we tried to nerf tera and it was still a problem, then you might have an argument for taking action against tera itself (unfortunately we haven't gotten there yet ;_;). But we have already nerfed sleep and sleep is still a problem, it makes more sense to target sleep itself at this point. This is especially true because we know how relatively balanced these mons were before meta developed and people realized how stupid abusing sleep was.

I feel there are more pressing issues to tackle before even discussing sleep, like the re-released mons and finalizing our decision on the generation defining mechanic.

The leader of this tier Finch here is asking for us to vote 5 on Sleep in the upcoming survey so council can quickban it. Xavgb posted 1 2 3 times about it, and I would beg you to read it all. The best players of this tier and members of OU council think Sleep is THE pressing issue to tackle, I agree with them, and so do many other accomplished players of this tier. As much as I would love to see kyurem, gouging fire, archaludon, and tera go from this tier, Sleep is the easiest slamdunk quickban that should be done asap.

I would really love to hear some serious responses to the above, without unfunny memes.

 

[senorlopez]

In my mind, MeepBard's suggested clause to prevent the player from clicking a sleep move once an opponent pokemon is put to sleep is the most logical first step to appease the cart accuracy argument if that's what we're striving for. It is a more precise implementation of the current clause and is something that could be introduced with relatively little resistance imo.

Pushing further than that, the onus would be to prove that the sleep mechanic is uncompetitive.

 

[Just A Shroom God]

Well, you finally managed it, OU discussion. You managed to genuinely impress me. I was DEAD sure the ubers-dropping discussion we had was the worst we could possibly get. We'd hit bedrock, and there was nowhere to go but up, right? But apparently, one of y'all had some coral fans and pistons stashed away, because somehow we've hit the void, the land of circling arguments and sleep clause.

Seriously though, is there really anything more to discuss? You either think sleep is an uncompetitive mechanic or you don't. If you do, you think we need to ban/restrict sleep. If you don't, you think either nothing should be done or we should ban the abusers. It's not that hard. Even the proposed restrictions boil down to just "modernize sleep clause." Can we move on?

 

[Anchor9]

Well, you finally managed it, OU discussion. You managed to genuinely impress me. I was DEAD sure the ubers-dropping discussion we had was the worst we could possibly get. We'd hit bedrock, and there was nowhere to go but up, right? But apparently, one of y'all had some coral fans and pistons stashed away, because somehow we've hit the void, the land of circling arguments and sleep clause.

Seriously though, is there really anything more to discuss? You either think sleep is an uncompetitive mechanic or you don't. If you do, you think we need to ban/restrict sleep. If you don't, you think either nothing should be done or we should ban the abusers. It's not that hard. Even the proposed restrictions boil down to just "modernize sleep clause." Can we move on?

Uhh…… admire my stall team instead! https://pokepast.es/d54bd7cf78d6ac5a

(This gets creamed by Skarmory)

 

[Carl_the_turtle]

Can we move on?

I agree despite the fact that this is probably a thinly veiled attempt to discuss lokix's relevance in OU again.
There's been a lot of discussion on Sleep as one of the two things that has support for a ban in OU, but I think we should talk about the other guy! How is everyone finding Kyurem in OU? With set variety between loaded dice sets and potent special wallbreaking, is the big ice dragon's potent power too much for the tier? Are there any move or item variations you find worth using? How difficult is he to account for in the builder, personally?

 

[Just A Shroom God]

I agree despite the fact that this is probably a thinly veiled attempt to discuss lokix's relevance in OU again.

WHAT??? Never!!!! Why would you ever suspect me of such an action? I'd never do that!!!

With set variety between loaded dice sets and potent special wallbreaking, is the big ice dragon's potent power too much for the tier? Are there any move or item variations you find worth using? How difficult is he to account for in the builder, personally?

On a completely unrelated topic, here's a calc!
252+ Atk Choice Band Tera Bug Lokix First Impression vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Kyurem: 298-352 (76.2 - 90%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock

 

[pika pal]

If there should be a less restrictive version of Species Clause, the one to go for should definitely be:
Multiple forms of the same pokemon are allowed as long as they are tiered separately.

After all, on Smogon we already have been making a distinction in saying that some forms are basically the same mon while others are actually different for years by tiering some together (e.g. Toxtricity), and some not (e.g. regional forms).

In principle I think this makes some sense, but we'd need a hard set definition for what gets things tiered separately while being distinct enough to call them different mons to distinguish the cosmetic differences (i.e. Stats, Movepool, Ability Access) since the way we choose tiering is itself a decision by Smogon format rather than a hardset objective rule of the game we're simulating. The first thing that springs to mind, while not relevant in gameplay, is how "Regular" and "Dusk-eligible" Rockruff are identical in every manner besides Own Tempo access, but are nonetheless coded as separate forms alongside BB Greninja for a much more significant case.

 

[Anchor9]

WHAT??? Never!!!! Why would you ever suspect me of such an action? I'd never do that!!!

On a completely unrelated topic, here's a calc!
252+ Atk Choice Band Tera Bug Lokix First Impression vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Kyurem: 298-352 (76.2 - 90%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock

Here’s a better calc.
252+ SpA Choice Specs Tera Fairy Ampharos Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Kyurem: 428-506 (109.4 - 129.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO

#AmpharosForOU

 

[Pluim]

In principle I think this makes some sense, but we'd need a hard set definition for what gets things tiered separately while being distinct enough to call them different mons to distinguish the cosmetic differences (i.e. Stats, Movepool, Ability Access) since the way we choose tiering is itself a decision by Smogon format rather than a hardset objective rule of the game we're simulating. The first thing that springs to mind, while not relevant in gameplay, is how "Regular" and "Dusk-eligible" Rockruff are identical in every manner besides Own Tempo access, but are nonetheless coded as separate forms alongside BB Greninja for a much more significant case.

If anything I think it should have to do with regional variants to allow zapdos and galar-zapdos, while still excluding 6 darkrai's on one team. It also excludes stuff like that Rockruff difference etc.

 

[heileone]

Anyone else here who doesn’t care about sleep clause at all? I just don’t wanna play vs hypno Val and rai and sleep powder venosaur and lilligant. Those guys alone are enough for sleep to be banned(and I wouldn’t miss amongus either)

 

[senorlopez]

It's great that you have found success in other formats and appear to have solid fundamentals, but none of this is proof that you are in tune with SV OU. Sleep is uniquely problematic in this generation and cannot be compared to how it was in past gens. As the resident forum mainer, I would love to have typed out a 20k word essay on why sleep should go, but my fellow forum mainer (and arguably best SV OU player) xavgb already did. I'm gonna just link them as necessary to respond to your serious points.


This is dead wrong. Sleep is limited BY SLEEP CLAUSE MOD, not by how good its abusers are. If I was able to put all 6 of your mons to sleep with Sleep Powder Exeggutor, I would use it and destroy everybody 75% of the time. Exeggutor is not a good abuser of Sleep, that's just Sleep being broken. We've simply been coddled by Sleep Clause Mod for so long that we think it's remotely balanced.


It really doesn't matter why the sleep ban discussion started, and if you think Darkrai is the main culprit, you are not aware of meta trends. It is definitely more than darkrai nowadays, and one of xavgb's posts can take it from here.


You would be very wrong to argue that there has never been more counterplay to deal with sleep than in SV OU. We lost tapu koko and tapu fini, which both set terrains which blocked direct sleep moves. These pokemon were incredible counterplay against sleep in SM and SS, and losing them hurts way more than gaining Gholdengo and Garg, especially when both are losing to modern sleep abusers.


This comparison, and many others comparing sleep to paralysis or missing moves, can only be seriously made because you are playing with sleep clause mod. Unrestricted sleep is so much stronger, so much more uncompetitive than flinching, full paras, etc that even baby Smogon could put two and two together and knew it had to be nerfed or banned. Unfortunately, they chose the option that would come to be inconsistent with modern tiering policy, and our archaic game mod isn't even keeping sleep balanced anymore.


Once again, unlike tera, sleep has already been acted upon to try and balance it. If we tried to nerf tera and it was still a problem, then you might have an argument for taking action against tera itself (unfortunately we haven't gotten there yet ;_;). But we have already nerfed sleep and sleep is still a problem, it makes more sense to target sleep itself at this point. This is especially true because we know how relatively balanced these mons were before meta developed and people realized how stupid abusing sleep was.


The leader of this tier Finch here is asking for us to vote 5 on Sleep in the upcoming survey so council can quickban it. Xavgb posted 1 2 3 times about it, and I would beg you to read it all. The best players of this tier and members of OU council think Sleep is THE pressing issue to tackle, I agree with them, and so do many other accomplished players of this tier. As much as I would love to see kyurem, gouging fire, archaludon, and tera go from this tier, Sleep is the easiest slamdunk quickban that should be done asap.

I would really love to hear some serious responses to the above, without unfunny memes.

So first off, I want to thank you for engaging with me in a manner that isn't asinine and taking the time to respond to my "serious" posts.

I want to begin by expanding on some points you raised which hopefully we could agree on:

Sleep is limited BY SLEEP CLAUSE MOD

I agree. Unrestricted sleep would be catastrophic to every generation in probably every tier. The current sleep mod is a midground between an attempt at balancing the mechanic and remaining faithful to a core element of pokemon gameplay. I have no issue in admitting sleep would be busted unrestricted, and in being unrestricted, would be unfair to compare tera to sleep in terms of "brokenness".

You would be very wrong to argue that there has never been more counterplay to deal with sleep than in SV OU. We lost tapu koko and tapu fini, which both set terrains which blocked direct sleep moves. These pokemon were incredible counterplay against sleep in SM and SS, and losing them hurts way more than gaining Gholdengo and Garg, especially when both are losing to modern sleep abusers.

On reflection, I agree. The terrain setters definitely influenced the sleep aspect of the meta to a greater extent than the mons I brought up. Saying that, I maintain there is significant counterplay to sleep as whole with the tools that we have but this is simply a matter of opinion.

I'll try now to respond to the main points of your post I contest. If you feel I missed anything significant, feel free to let me know.

We've simply been coddled by Sleep Clause Mod for so long that we think it's remotely balanced.
This comparison, and many others comparing sleep to paralysis or missing moves, can only be seriously made because you are playing with sleep clause mod.
they chose the option that would come to be inconsistent with modern tiering policy, and our archaic game mod isn't even keeping sleep balanced anymore.

So we need to try and separate the reasoning for why we went sleep cause to be modified. Is it because it isn't faithful to cartridge mechanics? If so implement MeepBard's suggested clause which greys out the sleep move button. Is it because, left unrestricted, sleep as a mechanic is broken? If it is (it is) then why is it an issue now when we've never played with that ruleset or ideology in mind. Is it because, in its current form, it's too oppressive? If it is then let's apply tiering policy to the mechanic and apply consistency. Let's understand if the move(s) is broken or the pokemon. This is not clear cut and I would be open to arguments from both sides on this but my main gripe with this is that we are currently banning mons on a case by case basis for tera pushing a mon over the edge ( which is fine) then why can't we follow the same principle with sleep?

and if you think Darkrai is the main culprit, you are not aware of meta trends. It is definitely more than darkrai nowadays, and one of xavgb's posts can take it from here.

Darkrai is absolutely the main culprit and saying otherwise would be disingenuous. It might not be the first problematic instance in this generation but it is absolutely the straw the broke the camels back.

But we have already nerfed sleep and sleep is still a problem, it makes more sense to target sleep itself at this point. This is especially true because we know how relatively balanced these mons were before meta developed and people realized how stupid abusing sleep was.

This is a matter of opinion on sleep being problematic as it is. Darkrai, Lilligant-h and IV are indeed causing havoc on the tier with the resurgence of sleep. But why is the onus on sleep rather than the pokemon? We aren't we seeing np gengar, speed boost yanmega or QD venemoth rip through the tier? Because these mons aren't pushed past the threshold for sleep to be good enough on these and snowball the game.

Xavgb posted 1 2 3 times about it, and I would beg you to read it all. The best players of this tier and members of OU council think Sleep is THE pressing issue to tackle, I agree with them, and so do many other accomplished players of this tier.

I agree with the vast majority of what Xavgb was written in their posts - they clearly have an insight of the meta and have put a lot of thought into outlining their position for why sleep is problematic.

My issue with the posts is that when framing the discussion around sleep, they are framing the argument with the most potent abusers in mind.
For example, when Xavgb discusses the resurgence of sun and Lilli-H, everything that he says with regards of Lilli-H running away with the game is correct. Hang on, but didn't Brute Bonnet used to be on those teams? Why wasn't anyone complaining about it, when it also has a (better) sleep move? We know it's because Lilli-H can snowball and win the game single handedly (which is exacerbated by tera). Why is the onus on the sleep mechanic instead of the pokemon, when BB had access to a better sleeping move?

If you discard the most potent abusers of the mechanic, would we still have the same balance issues that Xavgb highlighted in their post? Maybe, i'm not a high level player and that's a point of contention to be discussed but I would be inclined to say probably not.