I promise if we get a suspect test for Hypnosis or sleep-inducing moves or whatever everyone decides is under the Scooby-Doo villain mask terrorizing the metagame is, I will get reqs and vote do not ban.
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4
- Thread starter TPP
- Start date
not because drypass wouldn't be balanced or useful, but because it would be another unenforceable mod. even if you were to say something that's mostly enforceable like "you can't click bp while you have stat boosts", that doesn't cover all the weird edge cases where you can get a stat boost on the same turn, and because of how popular this game is those weird edge cases turn out to happen all the time
It's kinda like excadrill in Gen 5. First, they banned excadrill due to sand rush. Then, they unbanned exca because the metagame needed some hazard removal, with the caveat of sand rush not allowed on excadrill on sand teams. Rain teams eventually realised, "wait, we can use exca on our teams with sand rush". Thus, if sand set up their weather, then they would have to face a mon so powerful, they couldn't use it themselves. It was so dominant that they bit the bullet and banned sand rush entirely, despite the fact that stoutland wasn't so overpowered despite also having sand rush.
People will find loopholes, so sometimes it is best to just stop edgecases, which is the main reason why complex bans are not liked. They just lead to more strife and more bans which could have been solved by just banning the entire move/mechanic. Though I would like to see simple complex bans, I think it is for the best we strive for not many complex bans.
why don't we just unban evasion in gen 9, tbh? double team has a whopping 75% chance to do nothing the turn it's used and minimize also ends up not affecting the turn 60% of the time. plus, you can just run no guard and unaware to ignore it! Furthermore, the stat stage changes can be neutralized with defog, not to mention how USELESS it is against phazing. Plus, OU mons such as Meowscarada and Kingambit, or Iron Crown if you're up to it, can completely ignore accuracy checks, so its not even that good! if double team dragapult or darkrai or deo-s become too powerful we can just ban them to preserve the move, they're not worth it honestly.
Saw some discussions about banning inaccurate sleep moves and i will just say this - Between HypnoHex Valiant and Red Card Amoonguss, red card amoongus is more likely to completely incapacitate an enemy Pokemon while HypnoHex Val needs to rely on multiple Hypnosis procs to be a "better" option than Standard valiant sets and oftentimes feels like it's playing a move short compared to other sets.
Double Team forces people to run No Guard or Roar or whatever. Hypnosis has never forced anyone to run Chesto Berry. I know, haha funny false equivalency, but like. This is super duper extra false.
Personally I’m a fan of just banning sleep moves outright, but in this scenario what exactly is the issue with instantly losing? You’re the one who chose to click Dire Claw, or Relic Song, or switch in your effect spore mon knowing you had a 10% chance to lose the game when you did so. If you don’t want to have a chance to instantly lose games in a world where “you can’t put a second opponent mon to sleep or you lose” clause exists, then don’t run moves that can sometimes cause your opponent to fall asleep. I personally find the current world where something would have happened on cart and nothing happens instead much more offensive.
The main issue is that it's super uninteractive and we should strive to not have a situation where there is a new lose condition in the game.
Pokemon's always been "you lose if all your Pokemon faint", adding what is essentially now a second lose condition in: "You lose if you put more than 1 Pokemon asleep" is:
a) Punishing to the point where it fully makes people not run these moves/abilities that have a certain chance of putting to sleep
and
b) Extremely punishing to newer players in particular
The one thing I'll give Sleep Mod is that it's extremely easy to understand as a person new to Showdown, even if such scenarios are impossible in the game. Changing Sleep Clause to where you lose if you put a second Pokemon to sleep is a very patchy fix to sleep, which heavily punishes these new players.
Why is this scenario in any way better than sleep just not triggering if it gets rolled? You're getting the exact same result as Sleep Clause, where only one Pokemon on each time can be asleep at a time, but instead of the effect failing to activate you auto-lose. That adds an extra lose condition, as discussed above, and is way more complex than it needs to be. As I said in my other posts, this idea gets you to the exact same place as Sleep Clause, but now with extra restrictions that weren't there before.
I'm not against discussing removing Sleep Clause. I'm against removing Sleep Clause and then immediately replacing it with something as effective but way more obtrusive than Sleep Clause.
It doesn't necessarily force obscure tech to cover for it and arguably has more answers in OU than Hypnosis does. Here's a list of pokemon in OU currently that have commonly run moves or abilities that happen to also answer double team. (half points were awarded because defog isn't that reliable of an answer in the long term and unaware clef is absent from anything but niche heat techs)
ETA: OOPS I FORGOT WHIRLWIND SKARM DAMMIT
Now here's a list of pokemon that can answer hypnosis under the same criteria:
There are significantly less answers in OU to it, and even worse is that all of them will end up losing if the hypnosis mon just so happens to be a darkrai that has the right coverage (ice beam/sludge bomb, and ghold just loses off the top)
(this is not a defense of evasion boosting in OU, just arguing that you don't actually have to run NU shitmons with no guard to counter it if it were released)
I don't think that post is necessarily true because rillaboom, serperior, ogerpon wellspring and meowscarada can answer spore, which should count as half points if defog and unaware clefable does count. Spore is a big part of the tier, so spore usage should count.
Fair enough, I was under the impression that the discussion was about hypnosis since it was more swingy and on stronger pokemon, but spore is something that should be accounted for.
The issue isn't that the tech to answer evasion boosting is impossible to produce in OU, but that the answers to it become mandatory once it's up in a way sleep doesn't do. If the opponent gets two Double Teams off, that's it. Your odds of winning the game are basically slashed in half unless you do have one of the specific options that bypasses or remove it. If the opponent leads with Hypnosis Darkrai, you can pick which of your six you want to roll the Hypnosis dice on at the very least. There's way more interaction here.
I kinda realised halfway through the post you were talking more about hypnosis, but I think that spore should be considered. Red card amoonguss is a big enough problem right now to be discussed, so having a spore absorber is good. Technically speaking, gliscor is like a 3/4 points because on its first turn, it isn't sleep immune.
Sooooo when can we go back to talking about Pecharunt? 
Sooooo when can we go back to talking about Pecharunt?
I've never understood the "what about Relic Song" thing in relation to Sleep Clause Mod/Sleep Moves Clause. Meloetta doesn't even want to run the move because it forces a transformation into the awful Meloetta-P (last I checked it never even saw see significant use in lower tiers), and who the hell cares if that forme becomes effectively unusable because the trigger is banned.
It's a borderline bad faith argument.
It's a borderline bad faith argument.
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It's a demonstration of why "Sleep Clause should be turned off and instead you lose if you sleep two of the opponent's Pokemon" is a bad idea. Same result, but now you can feel better about not modding the game (even though what you're doing is functionally identical to the mod) and you have to ban Meloetta-P despite it being not at all banworthy. I think it's way more in bad faith to use "who the hell cares" as your reason for changing policy.
"You can't click sleep moves if you have another option." is a cleaner formulation than "You lose if you sleep a second Pokemon." You don't get ugly interactions with Trick/Encore, you aren't tempted to risk a loss to put something back to sleep, and new players can't click a button that makes them insta-lose.
This does rule out PP-stalling or trying to re-sleep something with Spore, but that's a cartridge-inaccurate strategy that gets criticized a lot when Sleep Clause gets discussed. Between getting rid of that strategy and banning sleep altogether, the nerf is the better option if you think sleep should stay.
(I'm personally fine with keeping Sleep Clause Mod as-is, but there are a lot of people who want it changed. Settling the cartridge accuracy debate would be nice, if only so sleep can be judged on its competitive merits and not on the way a clause was implemented as a mod 20 years ago. Sleep Moves Clause is not the only way to restore cartridge accuracy, and whether sleep is broken has nothing to do with whether Sleep Clause is a mod.)
Dire Claw and Relic Song are interesting corner cases, but not impossible to handle. One option is to say that the secondary effect is negligible and allow them to be clicked freely, meaning there will be some cases where you can randomly sleep a second Pokemon. This is analogous to what happens with freeze right now, and we can always ban the moves if they become a problem.
Another option is to lump them in with the primary sleep-causing moves, meaning they can't be clicked if an opposing Pokemon is already asleep. That would be another minor nerf to sleep moves, since the secondary effect moves can no longer be spammed once they proc. The upshot is that this prevents annoying cheese strategies that violate the spirit of the clause, but it also messes with Meloetta's mechanics if Relic Song gets a sleep.
Effect Spore is harder to control, since you can't turn off an ability. But the risk of getting double sleep from Effect Spore in OU is low, and if it ever becomes a viable strategy, it can always be banned.
Natural Cure, which was brought up in the other thread, is actually the hardest case. Can you click a second sleep move if you don't know whether the opposing Blissey is still asleep? To err on the side of caution, I would say a switched-out sleeping Pokemon should only count as awake once it has been seen to wake up.
TL;DR: Sleep Clause does not have to be a mod. Non-mod Sleep Clause does not need a lose condition. The corner cases are not insurmountable.
This does rule out PP-stalling or trying to re-sleep something with Spore, but that's a cartridge-inaccurate strategy that gets criticized a lot when Sleep Clause gets discussed. Between getting rid of that strategy and banning sleep altogether, the nerf is the better option if you think sleep should stay.
(I'm personally fine with keeping Sleep Clause Mod as-is, but there are a lot of people who want it changed. Settling the cartridge accuracy debate would be nice, if only so sleep can be judged on its competitive merits and not on the way a clause was implemented as a mod 20 years ago. Sleep Moves Clause is not the only way to restore cartridge accuracy, and whether sleep is broken has nothing to do with whether Sleep Clause is a mod.)
Dire Claw and Relic Song are interesting corner cases, but not impossible to handle. One option is to say that the secondary effect is negligible and allow them to be clicked freely, meaning there will be some cases where you can randomly sleep a second Pokemon. This is analogous to what happens with freeze right now, and we can always ban the moves if they become a problem.
Another option is to lump them in with the primary sleep-causing moves, meaning they can't be clicked if an opposing Pokemon is already asleep. That would be another minor nerf to sleep moves, since the secondary effect moves can no longer be spammed once they proc. The upshot is that this prevents annoying cheese strategies that violate the spirit of the clause, but it also messes with Meloetta's mechanics if Relic Song gets a sleep.
Effect Spore is harder to control, since you can't turn off an ability. But the risk of getting double sleep from Effect Spore in OU is low, and if it ever becomes a viable strategy, it can always be banned.
Natural Cure, which was brought up in the other thread, is actually the hardest case. Can you click a second sleep move if you don't know whether the opposing Blissey is still asleep? To err on the side of caution, I would say a switched-out sleeping Pokemon should only count as awake once it has been seen to wake up.
TL;DR: Sleep Clause does not have to be a mod. Non-mod Sleep Clause does not need a lose condition. The corner cases are not insurmountable.
all this sleep talk is nonsense imo, but who am I to say xD
What are you talking about. Sleep Talk is a great way to counter sleep. I remember giving it to my Scarf Heracross in Gen 4 because I hated Breloom and surprising people with it is great.
Even if the "sleep wasnt complained about until Darkrai showed up" argument were true, I'd still take issue with it.
An uncompetitive system, mechanic, or interaction isn't actually going to be a problem people care about until it becomes relevant enough to poke them in the face.
Acupressure has been legal and about as uncompetitive as a move could possibly be since generation 4, but has been too shit and irrelevant to actually be a real problem. If we somehow started seeing it regularly swing games in OU, though, the right course of action would be to ban Acupressure, not its abusers.
Sleep is obviously far more debatable on its competitiveness or lack thereof than Acupressure, and its situation is significantly different, but my point is that the "this hasnt been a problem until the right abuser showed up, therefore the abuser is the real problem" argument specifically is faulty logic.
An uncompetitive system, mechanic, or interaction isn't actually going to be a problem people care about until it becomes relevant enough to poke them in the face.
Acupressure has been legal and about as uncompetitive as a move could possibly be since generation 4, but has been too shit and irrelevant to actually be a real problem. If we somehow started seeing it regularly swing games in OU, though, the right course of action would be to ban Acupressure, not its abusers.
Sleep is obviously far more debatable on its competitiveness or lack thereof than Acupressure, and its situation is significantly different, but my point is that the "this hasnt been a problem until the right abuser showed up, therefore the abuser is the real problem" argument specifically is faulty logic.
Maybe we should remove sleep clause entirely, don't ban any sleep moves, and accept deep down that Pokemon will always be an inherently broken game.
I think our problem is that we keep staring into the abyss, but then expect the abyss to not stare right back.
I think our problem is that we keep staring into the abyss, but then expect the abyss to not stare right back.
Okay, grandpa, let's get you back to the VGC section.
I mean, "perfect" being impossible doesn't mean "better" isn't worth pursuing.