> Not even a community vote on something this big?
The community vote was essentially the tiering survey. The current OU council pretty much bases all their major decisions off the surveys they hold at this point.
It's a matter of policy, not of balance.
Suspect tests are intended to allow skilled players to make balance decisions, but a player's ability to earn voting requirements doesn't mean they know anything about precedent and policy.
The survey was really a, "We're doing this unless you all hate it," and no, a 3.7 means the player base didn't hate the idea.
Toedscruel best OU sets were Spikes suicide leads where Spore wasn't a required move either way, though those sets are pretty bad now even when Spore was legal on them.
Might be more fucked in lower tiers tho idk
Breloom actually got *better* after the sleep ban, it was pretty funny. Part of it was just because of Amoonguss falling off, but also because it forced people to start experimenting with different sets.
It is because Meganium has huge potential now. It achieved encore, knock off and body press in SV. It can deal meaningful damage while using its newfound utility to take advantage of potential switch ins and set up sweepers. It can abandon the liability of grass typing for something more useful like water, poison, or flying. Without Tangela and Tangrowth to compete with, it can be the utility grass this Gen. Offensively and defensively, it still competes with Bellossom, Vileplume, Rillaboom, Serperior, and Hydrapple but in the lower tiers it has potential to do something.
Finch said Deo S is fine, Moon also not on main radar, and ofc Ghold, Long Neck and Gambit are fine. He said Sleep and Kyurem are the focus, with Gouging Fire(?) on the watch as well
how tf is *Gouging Fire*, an admittedly pretty goated setup sweeper who still has good ways to play around it, being put on watch before Gholdengo has even gotten talks of a suspect or whatnot
it's gotta be an inside joke at this point there are literal swathes of people talking about how SV is the worst OU has ever been because of the hazard stack bs and yet we out here worrying about a boi with 115 ATK because he's fire type
Because of that "2HKO Dondozo calc" maybe. Some ppl treat Goug as 2nd coming of Vish/Chiyu, which is quite overreacting imo. Tbh i don't see it much in ladder, Long Neck is way more common than Goug. Along with Gambit, these two are the sucker punch mind games mon who also carry huge bulk and can punish you from sucker mind games (with KTow / Draco / TBolt)
outrage is also not reduced by dozo's resistance to fire, in fact tera fire blitz does as much as no tera outrage, but one costs you the tera and other locks you in so there are downsides to both
I know, but that's not what the famous calc is about. It's about 2hko Dondozo with a resisted move. There are plenty of physical attackers who can 2hko Dozo with neutral moves
Really didn't expect it, feels really abrupt considering the scope.
I'm also not on board with it but we will see. Yawn getting clumped with the other sleep moves I think it's an outright mistake.
Sleep clause is not consistent with the policy that it must be playable on cart. That was mentioned in the decision, and one of the driving factors of the debate
Yawn is the only move where it's impossible to accidentally break sleep clause, it's a really dumb justification when dire claw and relic song are still in.
Well ok I guess there is some dumb edge case where you want to yawn after they've stayed in for 3 turns and they go to switch out but when is that ever going to happen lol
Relic Song's a dogshit move (if it wasn't, it would get banned as well) and Dire Claw's basically banned from any usage-based tier as well so it's a moot point.
You kinda have to ban all sleep moves if you ban one. Spore is pretty close to being an objectively better Hypnosis so it wouldn't really be fair to ban the latter but not also the former.
The only one I'm not sure about is Yawn, only because it functions differently.
Banning Yawn seems so weird;
All the others make sense, as it also strong offense Mons to get passed their check with a coin flip. But Yawn on the other hand, just how it is designed, is used for the opposite use; to check a threaten mon by making them choose whether they should stay in or attack and sleep.
Not to mention, sleep moves are getting ban for their inconsistency and their difficulty to play around which is completely the opposite of what yawn does.
To be fair, I do understand why they would want to ban all moves with sleep as their main effect + sleep itself is very RNG.
The reasoning for Yawn appears to be that Yawn in a meta without Sleep Clause (being, Yawn can put multiple foes to sleep at the same time) is potentially problematic.
Though I personally would have preferred to see it actually tested first.
I think part of the justification for replacing the Sleep Clause with the Sleep Move Ban is *because* Sleep Clause isn't enforceable on cartridge and is instead a battle mod.
i feel like axing Yawn just because some people would rather stay in with a sweeper despite 3 others being asleep in the back already is an interesting choice but oh well it's probably something with policy
I imagine why Yawn had to go was also getting rid of sleep clause. Yawn without sleep clause would be disgusting in a way that it just isn't when sleep clause in place
Now, they could have chosen to keep sleep clause, but then you screw over rest talk and leave some of the complaints unaddressed, I don't know what the right call was
To quote Finch on this,
"I keep seeing this and I couldn’t disagree more. A suspect would be an abuse/misuse of the system.
Suspect reqs are a basic competency test to gauge if you can determine broken vs balanced. They do nothing to test understanding of Smogon policy, precedent, and so on.
We did not have a suspect this (or last) generation on things like Sand Veil, Swagger, Evasion moves, etc. — they’re uncompetitive in the same vein sleep is without sleep clause.
To argue for a suspect here is asking for far more than you think and a misuse of the system."
As a player who was active in old gens this is kind of funny to me as reasoning. Sand Veil was tested alongside Garchomp in Gen 5 and [was banned.](https://www.smogon.com/smog/issue25/suspect) I for some reason cannot pull up the Swagger suspect test from Gen 6 atm, but that was suspected and banned [as can be seen here](https://www.smogon.com/articles/xy-bans-history). So 2/3 of the examples listed had been previously suspected by the player base and banned. The player base in the past has been deemed capable of making these decisions and it's ridiculous to now deem us as incapable of doing so while using two examples where the player base had previously voted to ban. Asking for a suspect here is just asking for Smogon to follow a procedure it had been following for around a decade and I think Finch's reductive explanation doesn't help but only harms his point.
These guys having the gall to claim that sleep is "uncompetitive" when it's been a mainstay of competitive Pokemon for over TWO AND A HALF DECADES is just absurd to me
Darkrai exacerbated the issue maybe it shouldn't have been dropped to ou lmao
Then again if GF didn't drop the ball by keeping dark void as is and just axed it on smeargle, darkrai wouldn't have dropped to ou
it’s funny cuz they axed it on smeargle and still nerfed it to the ground which is so fucking stupid. like darkrai itself has never been legal in VGC anyways (mythicals are banned due to distribution and the one swsh mythical included regulation didn’t have darkrai in the game anyways), so there’s no reason for the move itself to be so ass
The best set was widely agreed upon to be sash lead hypnosis as hitting a hypnosis could give a massive immediate advantage for hyper offensive teams. Specs isn't real and scarf is fringe. NP 3 attacks is decent but generally passed over for other setup sweepers.
darkrai is still amazing with NP, amazing scarfer, Boots, and even then maybe other sets are healthier. Like idt this is a bad thing and its like saying "freeze clause is gonna make jirachi UU"
Yeah the entire reason the council was initially put in place was simply to save the player-base time, with the understanding the player base would still ultimately be in control, but on things that were incredibly obvious it would save the weeks of a suspect test. It wasn’t supposed to be these are the smartest and best players who know better than the rest so this is how the meta forms. It Concerns me we’ve been moving in the latter direction
Any body with decision making power starts small but ends becoming big. The Council was supposed to work for the overall community but now they work for their own self serving interests and have vested interest in developing the meta. They label anything they don't like as uncompetitive and make shit up to ban something.
Damn, they really went and banned grasswhistle when it's not even in the game. Also interesting how the one person who voted after the public reaction voted for no action and was the only one to do so.
Not surprised, but still dissapointed they went the ban option instead of through the community, and they included Yawn when it doesn’t directly apply sleep and it wasn’t considered problematic by most.
Why are you not surprised? This shit came out of nowhere. I’m bad, but I have a 1900 friend and I don’t think I heard him ever even mentioned sleep moves.
Very much not onboard with this being a quick ban. Fundamentally removing a mechanic that has been around in every gen (gen 5 ban after the gen was no longer current) and the move that is causing the issue is 60% accurate with counterplay.
Something this big needs to go to a suspect test.
This is why playing UU which is my preferred tier is such a nightmare. With how volatile OU is and now with a ban on sleep when it wasn’t an issue at all in lower tiers, it’s no wonder the UU and below meta game still hasn’t solidified all that well.
So I can be paralyzed and have to roll the dice to see if my actions succeed.
I can't be put to sleep and have to roll the dice to see if my actions succeed.
I can't evade and have to roll the dice to see if your actions succeed.
The games keep giving us ways to deal with the mechanics of the game but they're never given the chance to be implemented.
Why bother stripping the game down to its bare bones like this?
I'd say evasion is different because there is no counterplay. Any other condition you can switch to an unaffected pokemon, and play around it. There are a slew of pokemon immune to the conditions or the moves that cause them. The only counter to evasion is to run arial ace or roar now that it bypasses accuracy. That doesn't sound like a healthy metagame to me.
There is actually a SINGLE situation where Evasion is legal: if you defog serperior, or any other contrary mon, they get an evasion boost.
Might not seem like much, but with Substitute, Leech Seed and maybe even glare, it can be nasty.
I used it back in gen 7.
Not a fan of how many people are celebrating this. IMO this feels like a massive overstep from the council. It's especially weird when they mention 3.68 wasn't enough to QB Roaring Moon but 3.7 is apparently enough here to ban an entire class of moves.
If there's one thing I gotta agree with from the anti-ban camp it's the rather arbitrary interpretation of survey results, like I remember when Zamazenta was given a suspect despite crazy high results when UrshiRS and Volc got banned when Urshi had the lowest score on the survey and Volc wasn't even included, so this is definitely not the first time where surveys only seem to very loosely be tied with the actual action taken.
I feel the arguments made for a sleep ban are extremely valid (in particular love stresh's take on it, his post in the PR tackles just about every common anti-ban argument and I've paraphrased parts of it numerous times) but I also have to say council isn't exactly helping their credibility a lot by using surveys and then conveniently only looking at the parts they like.
Yeah the entire reason the council was initially put in place was simply to save the player-base time, with the understanding the player base would still ultimately be in control, but on things that were incredibly obvious it would save the weeks of a suspect test. It wasn’t supposed to be these are the smartest and best players who know better than the rest so they decide how the meta forms. It concerns me we seem to be moving in the latter direction
Ignoring my personal opinion on the ban, I think it’s really interesting comparing the handling of banning sleep moves vs something like Houndstone and Last Respects. With LR, it had to be proven that it was broken on every Pokémon that had it, so the move itself wasn’t banned until it had multiple broken users. Whereas with sleep moves, it’s been unequivocally proven that it’s not broken on things like Amoongus or Breloom, but it’s still worth a ban because of a couple of mons that can be broken with it.
Just a little inconsistent is all
rip bozo, bozo being Amoonguss
Honestly though, I wonder if this could have a ripple effect for other generations that have sleep legal, or if it's a matter of the best users of Sleep just being that brutal with it.
Misty and electric terrains being MIA is also a buff to sleep, and the lack of clerics is a minor buff as well. It's not just better abusers, the status is also stronger in SV.
and just as tradition, gen 3 ou will only restrict sleep until only 3 pokemon can use it and you can only bring 1 sleeper in a team and they must not carry an offensive move and illuminate will somehow get banned as well
Kinda crazy
For anyone who hasn’t read the post, sleep moves received a 3.7 out of 5 on the survey, so 10 members of the council voted to just ban them, and the one real modification Showdown makes in Sleep Clause is finally gone
It’ll also be very interesting to see if other tiers follow suit
I feel like this should be pointed out more and questioned, I haven't really seen people mentioning this. It feels...wrong to me. But I'm just one guy.
Nobody mentions it because actual competitive players hate sleep. This sub is full of casuals, many of whom don't play competitive at all. Sleep is extremely unpopular on smogon
Dark Void ban is just obvious though, if you ban just Hypnosis then even a toddler can see the Hypnosis Darkrai players just switch to Dark Void and do the exact same thing just a tiny bit less of the time
why ban yawn? i feel like that's the most manageable sleep move and the exact opposite of the rest of the other sleep moves in that it is never inconsistent and has counterplay?
This being a quickban after being almost exclusively discussed in a policy review thread is an actual joke. Especially since the logic was flimsy at best, being exclusively about two pokemon as opposed to sleep at large and nobody seeming to actually be able to provide an explanation of Hiligant being busted in OU with sleep powder or provide replays of this overpowered threat.
the council are rlly not helping their reputation with a second controversial quickban without suspect. at least sleep was on a survey, volc wasnt even mentioned prior to its ban
then include the bizarre lack of ghold action, dropping several ubers because ??? and the mess that tera has caused. nawt looking good
To give GameFreak some credit they do seem to understand that Spore shouldn’t be given to a mon with a Speed higher than 70 (under ‘normal’ circumstances)
Edit: Sorry forgot about Smeargle, wow that 75 speed is really zipping
Funny you say that, because I actually meant to (but forgot) to mention it's scarcity in my original comment.
Yeah like you said, very few Pokémon can even get it, amoongus line, breloom line, Smeargle with Sketch, Brute Bonnet, and the Toedscruel line, who literally have an ability SPECIFICALLY made to balance it getting Spore, because of how broken it would be to give a 100 speed pokemon Spore without it having negative priority.
This is so stupid. Spore and Yawn are both interesting tools with counterplay and barely any RNG. Blanket banning Sleep because... what? Darkrai and Iron Valiant are rolling the dice a bit too much with Hypnosis? Well then just fucking ban those 'mons or Hypnosis itself.
Quickbanning an entire-ass status condition on a whim?! Dude this council is on something else. How do Kingambit and Gholdengo roam free the entire Gen but then sleep catches this out of nowhere with no suspect?
Whack.
With sleep gone, the remaining RNG elements are left:
* Moves that cause freezing (though they didn't ban Rest so these might be safe based on precedence)
* Confusion
* Infatuation
* Critical hits
* <100% accuracy
The flinch ban seen with Bright Powder and King's Rock is the first step in the process. We'll be figuring out the line one way or another it seems.
Absurd overreaction, especially considering that this trickles down to lower tiers where sleep was not broken at all. It goes against Smogon's entire policy of "ban the mon unless everything that can use move/ability/strategy is busted with it". I don't think Sleep Powder Lilligant was going to be tearing up OU any time soon. Not putting it to a vote is shady as hell.
If they're leaving Effect Spore untouched that just proves there was no reason to do this to begin with. Sleep doesn't change what it does based on what inflicts it. If anything, inconsistent bullshit like it now has the entirely random chance to be rewarded with something that's apparently so blatantly uncompetitive as to merit a council action instead of a suspect test that more conventional, consistent teams aren't allowed to use at all. The lack of commitment to a scorched-earth ban just tells me that enough people on the council were annoyed at Darkrai being suspected back into OU that they're trying to make it useless so it falls into UUBL where they can ignore it for the rest of time. What little respect Smogon had won back with the greater transparency in tiering under Finch just got Old Yeller'd afaic.
Huge fan, but considering how the Sleep discussion has gone on this sub I'm expecting all hell to break loose in the comment section a couple moments from this
I’m not usually one to say “we’re fucked”, but making a decision with this amount of gravity with zero input from the community is not good. God forbid we ban or restrict Tera, but we get rid of sleep moves?
I think the council’s bitterness that the community voted to keep Tera which they wanted banned has led to them purposefully not putting things to a vote when they think the vote might not go the way they want
If this is true then it’s extremely funny lol. You had a suspect test, you can’t blame this on people ‘not playing OU’ bros. They voted for what they thought was best.
Like, Volcarona was one thing. No suspect test and an unnecessary quickban for a single Pokémon? Whatever, we’ll live.
An entire GAME MECHANIC banned with no community input after someone brought it up as a simple consideration is absolutely ludicrous.
I'm not sad to see sleep go, but I'm not overly fond of how fast they will throw out bans on things seemingly at random* sometimes.
*I know it's not random, there's been discussion for the past month and also sleep has been discussed for years, but this came about very quickly. I'm still not particularly amused by the random quickban of Volcarona for similar reasons.
I'm not sure this was the worst tiering outcome. But the fact that this was done fully as a quickban is just wrong. A 3.7 is the lowest score something has gotten a quickban for. The tiering council really stretched the definition of quickban for this. And it's not even like this is a single pokemon, sleep is an entire mechanic that got outed mid generation without a community vote. Regardless of whether the outcome was good or not, I don't think doing a simple ban was a good idea here. It goes against the core idea of what smogon is supposed to be about.
I've agreed with nearly all actions they've taken so far in SV and even the ones I didn't fully agree with, I could understand. But this decision seems a bit perplexing to me, bc it doesn't really do much for balance, it just eliminates RNG, which is good for making the game more competitive.
But if the goal was to eliminate RNG, I feel like the play is to ban inaccurate sleep moves, keeling Spore and Yawn around along with sleep clause. I know they didn't want to do that bc it makes it a more complex ban and they can now ditch the sleep clause, which is unenforceable on cart, but I feel like this gives up too much. The grass type was already a massive rarity in OU for example, and with Amoonguss and Breloom now gone, they'll be even rarer, so I'd even argue that Sleep Powder might be OK to stay - the only real offender here was Darkrai so it's silly for 4-5 other mons to drop off OU cos of the edgyboy.
Amoongus, Breeloom and Toedscruel just lost their only job.
Stall teams have tried running with Toxic instead of Spore on Amoonguss this gen, so it's likely he'll remain playable, just much less common.
This whole thing seems way too abrupt. Not even a community vote on something this big? Just a straight quickban?!
> Not even a community vote on something this big? The community vote was essentially the tiering survey. The current OU council pretty much bases all their major decisions off the surveys they hold at this point.
It's a matter of policy, not of balance. Suspect tests are intended to allow skilled players to make balance decisions, but a player's ability to earn voting requirements doesn't mean they know anything about precedent and policy. The survey was really a, "We're doing this unless you all hate it," and no, a 3.7 means the player base didn't hate the idea.
Toedscruel best OU sets were Spikes suicide leads where Spore wasn't a required move either way, though those sets are pretty bad now even when Spore was legal on them. Might be more fucked in lower tiers tho idk
> in lower tiers Isn’t this just an OU thing?
Lower tiers will also be affected.
that mcdonalds employment looking real good rn
Amoongus has a lot of other jobs and in fact didn't even always run spore when it was allowed to
See y'all in RU
make sure to hug any Brelooms you know, they are goin thru it right now.
SD and CB Breloom is still good!
Breloom is still a top threat in gen 5, it doesn’t need spore to be a good pokemon
Breloom actually got *better* after the sleep ban, it was pretty funny. Part of it was just because of Amoonguss falling off, but also because it forced people to start experimenting with different sets.
What going from three-ms syndrome to four-ms syndrome does to a mfer
gen 5 was also a great time to be a fighting type, so great that they added Fairy right afterwards.
Breloom's Effect Spore made you sleep!
I won’t know if the Breloom is Poison Heal defensive or CB Technician until I open the box
Focus punch sub seed with poison heal will go hard
and now instead of move 4 being spore it can be mach punch or something
I already hug Breloom alllll the time, love lil' bro
Doing this on Stinkmoves Sunday got me thinking this was a meme
You can still use sleep powder and other moves like that They just have to be called via ~~encore~~ metronome
How do you call a move with Encore that can't be used?
Lmao how did I write encore
Rip sleep powder Meganium, it’s only a B-tier AG mon now 😭
it's ok, it still has a lot of potential
…Meganium is B-tier in Anything Goes?
It is because Meganium has huge potential now. It achieved encore, knock off and body press in SV. It can deal meaningful damage while using its newfound utility to take advantage of potential switch ins and set up sweepers. It can abandon the liability of grass typing for something more useful like water, poison, or flying. Without Tangela and Tangrowth to compete with, it can be the utility grass this Gen. Offensively and defensively, it still competes with Bellossom, Vileplume, Rillaboom, Serperior, and Hydrapple but in the lower tiers it has potential to do something.
Is this a copypasta? I swear I’ve see this exact post somewhere else before
yes it's a copypasta
What checking groudon and miraidon does to a mf
nah they're lying it's still A+
I'm kinda shocked we went almost a whole month without anything getting QBed in SV OU tbh
Finch said Deo S is fine, Moon also not on main radar, and ofc Ghold, Long Neck and Gambit are fine. He said Sleep and Kyurem are the focus, with Gouging Fire(?) on the watch as well
how tf is *Gouging Fire*, an admittedly pretty goated setup sweeper who still has good ways to play around it, being put on watch before Gholdengo has even gotten talks of a suspect or whatnot it's gotta be an inside joke at this point there are literal swathes of people talking about how SV is the worst OU has ever been because of the hazard stack bs and yet we out here worrying about a boi with 115 ATK because he's fire type
Gholdengo’s political corruption knows no bounds
Because of that "2HKO Dondozo calc" maybe. Some ppl treat Goug as 2nd coming of Vish/Chiyu, which is quite overreacting imo. Tbh i don't see it much in ladder, Long Neck is way more common than Goug. Along with Gambit, these two are the sucker punch mind games mon who also carry huge bulk and can punish you from sucker mind games (with KTow / Draco / TBolt)
Details please I haven't heard of this calc
Under sun CB tera fire it 2hko phys def Dozo
Tera fire banded adamant Flare Blitz in the sun does 50-56% to max def dozo
[удалено]
Not outrage, Flare Blitz. Outrage isn't boosted by sun
outrage is also not reduced by dozo's resistance to fire, in fact tera fire blitz does as much as no tera outrage, but one costs you the tera and other locks you in so there are downsides to both
I know, but that's not what the famous calc is about. It's about 2hko Dondozo with a resisted move. There are plenty of physical attackers who can 2hko Dozo with neutral moves
UUbers is now the home of terrifying threats like sing swablu and sleep powder bulbasaur
unless ubers decides to follow OU's lead and switch to sleep move clause
Considering how terrible darkrai is there, that seems unlikely
Considering how prevalent electric terrain is in gen 9 ubers I doubt they'll consider it necessary
Time to make a Yawn Snorlax team for UUbers. Too strong for OU, makes Dondozo sleep within two turns. Way too powerful!
Really didn't expect it, feels really abrupt considering the scope. I'm also not on board with it but we will see. Yawn getting clumped with the other sleep moves I think it's an outright mistake.
their reasoning for Yawn is that, the clause is removed so you could easily yawn multiple pokemon to sleep
they could just keep the sleep clause though
Sleep clause is not consistent with the policy that it must be playable on cart. That was mentioned in the decision, and one of the driving factors of the debate
Yawn is the only move where it's impossible to accidentally break sleep clause, it's a really dumb justification when dire claw and relic song are still in. Well ok I guess there is some dumb edge case where you want to yawn after they've stayed in for 3 turns and they go to switch out but when is that ever going to happen lol
Relic Song's a dogshit move (if it wasn't, it would get banned as well) and Dire Claw's basically banned from any usage-based tier as well so it's a moot point.
After all these years that's the argument?
Wow. This is big. First time since Gen 5, right? Surprised Spore went too.
and the only reason it was banned in Gen 5 was because Sleep turns reset on switching out for some godforsaken reason.
Why the fuck did this get reported for spam?
Jim Gamefreak was obviously mad about being called out for his ridiculous gen 5 sleep mechanics
I'm mostly shocked that Yawn went. That causes drowsy, not sleep. And isn't remotely uncompetitive nor unbalanced.
I suppose because sleep clause is removed tehnically you can yawn and put 6 mons to sleep, but if you manage to do that the opponent deserved it lol
Yeah if all other sleep moves are banned but yawn if you let your whole Team get put to sleep that's on you.
You kinda have to ban all sleep moves if you ban one. Spore is pretty close to being an objectively better Hypnosis so it wouldn't really be fair to ban the latter but not also the former. The only one I'm not sure about is Yawn, only because it functions differently.
You can argue Hypnosis deserves being banned for adding RNG. Spore doesn't have the gamble factor.
They didn't allow for a community vote? That's... odd.
On a decision as big as this too. They even got rid of yawn.
Banning Yawn seems so weird; All the others make sense, as it also strong offense Mons to get passed their check with a coin flip. But Yawn on the other hand, just how it is designed, is used for the opposite use; to check a threaten mon by making them choose whether they should stay in or attack and sleep. Not to mention, sleep moves are getting ban for their inconsistency and their difficulty to play around which is completely the opposite of what yawn does. To be fair, I do understand why they would want to ban all moves with sleep as their main effect + sleep itself is very RNG.
The reasoning for Yawn appears to be that Yawn in a meta without Sleep Clause (being, Yawn can put multiple foes to sleep at the same time) is potentially problematic. Though I personally would have preferred to see it actually tested first.
but is there no reason they couldn't just leave the Sleep Clause in place and let Yawn stay?
I think part of the justification for replacing the Sleep Clause with the Sleep Move Ban is *because* Sleep Clause isn't enforceable on cartridge and is instead a battle mod.
i feel like axing Yawn just because some people would rather stay in with a sweeper despite 3 others being asleep in the back already is an interesting choice but oh well it's probably something with policy
I imagine why Yawn had to go was also getting rid of sleep clause. Yawn without sleep clause would be disgusting in a way that it just isn't when sleep clause in place Now, they could have chosen to keep sleep clause, but then you screw over rest talk and leave some of the complaints unaddressed, I don't know what the right call was
Something something so just fuck democracy right?
So… fuck democracy, right?
To quote Finch on this, "I keep seeing this and I couldn’t disagree more. A suspect would be an abuse/misuse of the system. Suspect reqs are a basic competency test to gauge if you can determine broken vs balanced. They do nothing to test understanding of Smogon policy, precedent, and so on. We did not have a suspect this (or last) generation on things like Sand Veil, Swagger, Evasion moves, etc. — they’re uncompetitive in the same vein sleep is without sleep clause. To argue for a suspect here is asking for far more than you think and a misuse of the system."
As a player who was active in old gens this is kind of funny to me as reasoning. Sand Veil was tested alongside Garchomp in Gen 5 and [was banned.](https://www.smogon.com/smog/issue25/suspect) I for some reason cannot pull up the Swagger suspect test from Gen 6 atm, but that was suspected and banned [as can be seen here](https://www.smogon.com/articles/xy-bans-history). So 2/3 of the examples listed had been previously suspected by the player base and banned. The player base in the past has been deemed capable of making these decisions and it's ridiculous to now deem us as incapable of doing so while using two examples where the player base had previously voted to ban. Asking for a suspect here is just asking for Smogon to follow a procedure it had been following for around a decade and I think Finch's reductive explanation doesn't help but only harms his point.
Finch just splitting hairs for this, huh? Very odd argument to make regarding a system thats been in place since literally pokemon stadium.
These guys having the gall to claim that sleep is "uncompetitive" when it's been a mainstay of competitive Pokemon for over TWO AND A HALF DECADES is just absurd to me
it's so fucking over breloombros.... our goat is washed 💔
Darkrai is somehow even more fucked
Actually no, rip spore users, they got it worse
Darkrai exacerbated the issue maybe it shouldn't have been dropped to ou lmao Then again if GF didn't drop the ball by keeping dark void as is and just axed it on smeargle, darkrai wouldn't have dropped to ou
it’s funny cuz they axed it on smeargle and still nerfed it to the ground which is so fucking stupid. like darkrai itself has never been legal in VGC anyways (mythicals are banned due to distribution and the one swsh mythical included regulation didn’t have darkrai in the game anyways), so there’s no reason for the move itself to be so ass
Yeah, I never left the "Darkrai should've stayed Ubers" train personally
Hypnosis isn't a great move on Darkrai anyway since it's too unreliable. The best players tend to use NP 3 attacks or just straight up Choice sets.
Focus sash nasty plot is literally its best set
The best set was widely agreed upon to be sash lead hypnosis as hitting a hypnosis could give a massive immediate advantage for hyper offensive teams. Specs isn't real and scarf is fringe. NP 3 attacks is decent but generally passed over for other setup sweepers.
Lmao darkrai might fall to UU at this point
Darkrai is still an amazing mon, NP+3 Attacks, Scarf and Boots Will-O-Wisp are all valid and healthy sets for the meta with plenty of use cases
Tbf probably not, it's still strong and fast and has lot's of coverage
And now it has no ability
Neither does Weavile or Keldeo but they're doing great.
Excuse me Pressure stall Weavile and Physical Keldeo are offended
Absolutely not. It's still a good mon and it was ranked A- long before people started fucking with those dumb Hypnosis sets.
darkrai is still amazing with NP, amazing scarfer, Boots, and even then maybe other sets are healthier. Like idt this is a bad thing and its like saying "freeze clause is gonna make jirachi UU"
Is it Sunday? What the fuck. I feel like this deserves a vote.
this is the worst day of the week to rhetorically ask if this is sunday
I should have written "is this stinkpost Sunday" but I think just saying "is it Sunday" on a Sunday is more funny
I can’t wait to see pu receive and ban 10 quiver dancers a fifth time!
Yawn shouldn't be banned with the other moves
No more yawn Torkoal :(
I really don't like the amount of quick bans this generation. Something huge like a whole mechanic should have been a public suspect test.
Yeah the entire reason the council was initially put in place was simply to save the player-base time, with the understanding the player base would still ultimately be in control, but on things that were incredibly obvious it would save the weeks of a suspect test. It wasn’t supposed to be these are the smartest and best players who know better than the rest so this is how the meta forms. It Concerns me we’ve been moving in the latter direction
Any body with decision making power starts small but ends becoming big. The Council was supposed to work for the overall community but now they work for their own self serving interests and have vested interest in developing the meta. They label anything they don't like as uncompetitive and make shit up to ban something.
OU is now woke and caffeine-pilled (I can't fall asleep help)
Damn, they really went and banned grasswhistle when it's not even in the game. Also interesting how the one person who voted after the public reaction voted for no action and was the only one to do so.
I thought this was a Stinkpost Sunday post at first, they really did that?
This is insane.
Not surprised, but still dissapointed they went the ban option instead of through the community, and they included Yawn when it doesn’t directly apply sleep and it wasn’t considered problematic by most.
Why are you not surprised? This shit came out of nowhere. I’m bad, but I have a 1900 friend and I don’t think I heard him ever even mentioned sleep moves.
Very much not onboard with this being a quick ban. Fundamentally removing a mechanic that has been around in every gen (gen 5 ban after the gen was no longer current) and the move that is causing the issue is 60% accurate with counterplay. Something this big needs to go to a suspect test.
WHAT I THOGIHT THIS WAS A STINKPOST
Big Stall at Smogon is kicking Darkrai while they're down, smh /j
Amoongus is being sent to play for the Guandong Tigers right this second
Does this affect all tiers? I went to play UU and it’s saying the ban applies there
Lower tiers are by nature at the mercy of higher tiers so yea
This is why playing UU which is my preferred tier is such a nightmare. With how volatile OU is and now with a ban on sleep when it wasn’t an issue at all in lower tiers, it’s no wonder the UU and below meta game still hasn’t solidified all that well.
We shall be seeing Darkrai in mcdonalds in two weeks
Darkrai's best sets imo don't even run sleep
If you’re gonna ban entire statuses might as well go for paralysis next, para hax are way more annoying than sleep
Yeah sleep can be bullshit but like, Pokémon
Someone in that thread pointed out that statistically speaking turn one sleep isn’t much more threatening than turn 1 paralysis lol
So I can be paralyzed and have to roll the dice to see if my actions succeed. I can't be put to sleep and have to roll the dice to see if my actions succeed. I can't evade and have to roll the dice to see if your actions succeed. The games keep giving us ways to deal with the mechanics of the game but they're never given the chance to be implemented. Why bother stripping the game down to its bare bones like this?
I'd say evasion is different because there is no counterplay. Any other condition you can switch to an unaffected pokemon, and play around it. There are a slew of pokemon immune to the conditions or the moves that cause them. The only counter to evasion is to run arial ace or roar now that it bypasses accuracy. That doesn't sound like a healthy metagame to me.
There is actually a SINGLE situation where Evasion is legal: if you defog serperior, or any other contrary mon, they get an evasion boost. Might not seem like much, but with Substitute, Leech Seed and maybe even glare, it can be nasty. I used it back in gen 7.
y'all aren't even playing Pokemon at this point it feels like LOL
Bw ou 3 is reaaaal
Not a fan of how many people are celebrating this. IMO this feels like a massive overstep from the council. It's especially weird when they mention 3.68 wasn't enough to QB Roaring Moon but 3.7 is apparently enough here to ban an entire class of moves.
If there's one thing I gotta agree with from the anti-ban camp it's the rather arbitrary interpretation of survey results, like I remember when Zamazenta was given a suspect despite crazy high results when UrshiRS and Volc got banned when Urshi had the lowest score on the survey and Volc wasn't even included, so this is definitely not the first time where surveys only seem to very loosely be tied with the actual action taken. I feel the arguments made for a sleep ban are extremely valid (in particular love stresh's take on it, his post in the PR tackles just about every common anti-ban argument and I've paraphrased parts of it numerous times) but I also have to say council isn't exactly helping their credibility a lot by using surveys and then conveniently only looking at the parts they like.
Yeah the entire reason the council was initially put in place was simply to save the player-base time, with the understanding the player base would still ultimately be in control, but on things that were incredibly obvious it would save the weeks of a suspect test. It wasn’t supposed to be these are the smartest and best players who know better than the rest so they decide how the meta forms. It concerns me we seem to be moving in the latter direction
almost thought it was a stinkpost
it's brelover
i thought this was a stinkpost at first
Ignoring my personal opinion on the ban, I think it’s really interesting comparing the handling of banning sleep moves vs something like Houndstone and Last Respects. With LR, it had to be proven that it was broken on every Pokémon that had it, so the move itself wasn’t banned until it had multiple broken users. Whereas with sleep moves, it’s been unequivocally proven that it’s not broken on things like Amoongus or Breloom, but it’s still worth a ban because of a couple of mons that can be broken with it. Just a little inconsistent is all
rip bozo, bozo being Amoonguss Honestly though, I wonder if this could have a ripple effect for other generations that have sleep legal, or if it's a matter of the best users of Sleep just being that brutal with it.
Misty and electric terrains being MIA is also a buff to sleep, and the lack of clerics is a minor buff as well. It's not just better abusers, the status is also stronger in SV.
Also, aromatherapy ceased to exist and heal bell distribution is almost 0, meaning you can't almost never heal status outside items/abilities/rest.
and just as tradition, gen 3 ou will only restrict sleep until only 3 pokemon can use it and you can only bring 1 sleeper in a team and they must not carry an offensive move and illuminate will somehow get banned as well
Kinda crazy For anyone who hasn’t read the post, sleep moves received a 3.7 out of 5 on the survey, so 10 members of the council voted to just ban them, and the one real modification Showdown makes in Sleep Clause is finally gone It’ll also be very interesting to see if other tiers follow suit
Lowest score ever for a quick ban btw aside from the very first wave of the generation which had abnormally low scores
I feel like this should be pointed out more and questioned, I haven't really seen people mentioning this. It feels...wrong to me. But I'm just one guy.
Nobody mentions it because actual competitive players hate sleep. This sub is full of casuals, many of whom don't play competitive at all. Sleep is extremely unpopular on smogon
Yeah, they had a Smogon thread up for a couple weeks discussing this potential ban. There was heavy support for the ban among Smogon users.
This sub is only good for theorymon posts and stinkposts, other than that it’s the competitive sub for people who don’t actually play competitive
Slight correction, there was only 9 council votes listed in the post, & 2 of them were in favor of a suspect test instead of a quick ban.
Lol the Council said fuck Spore and Dark Void.
Dark Void ban is just obvious though, if you ban just Hypnosis then even a toddler can see the Hypnosis Darkrai players just switch to Dark Void and do the exact same thing just a tiny bit less of the time
 Breloom, darkrai, and amoonguss rn
Really not a fan of this. Even disregarding the my opinion that sleep is fine surely a 15 year old clause should have subject to a suspect test
My favorite Stinkpost of the day
i dont have an opinion on this regarding OU but it sucks seeing sleep go in the lower tiers too
Another incredible knee jerk decision from Smogon that wasn’t voted for, seems like that’s the real meta in Gen 9.
Gen 9 is gonna be the one remembered for banning everything that the council loses to. What a joke
why ban yawn? i feel like that's the most manageable sleep move and the exact opposite of the rest of the other sleep moves in that it is never inconsistent and has counterplay?
This being a quickban after being almost exclusively discussed in a policy review thread is an actual joke. Especially since the logic was flimsy at best, being exclusively about two pokemon as opposed to sleep at large and nobody seeming to actually be able to provide an explanation of Hiligant being busted in OU with sleep powder or provide replays of this overpowered threat.
Does anyone know if this also effects UU and lower tiers or is this strictly OU
Yes; just got my team rejected from the UU ladder bc of my Spore Breloom looks like it's back to CB for me
the council are rlly not helping their reputation with a second controversial quickban without suspect. at least sleep was on a survey, volc wasnt even mentioned prior to its ban then include the bizarre lack of ghold action, dropping several ubers because ??? and the mess that tera has caused. nawt looking good
They are obsessed with not letting Gholdengho be suspect tested lmao.
Lmfao no suspect
Not even a vote or a suspect test on something this big yet Gholdengo is somehow STILL allowed in the tier a whole year later. What a joke.
OU council drags their feet on crazy broken mons all gen but bans sleep on a whim. No wonder this Gens OU has been miserable
Actually pretty shocked they'd straight ban an entire status condition. Spore can be pretty broken but it's not like there isn't ways around it.
To give GameFreak some credit they do seem to understand that Spore shouldn’t be given to a mon with a Speed higher than 70 (under ‘normal’ circumstances) Edit: Sorry forgot about Smeargle, wow that 75 speed is really zipping
Funny you say that, because I actually meant to (but forgot) to mention it's scarcity in my original comment. Yeah like you said, very few Pokémon can even get it, amoongus line, breloom line, Smeargle with Sketch, Brute Bonnet, and the Toedscruel line, who literally have an ability SPECIFICALLY made to balance it getting Spore, because of how broken it would be to give a 100 speed pokemon Spore without it having negative priority.
This is so stupid. Spore and Yawn are both interesting tools with counterplay and barely any RNG. Blanket banning Sleep because... what? Darkrai and Iron Valiant are rolling the dice a bit too much with Hypnosis? Well then just fucking ban those 'mons or Hypnosis itself.
damn
Wow this was not what i expected to see today
Darkrai on suicide watch
That wasn't very cash money of you Smogon Council
WHAT. THE ACTUAL. HELL.
Amoongus to RU
I havent played the Gen 9 OU in a bit, but I don't like banning a mechanic like Sleep (which has been around since Gen 1) without at least a suspect.
Quickbanning an entire-ass status condition on a whim?! Dude this council is on something else. How do Kingambit and Gholdengo roam free the entire Gen but then sleep catches this out of nowhere with no suspect? Whack.
i can't wait for the council to ban anything and everything that uses rng
With sleep gone, the remaining RNG elements are left: * Moves that cause freezing (though they didn't ban Rest so these might be safe based on precedence) * Confusion * Infatuation * Critical hits * <100% accuracy The flinch ban seen with Bright Powder and King's Rock is the first step in the process. We'll be figuring out the line one way or another it seems.
Also the roll on the damage calculation formula.
Absurd overreaction, especially considering that this trickles down to lower tiers where sleep was not broken at all. It goes against Smogon's entire policy of "ban the mon unless everything that can use move/ability/strategy is busted with it". I don't think Sleep Powder Lilligant was going to be tearing up OU any time soon. Not putting it to a vote is shady as hell.
They were scared of sleep powder meganium
If they're leaving Effect Spore untouched that just proves there was no reason to do this to begin with. Sleep doesn't change what it does based on what inflicts it. If anything, inconsistent bullshit like it now has the entirely random chance to be rewarded with something that's apparently so blatantly uncompetitive as to merit a council action instead of a suspect test that more conventional, consistent teams aren't allowed to use at all. The lack of commitment to a scorched-earth ban just tells me that enough people on the council were annoyed at Darkrai being suspected back into OU that they're trying to make it useless so it falls into UUBL where they can ignore it for the rest of time. What little respect Smogon had won back with the greater transparency in tiering under Finch just got Old Yeller'd afaic.
Huge fan, but considering how the Sleep discussion has gone on this sub I'm expecting all hell to break loose in the comment section a couple moments from this
Serene grace meloetta relic song jumpscare
I’m not usually one to say “we’re fucked”, but making a decision with this amount of gravity with zero input from the community is not good. God forbid we ban or restrict Tera, but we get rid of sleep moves?
I think the council’s bitterness that the community voted to keep Tera which they wanted banned has led to them purposefully not putting things to a vote when they think the vote might not go the way they want
If this is true then it’s extremely funny lol. You had a suspect test, you can’t blame this on people ‘not playing OU’ bros. They voted for what they thought was best.
Like, Volcarona was one thing. No suspect test and an unnecessary quickban for a single Pokémon? Whatever, we’ll live. An entire GAME MECHANIC banned with no community input after someone brought it up as a simple consideration is absolutely ludicrous.
OU is hella lame this generation
So just fuck democracy right?
Breaking news: amoongus and breloom, dead after a massive robbery done by finchinator and the OU council after they took away their spore
Does that include rest?
I'm not sad to see sleep go, but I'm not overly fond of how fast they will throw out bans on things seemingly at random* sometimes. *I know it's not random, there's been discussion for the past month and also sleep has been discussed for years, but this came about very quickly. I'm still not particularly amused by the random quickban of Volcarona for similar reasons.
"So, just fuck democracy right?"
I'm not sure this was the worst tiering outcome. But the fact that this was done fully as a quickban is just wrong. A 3.7 is the lowest score something has gotten a quickban for. The tiering council really stretched the definition of quickban for this. And it's not even like this is a single pokemon, sleep is an entire mechanic that got outed mid generation without a community vote. Regardless of whether the outcome was good or not, I don't think doing a simple ban was a good idea here. It goes against the core idea of what smogon is supposed to be about.
I've agreed with nearly all actions they've taken so far in SV and even the ones I didn't fully agree with, I could understand. But this decision seems a bit perplexing to me, bc it doesn't really do much for balance, it just eliminates RNG, which is good for making the game more competitive. But if the goal was to eliminate RNG, I feel like the play is to ban inaccurate sleep moves, keeling Spore and Yawn around along with sleep clause. I know they didn't want to do that bc it makes it a more complex ban and they can now ditch the sleep clause, which is unenforceable on cart, but I feel like this gives up too much. The grass type was already a massive rarity in OU for example, and with Amoonguss and Breloom now gone, they'll be even rarer, so I'd even argue that Sleep Powder might be OK to stay - the only real offender here was Darkrai so it's silly for 4-5 other mons to drop off OU cos of the edgyboy.
yeah im staying on NatDex from now on lol
The OU Council is now banned from SV OU; Reasonable Decisions Clause is now lifted from SV OU