So since it's been pretty unclear what I was going for in the OP as evidenced by other posts in the this thread and people talking to me on Discord I wanna take a minute to clarify some other things.
Sleep Clause's main issue is that it breaks the first rule of tiering policy:
the main reason I didn't cite this was because I thought everyone knew it (it was 4am when I wrote my original post so I was clearly suffering from a bit of a lack of sleep myself...) but I understand that that's not good reasoning to not lay things out. I instead opted to make my post a half-rant half-reasoning to actually tackle this other than "it looks nice" since people on here just love to make terrible, brainless posts about how we're tiering for aesthetics or whatever when that's clearly not the case, termi and MMII have hit the nail on the head and covered what I wanted to say before I got the chance to say it, though I get the feeling the sarcasm in MMII's post was lost on some people. in particular i'd like to quote part of termi's post since it sums up everything perfectly for me and explains much better than i originally did with point 3.
anyway @ rby / oras / whatever other gen has come up:
I don't really have much to argue w/ the other lower tier TLs who disagree with this because it's not relevant in their tiers. King's Rock was never relevant in UU but it was pretty obvious degeneracy so arguing in favour of keeping it was stupid. I suppose there's a fundamental disagreement on the strength of sleep there and I don't think I'll get through to anyone who feels that it's not broken. I do want to respond to some of Mossy Sandwich's points though because I found them to be quite interesting, mostly on the clause itself because it's clear we don't really agree on counterplay and that's fine - I'd also like to ping them to let them know that they can request posting access here so they don't need anyone to proxypost for them. Mossy Sandwich
- you are out of pp in all of your non-sleep powder moves and suddenly have to struggle despite actually having 22 pp remaining;
- you can be (convolutedly) encored into sleep moves while something else is asleep;
- i know there are other silly situations others can come up with that i'm not able to think of right now, and this still doesn't address the effect spore issue (though i feel that one's fine to leave alone)
the only solution here is some sort of mod which doesn't actually make it any better than the current iteration of sleep clause. it doesn't really help with the confusion new players will face ("why is my move greyed out? i'm not taunted") and doesn't address the core problem that this is a mod and directly contradicts the first rule of tiering philosophy. i don't think polishing the mod is a good solution when it shouldn't rlly exist to begin with.
anyway i completely accept that my original post was poorly written and that i probably should've had someone look over it before clicking send. what i would like to see is people making arguments about why sleep is different to other mechanics in that it's worth preserving via a modification to the game when we aren't supposed to do that unless absolutely necessary (eg desyncs or whatever). the strength in whatever individual meta shouldn't be a factor here, and if the main argument is just that it's been this way for a long time then i think that's pretty poor justification to stick to the status quo. alternatively if anyone has ideas for a better solution then i'm all ears.
Sleep Clause's main issue is that it breaks the first rule of tiering policy:
the main reason I didn't cite this was because I thought everyone knew it (it was 4am when I wrote my original post so I was clearly suffering from a bit of a lack of sleep myself...) but I understand that that's not good reasoning to not lay things out. I instead opted to make my post a half-rant half-reasoning to actually tackle this other than "it looks nice" since people on here just love to make terrible, brainless posts about how we're tiering for aesthetics or whatever when that's clearly not the case, termi and MMII have hit the nail on the head and covered what I wanted to say before I got the chance to say it, though I get the feeling the sarcasm in MMII's post was lost on some people. in particular i'd like to quote part of termi's post since it sums up everything perfectly for me and explains much better than i originally did with point 3.
here's one way to look at it: imagine if things were the other way around right now, sleep was already banned and someone wanted to propose Sleep Clause - there's no shot it'd get anywhere under current tiering framework. I don't see why it should be any different now just because it's been this way for whatever number of years.As it stands, then, we have for the sake of convenience kept a clause that undeniably alters cartridge mechanics in a significant way even though a feasible and relatively painless alternative - a ban on sleep moves - is available to us. The question that should be answered in this thread therefore is not "are Sleep moves problematic enough in the current metagame to warrant further tiering action" because we already collectively agree that under circumstances where Sleep Clause did not exist it would be a problematic mechanic worthy of a significant nerf at the very least. What should instead be answered by those critiquing the OP is why this mechanic is at once broken enough to warrant such a significant nerf while also being somehow integral enough to the metagame to deserve special treatment in the form of a game mechanics-altering clause.
anyway @ rby / oras / whatever other gen has come up:
this wouldn't apply to your gen unless you want it to, it's not a direct response to something randomly being broken now, it's a proposal to change an antiquated part of tiering for this gen & further gens to follow so that we can have a ruleset that makes more sense than the current one. it shouldn't shake up past gens unless their tiering councils agree with it.Before anyone asks, no this shouldn't automatically apply to every tier across every gen.
I don't really have much to argue w/ the other lower tier TLs who disagree with this because it's not relevant in their tiers. King's Rock was never relevant in UU but it was pretty obvious degeneracy so arguing in favour of keeping it was stupid. I suppose there's a fundamental disagreement on the strength of sleep there and I don't think I'll get through to anyone who feels that it's not broken. I do want to respond to some of Mossy Sandwich's points though because I found them to be quite interesting, mostly on the clause itself because it's clear we don't really agree on counterplay and that's fine - I'd also like to ping them to let them know that they can request posting access here so they don't need anyone to proxypost for them. Mossy Sandwich
the glaring issue here is that this has too many exceptions. for example:Sleep Clause
While I don't think sleep should be banned, I think the current Sleep Clause is a pretty clumsy way of implementing a one sleep limit. The current clause still allows players to use Sleep moves when they've already put an opponent to sleep, but if that move hits a target that could be put to sleep otherwise, it just fails. This is not only confusing and punishing to newer players who don't fully understand the clause, it's also not accurate to how it would be applied in a cartridge game. Assuming both players play on cartridge and decide to apply Sleep Clause, they would simply not use a Sleep move once one opposing pokemon is put to sleep. Disabling the use of sleep moves after putting one opponent to sleep is actually a very simple way of applying the clause while also making it impossible for players to accidentally waste a turn because they forgot or didn't know about it and it keeps the simulator closer to cartridge play.
- you are out of pp in all of your non-sleep powder moves and suddenly have to struggle despite actually having 22 pp remaining;
- you can be (convolutedly) encored into sleep moves while something else is asleep;
- i know there are other silly situations others can come up with that i'm not able to think of right now, and this still doesn't address the effect spore issue (though i feel that one's fine to leave alone)
the only solution here is some sort of mod which doesn't actually make it any better than the current iteration of sleep clause. it doesn't really help with the confusion new players will face ("why is my move greyed out? i'm not taunted") and doesn't address the core problem that this is a mod and directly contradicts the first rule of tiering philosophy. i don't think polishing the mod is a good solution when it shouldn't rlly exist to begin with.
anyway i completely accept that my original post was poorly written and that i probably should've had someone look over it before clicking send. what i would like to see is people making arguments about why sleep is different to other mechanics in that it's worth preserving via a modification to the game when we aren't supposed to do that unless absolutely necessary (eg desyncs or whatever). the strength in whatever individual meta shouldn't be a factor here, and if the main argument is just that it's been this way for a long time then i think that's pretty poor justification to stick to the status quo. alternatively if anyone has ideas for a better solution then i'm all ears.