(these are my thoughts, not the council's)
Because of the nature of the Sleep Clause, Sleep's directly uncompetitive mechanics, and its in-congruence with cartridge mechanics being a nail in the coffin, I have always supported the notion behind upgrading the Sleep Clause into a full on restriction against direct Sleep-inducing moves. This is far from unreasonable imo; Sleep moves can easily be restricted due to existing precedent of the Sleep Clause itself whereas it's harder to dance around the nuances of moves like Scald or abilities like Static without tricky justifications that set awkward tiering precedents on how far we push tiering uncompetitiveness and how we do so.
This isn't really a discussion I think should be exclusive to Gen 9 OU but should be one that addresses the clause on a global scale. Sleep mechanically is going to always be a hot subject and I do believe its role in Gen 9 OU is not too much unlike that of previous modern generations where there is always going to be some level of fishing to take advantage of its extremely high reward.
That being said, while it is far from an element of the tier I'm clamoring to keep, I don't view Sleep as a pressing discussion point in Gen 9 OU specifically when the metagame is still in a state of polarity from a great deal of other factors. As a council member I personally would advocate for action against Pokemon like Kyurem first which centralize common defensive backbones that Hypnosis users like Darkrai can fish more easily against. This is part of why I think if we have a dedicated dialogue on reworking the Sleep Clause it should probably be on a greater scale since the problem is not really exclusively spotlighted by Gen 9 OU and only really stands out now tbh because Darkrai is a new option in the tier whose niche in past generations came from its obscene synergy with Sleep and people are trying to take advantage of that. Aislinn has mentioned numerous other Hypnosis users like Iron Valiant and Alolan Ninetales that make use of it in similarly efficient ways, so I don't really think targetting Darkrai specifically really addresses the core of the proposal should we move forward with it.
Because of the nature of the Sleep Clause, Sleep's directly uncompetitive mechanics, and its in-congruence with cartridge mechanics being a nail in the coffin, I have always supported the notion behind upgrading the Sleep Clause into a full on restriction against direct Sleep-inducing moves. This is far from unreasonable imo; Sleep moves can easily be restricted due to existing precedent of the Sleep Clause itself whereas it's harder to dance around the nuances of moves like Scald or abilities like Static without tricky justifications that set awkward tiering precedents on how far we push tiering uncompetitiveness and how we do so.
This isn't really a discussion I think should be exclusive to Gen 9 OU but should be one that addresses the clause on a global scale. Sleep mechanically is going to always be a hot subject and I do believe its role in Gen 9 OU is not too much unlike that of previous modern generations where there is always going to be some level of fishing to take advantage of its extremely high reward.
That being said, while it is far from an element of the tier I'm clamoring to keep, I don't view Sleep as a pressing discussion point in Gen 9 OU specifically when the metagame is still in a state of polarity from a great deal of other factors. As a council member I personally would advocate for action against Pokemon like Kyurem first which centralize common defensive backbones that Hypnosis users like Darkrai can fish more easily against. This is part of why I think if we have a dedicated dialogue on reworking the Sleep Clause it should probably be on a greater scale since the problem is not really exclusively spotlighted by Gen 9 OU and only really stands out now tbh because Darkrai is a new option in the tier whose niche in past generations came from its obscene synergy with Sleep and people are trying to take advantage of that. Aislinn has mentioned numerous other Hypnosis users like Iron Valiant and Alolan Ninetales that make use of it in similarly efficient ways, so I don't really think targetting Darkrai specifically really addresses the core of the proposal should we move forward with it.