RBY UU Sleep Suspect Test (Sleep Banned)

Plague von Karma

Banned deucer.

:hypno:RBY UU Sleep Suspect Test:venusaur:

In response to the survey results, the RBY UU Council has decided to suspect test sleep.
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For the past few months, roughly since around the time after RBYPL II, sleep as a status in RBY UU has increased in controversy. While vocal users such as Volk pointed it out prior, a noticeable portion of tournament-playing competitors has argued that it should be banned. There is a mirror post in the RBY forum, but if you wish to post in the Policy Review thread but lack a badge, you can apply for access here.

The reason for this mainly stems from RBY UU's offensive nature. The strength of RBY sleep is known to many: up to six turns asleep, requiring a turn to wake up, all of this is magnified in such an offensive tier, and waking up on Wrap is a strategy that has become continually more difficult as gameplay improves. Sleep strengthens strong attackers like Persian, Kangaskhan, Dodrio, Swords Dance Tentacruel, Kadabra, and Dugtrio to dizzying heights, with slower and bulkier Pokemon simply being unable to be fit onto teams to check them. Many players have advocated for universal sleep bans in RBY lower tiers, and the UU Council wishes to give this idea a fair shake.

Many teams require speedsters to deal with Tentacruel, as well as offensive answers to teams stacking multiple Normal-types, all while including the mandatory sleeper among other roles. This means teams tend to have 6-Pokemon cores to fit all the roles they require in UU, with no "weakest link", and this means sleep's impact on games can be very swingy depending on timing. Plus, with the relevant sleepers - Hypno, Tangela, Venusaur, and Haunter, as well as the newly dropped Victreebel - being generally consistent with high power levels, it can be difficult to effectively block sleep as well. Hypno is often tasked with the job of blocking sleep once paralysed - a Pokemon already strapped for defensive play - which worsens matters further; keep in mind it can have sleep itself too. This has led to unscrupulous interactions like Hypnosis Hypno mirrors and turn 1 Venusaur switch-ins being seen as uncompetitive. With teambuilding so geared towards profiting from the environment that makes sleep so powerful, a critical mass of speedsters that make it difficult to even wake up a Pokemon, and the general unsavoury nature of RBY sleep not meshing with UU, a suspect test seems very clear-cut!

We anticipate two questions regarding the nature of this suspect test, which will be answered now for transparency:

:rg/hypno:"Why not Hypno?"
This was hotly debated among the UU Council prior to the survey's release and was the main argument against a blanket sleep ban. Not only does the playerbase not agree with it overall - our survey results greatly showed this - but the Council also believes a Hypno ban would make the tier worse. The argument makes sense on paper: many of the interactions leading to sleep come from Hypnosis Hypno, as it compresses the sleeper role well, and mirrors between them are sometimes forced. However, Pokemon like Venusaur - and, again, the new Victreebel - are seen as similarly unhealthy with sleep access; the impact of the status itself and the team compositions encouraged are the problems here. Ergo, banning Hypno itself removes the tier's strongest defensive pivot and ignores playerbase concerns, all while not addressing the fundamental issues that allow a critical mass of speedy attackers to be used viably with little punishment. The UU Council hopes that a sleep ban would lead to the opportunity to run slower teams without the need to always dedicate the role to the tier's frail, inconsistent sleepers, while also diversifying Hypno's movesets. Hypno will be on the table should it prove to be broken in and of itself, but this has failed to manifest.

:y/lapras:"Where's Lapras?!"
The UU Council aims to retest Lapras after RBYPL III. This is because a potential sleep ban would nerf Lapras in a way that would lead to a more successful and productive suspect test. Current anticipations and experimentation bring concerns to Lapras wars defining a "Lapras UU", and its access to Sing will make these interactions exceedingly unhealthy, even if it doesn't prove to be a mainstay set. Lapras could cancel itself out, but with Sing, you end up with variance that could lead to it gaining an extreme advantage that's difficult for players to dig themselves out of. Additionally, shifting the metagame in such a large way would be very problematic for RBYPL III's draft if Lapras returns, something the UU Council wants to avoid. Thus, suspect testing sleep itself first in response to current metagame concerns feels far more appropriate, allowing us to deliver on our promise in a more in-touch manner later.

Qualifying Players & Methodology
The following requirements will determine our Voter Pool:
  • Played 3 games and won at least 1 in the following team tours: UUSD III, UUFPL II, RBYPL II, UUSD II
  • Placed in the Top 3 of RoA Olympics 6
  • Placed in the Top 4 of the RBY UU Open I
  • Placed in the Top 2 of the RoA's UU Spotlight Tours
  • Placed in the Top 4 of the RBY UU Invitational LCQ
  • Placed in the Top 8 of the RBY UU Invitational

With these requirements, the following 25 players qualify;
A 60% majority - 15 ban votes - will be required to ban sleep from RBY UU.

This thread will be open for two weeks to allow players to gather their thoughts and discuss RBY UU sleep, after which a blind voting thread will be made for the qualifying players to cast their votes. Blind voting will, thus, open on the 5th of September, just in time for Week 1 of RBYPL III!

Should sleep be banned, it will be non-transitive, like the Agility + Partial Trapping ban.
 
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Amaranth

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UU's offensive nature exacerbates the uncompetitive nature of sleep to absurd degrees in comparison to OU.

The low accuracy of all sleep moves is problematic; in OU, Chansey can afford to miss a Sing because she can take 5 trillion attacks before dying, Gengar can afford to miss an Hypnosis because it's forcing out the EQless Snorlax anyways, Exeggutor can afford a Sleep Powder miss because it's forcing out the Reflect Snorlax anyways, Jynx can afford a Lovely Kiss miss because she's not immediately threatened by Alakazam/Starmie leads (bar SurfMie) and can rest up immediately after. In UU, none of this holds. Your best option into sleep users is often to stay in and attack, getting as much damage down as possible before getting slept, and playing on afterwards. This makes missing sleep moves far more punishing, as the opponent can use that extra turn far more effectively.

Similarly, trying to wake up and rolling the 0-6 turn dice is pretty dumb; but in OU, you can at least generate plenty of opportunities to wake on Cloyster Clamps or Chansey's weaker attacks, with Tauros being the only real punish to waking attempts. In UU, not only is finding opportunities to wake somewhat harder, being pretty much limited to Wraps exclusively, but the list of unstoppable attackers that can harshly punish wake attempts is much larger.

Frankly, RBY sleep is a little broken. It works in OU due to an extreme combination of metagame factors, but it breaks pretty easily the moment you drop to a tier that doesn't have the same quantity and quality of defensive options to handle the variance.

I will be voting ban and I believe this will be a good step towards reducing the impact of variance on UU.
 

emma

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I agree with Amaranth completely - just want to emphasize one point.

Sleep in RBY is a bit silly. In RBY OU, it works because more often than not, you get to a 5v5 where each player has slept one of the opposing Pokemon. As stated above, this is because Chansey / Exeggutor / Jynx / Gengar can all miss their moves even multiple times and still get Sleep off successfully more often than not.

Unfortunately, the same is simply not true in RBY UU due to the offensive nature of the tier. Hypno is not Chansey - it cannot shrug off all special attackers with its massive bulk and access to Softboiled. Instead, you miss Hypnosis twice while taking opposing Hypno or Kadabra Seismic Toss, Dodrio Body Slams, and so on and are effectively down an entire Pokemon because you are not allowed to Rest in a tier as fast paced and focused on momentum and trading as RBY UU. The offensive nature also makes it that much harder to come back from being down an entire Pokemon or two so early on. The tier gets anywhere ranging from 6v4 to 4v6 an unhealthy amount of time because of Sleep and the mechanic needs to be removed from the tier.
Week 1 Game 1 vs. Torchic - 4v6 by turn 6 because of sleep
Week 4 Game 1 vs. Unowndragon - 4v5 by turn 5 because of sleep
Week 4 Game 2 vs. Unowndragon - 5v6 by turn 12 because of sleep
Week 5 Game 2 vs. juoean - 6v5 by turn 11 because of sleep
Week 6 Game 1 vs. phoopes - 4v6 by turn 14 because of sleep
Week 7 Game 1 vs. stunner047 - 4v6 by turn 9 because of sleep
Week 7 Game 2 vs. stunner047 - 5v6 by turn 4 because of sleep

I played 15 games of RBY UU in UUSD III - 7 (46.67%) of my games saw me up or down at least one Pokemon within the first 12 turns because of Sleep interactions. This is not healthy gameplay - Ban Sleep from RBY UU.
 

Hipmonlee

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Some maths that might help:

For each click of hypnosis, there is a 40% chance of losing one turn.
There is a 8.6% chance you break even.
There is a 8.6% chance you gain a turn (that is, your opponent loses two turns to sleep), and a 51.4% chance you gain one turn or more.
There is a 8.6% chance you gain two turns, and a 42.9% chance you gain two turns or more.
There is a 34.3% chance you gain more than two turns.

In a straight 1v1 I have Hypno with hypnosis winning about 70% of the time against a Thunderwaving Hypno.
 

phoopes

I did it again
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I've been having a hard time putting my thoughts into words besides, "I'm on the fence but I don't really feel like Sleep should be banned" so this post is probably going to be a mess lol, but I'll try.

I think the big point I want to touch on is variance. I'll admit, the low accuracy of Sleep moves can cause some variance, especially if one side hits a Sleep move first try and the other doesn't. This can certainly lead to advantageous/disadvantageous situations based almost entirely on Sleep like emma pointed out. However, I feel like UU is a tier that is not simply just "momentum and trading." Clever play is rewarded enough that I never feel like anyone is truly out of the game; as long as they brought a competitive team and play smart they can usually play their way back into the game through the "variance." There's plenty of examples out there of replays where someone is down a mon or two because of sleep/freeze/whatever where they're able to come back and win the game, or at least make it anyone's game at the end. I've been a part of it from mostly the losing side recently, so maybe it holds some weight when I say I never feel like I've been cheated out of a game because of Sleep. If you ask me about crits and full paras you might get a different story haha, but Sleep I feel like has been fine from personal experience. This is because you pretty much always know when Sleep is coming: you can prepare accordingly and respond to what your opponent is going to do, as opposed to freeze, which feels like an OHKO by random chance unless your opponent is really fishing for it. Not saying we should ban freeze or anything, but I do think there's more you can do to combat Sleep than people think, especially when there's a bunch of replays on your opponent that you can scout from. A lot of it comes down to counterteaming/prediction, which may not be fun for some people/you could argue is uncompetitive. But I think with the right preparation you can reduce a lot of the variance that you see with sleep. Sure, sometimes you'll still miss your moves, but I think I just have a higher tolerance for that/variance in general than most people so idk.

I will say though that I agree it's almost impossible to get a strategic wakeup in today's UU. You just kind of have to hope and pray for an early one which definitely makes sleep more powerful than it is in OU. Like I said above though, I don't think it's too powerful quite yet. I am on the fence, but it doesn't seem like an obvious ban to me like it would be in a lower tier. Speaking of...

I do agree with the point that Amaranth made though where if you drop a tier in power level Sleep gets worse and worse. I think we can see that in NU, where I feel like sleep (or at least Poliwhirl lol) is a problem. I don't know how to go about it exactly (I'll ask), but I think that if sleep does get banned in UU we should consider a transitive ban in NU/PU/etc. It just makes the most sense to me but I'd love to hear what others think even if it's kind of outside the scope of this thread.
 

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