I really like KD458's post on sleep clause in SV OU. I do disagree with their viewpoints, but I find the post to be really thorough, well-thought out and explained, as well as being fair to both sides of the discussion. It seems like a post that is genuinely trying to see both sides of the issue, and I admire their breakdown and thoughtfulness placed on the Sleep discussion. Here are a few points I would like to comment on:
Forgive if the quote link is not 100% correct I am new to quoting from another page on these forums.
Although a pretty different situation, Baton Pass is a wide distribution move that breaks a selection of Pokemon to the extent of it being deserving of a ban - no one would really argue that dry passing is uncompetitive on mons that cannot boost their stats such as pre-Flip Turn Alomomola, but stat passing is clearly broken on certain viable mons and so it is banned across all users. Similarly, sleep moves don't feel broken whatsoever on certain defensive users, but offensive threats that can leverage it well provide the main argument for a ban. Is this the fault of broken sleep users or sleep moves being broken in general? Without the Sleep Clause Mod, sleep does seem clearly broken, so we already acknowledge that it's a broken mechanic, while Sleep Clause Mod no longer actually provides artificial balance it as well as it once with the prevalence of inaccurate sleep moves that actually get rewarded by missing if you use this invented counterplay. Why don't we give it the Baton Pass treatment and remove it from the tier entirely? Then again, is this really necessary with how few sleep users pose a large metagame threat compared to how many mons Baton Pass breaks?
This kinda hits the nail on the head for me. Baton Pass is a move that is broken on a large number of mons and the reasoning for that is simply that
allowing the baton pass user to setup and pass worthwhile stats into any strong pokemon is something that is inherently broken in its idea. There is no
one pokemon that is broken with options to baton pass boosts as really any pokemon that is already amazing (almost anything A-S tier viability) becomes broken with access to boosts that it otherwise wouldn't normally get, and it doesn't matter which pokemon are that high up in viability. Almost any user of baton pass (even pokemon that are otherwise woefully unviable) will be able to find a way to cheat boosts up for itself and then pass it into any ally pokemon that is already very absurdly powerful, allowing itself to break the tier. This is true for many many possible users of baton pass. This does not track with modern sleep implementations as the true beneficiary of sleep rn is more often the pokemon that is using sleep rather than another pokemon benefitting from it.
These pokemon are also pokemon that are required to run a sleep move, a stat boosting move, and only maximum two coverage moves. They have to then hope that that with their base stats is enough to break the tier open.
This does not apply for many lower tier sleep-sweepers/sleep-breakers (which are either two slow, too weak to priority and/or answered by too many pokemon in the tier) and is a much smaller pool of pokemon than the pokemon that abuse Baton pass. Therefore, it stands to reason this should be judged on a mon to mon basis as to whether or not that pokemon is too uncompetitive for the tier. This is ultimately a very small list. Your post is very well thought out but does not list under "Solutions", simply banning Darkrai AND Iron Valiant (and Lilligant Hisui if it comes down to it). There is no solid justification for the "Sleep Ban" argument as to why we should not simply ban the few truly broken sleep abusers as opposed to sleep as a whole, which is what you seem to imply in your break down of yawn and spore users (pokemon that are far from broken with the move).
I don't think you can truly make the argument to
ban sleep moves entirely if
only a small selection of pokemon are broken with it. Rather your arguments seem to imply more that
Sleep Clause mod is archaic and should be replaced by one more cart-accurate such as the one suggested by MeepBard. The argument continuously made of
Sleep Clause mod does not make 100% of sleep users balanced therefore Sleep Clause mod does not work does not hold weight or consistency across the bans you previously listed. In the case of the baton pass ban, almost any combination pokemon is uncompetitive with it. Additionally, your evaluation of the Evasion ban does state that even unviable pokemon like Raichu would be uncompetitive with access to Evasion boosting moves (even bad ones like double team).
While its true that Sleep Clause mod is something in place that already limits sleep to an extent, to argue for its entire removal and outright banning of sleep moves entirely implies that far more pokemon are broken with sleep than what currently is viable in OU. Using Baton pass as an analogy again, Boost Passing finally led to a removal of the Baton Pass Clause once the council was able to argue that there were many many pokemon that were problematic that could sufficiently pass boosts to ally pokemon. You would have to argue many pokemon are broken with sleep despite Sleep Clause mod's existence to prove that Sleep Clause Mod (in some form cart-accurate or not) is what is not working rather than the few Sleep abusers being the problems.
