[PvP Council] Suggestions and requests regarding current PvP bans

[Avatarash]

Discussed item: Sleep-inducing moves that do not target the user: spore, sleep powder, hypnosis, lovely kiss, sing, and yawn.

 

Course of action: Ban/Test

 

Justification:  

It is often easy to base ban decisions solely on strength alone. However, strength is not the only characteristic that can make a metagame element unhealthy. Consider for example, an imaginary ability: Coinflip - If one or more trainer(s) has a pokemon with the coinflip ability on their team, a coin is flipped at the beginning of the match which decides the winner. Pokemon with this ability would absolutely not be “too strong” as their winrates would be exactly 50%; conversely, they would arguably be the most balanced pokemon in existence. But it isn’t difficult to see that this ability would not be healthy in any metagame. It would allow people to take away all elements of skill: team-building, prediction, knowledge of the game, etc. And very notably, it would take away the fun of playing the game. Obviously, Pokemon is a game with a lot of inherit luck and attempting to completely remove luck is futile. However, I believe that strategies that rely heavily on pure luck should be considered for bans. The most egregious culprit of this is sleep-inducing moves. A sleep-status that lasts for a single turn is effectively worthless as the user spends a turn using the sleep-inducing move while the target spends a turn asleep. Meanwhile, a sleep-status that lasts for longer than a single turn can turn the state of the game on its head. It allows the player to freely swap pokemon, use setup moves, etc. while their opponent’s pokemon is rendered helpless. The player with the asleep pokemon may opt to swap into another pokemon but they are still effectively playing a pokemon down as that pokemon will still be asleep when it is swapped back in and may even be a liability to the rest of the team if it gives up free turns to the opponent. Some sleep-inducing moves like spore or sleep powder may fail against certain types of pokemon, others like hypnosis can hit every type in the game. Sleep-immune pokemon like komala and pokemon with insomnia do exist; however, none of them are viable in the current metagame. Amoongus is a defensive pokemon with rather mediocre offensive stats, but thanks to its access to spore only two pokemon in the top 50 usage (chansey and mega-venusaur) can safely swap into it. Overall, sleep-inducing moves flipping between being useless and completely crippling an opposing pokemon into a liability for its team make them too luck-dependent for a healthy metagame. 

Smogon is now seriously considering action on sleep: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/views-from-the-council.3733223/post-9927554

Edited January 10 by Avatarash