I was directed here by GlassGlaceon to nominate for suspects, and I'd really like to nominate sleep clause. Sleep is not broken in the normal sense such as how mega mawile and aegi were banned from ou, but i believe it deserves another suspect becuase of the pure disruption is causes. A sleep clause of only 2 pokes to sleep per team would be fine but being able to put every poke to sleep is really quite detrimental to the meta. While it is possible to have a counter, every team MUST have a counter and it severly limits teambuilding. Also the lack of sleep clause promotes people to come in and spam sleep, as they're unable to do so in their usaul tiers. Another thing about sleep is the lack of skill it takes to use, and the pure luck of the rolls it involves. No predictions happen due to the fact that it is completely random and unreliable. I know some will probably back this and others will go against it but I do believe that sleep clause would be helpful to the developement of the meta and to the quality of the ladder, something we've been trying to improve. I know that because of the first one this one is going to need support to get anywhere, so if you're wanting a change in the standing of sleep please back this cause!
Im sorry but what kinds of arguments are these?
1) it forces you to pack counters.
........
2) it severely limits teambuilding.
Sleep is quite possibly the last thing you could say this about. For one, there's a variety of pokes that naturally beat sleep users: venu, skymin, ludicolo, any sub user, but if you don't like those options, there's also safeguard or taunt or putting goggs on
literally any pokemon that isnt mega.
3) noobs use it and do better than they should
quite ironic, considering one of the main points in our original sleep suspect was that it was much harder to win with shit like contraryswap and transform mew when we removed sleep clause.
4) sleep takes no skill to use
Have u ever used sleep because u would see that this is wrong
5) sleep rolls introduce "pure luck," meaning you can't predict.
I've written before about how sleep having a random timer is a benefit to the sleeping Pokemon and not the sleep user, and I don't feel like reposting these arguments, especially from a phone. It's pretty intuitive anyways—when you don't know when the pokemon is going to wake up, you can't safely ignore it or know exactly what your battle plans will be. And many good players have written treatises on why "prediction" is a joke. But assuming you meant "move options" instead of predictions, sleep doesn't remove those, just change them. Do you stay in with the sleeping mon to burn turns? Do you switch it? Do you spore the sleeping mon hoping for a switch? Do you spore at all, or rage powder? In the sleep clause meta there is none of this, there's just "get mon slept, switch it out so it can't get koed, don't switch it back in until the sleep user is dead," which is so much drier.
Friendly reminder that 79% of people voted to remove sleep clause under the exact same banlist we have now