Is the sleep status condition too overpowered?

[Sweet Serenity]

When playing in Pokémon Showdown, namely Singles, many formats have rules against sleep, such as disallowing more than one Pokémon to be asleep at a time during a battle. Sleep can result in a Pokémon being unable to do anything for up to three turns, which can drastically change the direction of a battle. What do you think? Is the sleep status condition too overpowered and should be nerfed, or are you okay with how it is?

 

[Squirtkipfan01]

Sleep is honesty weird when i actually think about. Quite alot of moves can cause sleep making it common. And when it hits you can potentially have a large amount of turns of free action with no opposition. Not sure if id say to nerf it or not though, not competitively inclined. That said could introduce a thing where if you physically hit a sleeping pokemon they have a chance to wake up, the hard the hit the more likely of it happening; some food for thought

 

[Devalue]

Depends on the method of inflicting it. Risks missing with less accurate options like Sing. Causes you to lose a turn, rather than your opponent. To look at it a different way with Sleep Powder:

• 25% miss chance. Results in -1 action for you.
• 75% hit chance.
  • 33% chance of 1 sleep turn. Cost you an action to make them lose an action. No net change.
  • 33% chance of 2 sleep turns. Spent one action to stop two of theirs. +1 action.
  • 33% chance of 3 sleep turns. +2 actions.

Expected value of Sleep Powder: (.25 * -1) + (.75 * .33 * 0) + (.75 * .33 * 1) + (.75 * .33 * 2) = 0.4925 extra actions per Sleep Powder use. Not bad.

Compare this to something like Swords Dance. Normally deals 100 damage, for ease.
Turn 1: 0 damage.
Turn 2: 200 damage.
Turn 3: 200 damage.
Turn 4: 200 damage.

Racked up 600 damage instead of 400 across 4 turns. Averages out to 0.5 extra actions over your opponent every turn, in a sense, albeit at a 4 turn commitment. Increases in value beyond that, of course.

May be a little more simplistic than reality. Is not a competitive player. Recognizes the power of Swords Dance potentially robbing actions via knockout. Did not acknowledge the momentum swing of an easy switch or Leftovers healing either. Seems relatively okay for Sleep Powder, at least.

Becomes overpowered when things like Spore enter the conversation. Incurs a high stat cost for a reason. Saddled Shiinotic with 405 base stats (with a halfway decent spread). Created more counterplay these days than past days, however: Safety Goggles, Electric Terrain, Misty Terrain, Grass powder immunity, and various abilities. Is that enough? Shrugs. Fights it so rarely, not including that awful 6-star Tera Raid Amoongus.

Suspects some of the reason for the Sleep Clause is for swingyness. Potentially wins on pure luck. Bans moves like Guillotine and Minimize on similar grounds.

 

[Corveone]

The condition seems overpowered, however the methods to inflict it somehow keeps it under control.

Sing, Hypnosis and Grass Whistle have awful accuracy. Two of them are also sabotaged by things like Soundproof and Throat Chop, but I guess that's too situational.
Sleep Powder has decent accuracy, but Grass types gained a natural immunity to it in Gen.... 6?
Yawn is reliable but needs an extra turn, usually just forcing the opponent to switch rather than putting them to sleep.

Spore is the most concerning. 100 Accuracy, and it's only balanced by the Pokémon that learn it. This was totally fine when said Pokémon were just Parasect and Breloom, both slow, fragile, bad defensive typings including 4x weakness, and mediocre stats for a final stage.

But then Amoongus came out, and seriously that thing has fairly decent stats and bulk to be potentially a huge pain with Spore. Its Paradox also gets it and it's a Pokémon with legendary-like BST. Well, luckily at least it's still slow and has a worse typing to compensate a bit.

It's funny that the only fast Pokémon that can learn Spore is Toedscruel, which can't take advantage of this because its only ability forces all of its status moves to go last.

Anyway, the sleep condition can be very annoying in a favorable RNG scenario, so I think the sleep clause was a great idea to prevent lucky players from basically win battles by just spamming Sleep on everything.

 

[ReKoil]

It's fine the way it is during playthroughs imo.
Can't speak for competitive.

 

[Adam Levine]

The problematic nature of sleep comes down to two factors:

1. In a game where you can only control one unit (or two in VGC) per turn, spending a turn doing nothing is a much bigger deal than one where you can control three, four, or a dozen. Because sleep prevents you from using most moves until you wake up, this makes your sleeping Pokémon a sitting duck or a forced switch. Either way, they're a liability, and even attempting to burn sleep turns means that you're doing absolutely nothing against the opponent preparing to screw you over.

2. Pokémon are asleep for a random amount of turns. Being unable to plan around when you'll wake up makes burning sleep turns a do-or-die decision. There's a certain thrill to this, sure, but RNG-related mechanics are always going to be contentious.

I don't necessarily have a problem with moves that induce sleep; the most common ones have low enough accuracy to make them unreliable, and Spore is learned by Pokémon that can't abuse it too much (e.g. Toedscruel's ability was specifically designed not to allow 100-Speed Spores, and Brute Bonnet's stats were allocated so that it couldn't get a Protosynthesis boost in Speed). It's just that sleep itself is an extremely powerful mechanic when it cuts off so many of your options so severely. Sleep clause is definitely a healthy adjustment.

 

[Palamon]

Honestly? Not really, and neither is Freeze. Yes, they prevent moving, but it's not like stats are lowered when a Pokemon is asleep like paralysis and burn. However, I do have issues with it lasting up to seven turns, that's a bit too long. I'd lower it to 1-5.

Honestly, Freeze in Gen I was overpowered, if anything. A Pokemon would never thaw out. Since Sleep's duration can end, it's really not that big of s deal, imo. Just annoying if it's done to you.