Hey guys, time for something you've never seen before:

A Post on Sleep in 1v1!
or, Sleep and the role it plays in the 1v1 Metagame

Sleep, as I am sure everyone who is reading this already knows, is a mechanic in Pokemon wherein an affected Pokemon is unable to perform an action for 1-3 turns. There are some exceptions to this, primarily when Sleep Talk is performed, but for the most part it is very cut and dry. In a regular 6v6 format, the status of Sleep is balanced through the enforcement of a Sleep Clause, stating that no more than one Pokemon on an opposing team can be afflicted by Sleep from an opponent at a time. This works fine in 6v6, as the other 5 members of the team can account for this, but in 1v1, the ongoing debate has always been, is Sleep a problem?

​The Principles:​​​​
Sleep as a status in Pokemon takes away control from the entirety of a team, in a 1v1 situation. This pretty much goes against the standards of sleep clause in a metagame. Despite the fact that 1v1 does not yet enforce such a clause, sleep clauses are seen in many official tiers as a balancing measure to ensure that teams don't need to predominantly worry about the RNG associated with being hit by Sleep-inducing moves and waking up. In essence, Sleep Clause exists in 6v6 because excess Sleep is uncompetitive/unhealthy.

This is probably due to the fact that, while asleep, Pokemon cannot perform the basic tasks they have been set out to do, and open the door for less skilled players to gain an advantage over more skilled players, exasperated by the randomness of when a Pokemon wakes up. Referencing the tiering policy of Smogon, "The majority of our potential suspect discussion will center around the defined versions of uncompetitive, broken, and unhealthy and how a particular suspect element lowers some component of player skill within those three constructs", with skill being defined as:

I.) Skill - the subjective metric we use to judge player worth in competitive Pokemon.
Team Building Skill - the part of skill that is involved in the preparation for a battle
Assessing and Dealing with Threats
Building Towards a Strategy (or Strategies)
Creativity
Catering to Metagame / Opponents
Battling Skill - the part of skill involved in actually battling
Picking the Right Lead
Recognizing the Win Condition
Picking the Right Move
Smart Switching (Not relevant in 1v1)
Gathering Information and Making Assumptions
Long-term vs. Short-term Goals
Assessing Risk
Probability Management
Prediction
With an overabundance of sleep in a 6v6, skill is significantly undermined, in particular negatively affecting Building Towards a Strategy, Creativity, Picking the Right Move, Long-term vs. Short-term Goals, Probability Management, and Prediction, among other qualities. To limit sleep in a 6v6 is to promote skill based gameplay.

That being said, 1v1 isn't a 6v6, and 1v1 has core values that separate itself from any 6v6. While sleep still inhibits many of the aforementioned qualities of skill, as a Pokemon still cannot move while asleep, in 1v1, a team is built to beat almost everything and anything that it comes across; in theory, that should include sleep. This then deviates to a conversation on whether or not sleep strategies limit teambuilding significantly, which then ties into more of the facts rather than principles.

The takeaways from this section should be: Sleep when unchecked has traditionally proven to be negative on the traditional core tenants of skill-based gameplay in Smogon, but these tenants may be subtly different in 1v1 than in other metagames.

​The Facts:
Sleep in 1v1 is utilized by several Pokemon, including Jumpluff, Vivillon, Mega Venusaur, and Mega Gengar, among others. Their sleep strategies, in one way or another, involve taking advantage of a Pokemon in one way or another while they are immobilized by Sleep, whether it be through damage or stall. The undisputed best sleep abuser is currently Jumpluff; it can essentially automatically win after hitting Sleep Powder or Leech Seed, has an amazing Speed Tier, and ways to mitigate Sleep Powder's mediocre accuracy and weakness to Taunt. Other Pokemon either rely on  less accurate sleep-inducing moves, are not as fast as Jumpluff, or both.

However, these Pokemon can still put a Pokemon to sleep, which causes a lot of inconsistency in otherwise cut and dry matchups. Mega Gengar, with its absurd 394 max speed, can easily cheese a win from almost anything that Ghost hits neutrally about 50% of the time, thanks to Hypnosis and Hex. Whimsicott can utilize Grass Whistle to win against Pokemon such as Mega Charizard Y and Naganadel, which it would otherwise be incapable of beating reliably, about 50% of the time.

But besides this, sleep-inducing moves breaking a Pokemon is not necessarily the rule; rather, a sleep move works in tandem with a Pokemon's pre-existing tools to sweeten the deal. Pokemon like Hypnosis Rapidash and Grass Whistle Cacturne are never going to be viable or threatening thanks to their respective sleep moves, but the moves do allow each user to gain possibly unwarranted advantages against any Pokemon by removing their ability to actually do anything.

​The takeaways from this section should be: Sleep-inducing moves have allowed Pokemon such as Jumpluff and Vivillon to rise up the ranks, as well as provide others a way to cheese out wins that neither side can control, but sleep-inducing moves by themselves don't break any Pokemon that can use them, rather they must be used in conjunction with individual complimentary strategies.

I hope I have been able present the information above in a coherent and unbiased manner; I am hoping that by separating these points like this, people can see more eye to eye when discussing sleep in 1v1.

This brings me to my final point
After discussing with a few of my contemporaries, we have narrowed down a few of the 'problem children' of sleep moves in 1v1. I am personally curious to hear what the community thinks about these specific moves:
Dark Void, Grass Whistle, Hypnosis, Lovely Kiss, Sing, Sleep Powder, Spore​
These are all moves that activate sleep on the turn when the move is used. They prevent an opponent from doing anything at all during that turn and a random amount of following turns. The reason why Yawn wasn't included in this is because a Pokemon can still act during a turn of Yawn, and thus either forces a Yawn user to waste a moveslot running Protect, or forces the Yawn user to be hit twice before sleep activates, which can be fatal in 1v1. What are your thoughts on the healthiness of these moves in the 1v1 metagame?​​