In a shocking turn of events, I've laddered a lot lately and came to some more conclusions about the state of the tier. Like I said in my RMT roughly 5000 times, Durant is such good insurance versus most of the tier's top threats like Weavile, Haxorus, Diggersby, etc. through its natural bulk, typing, and access to First Impression. That trait has made it ridiculously hard for me in the last month or so to not just spam the living shit out of it and throw it on whatever team. Once home came out, my RMT obviously became worse and of course it was public, so I ended up revamping it to play into some of the new trends and it worked better than I ever could've hoped. Simply put, Durant is just jesus christ and if supported well, it absolutely steamrolls the ladder.
For the record, I'm not putting this here to stroke my own ego or anything along those lines. People's main critique against Durant is the inconsistency brought about by its accuracy, but if that win/loss shows anything, it's that Durant's benefits stupidly outweigh the miss chances that fuck us all over from time to time. It's pretty apparent looking at that group of 6 mons just how much offensive load Durant is meant to carry. Nothing else makes meaningful progress on its own versus the vast majority of teams you'll see. I would legitimately lead Durant almost every single game, threaten First Impression against something faster, dent whatever was in front to push past them later, or predict accordingly. As for the last point, the ball is almost entirely in the Durant user's court when it comes to aggressive maneuvers. Complain all you want about accuracy, but no one should be leaving in their Weezing or whatever, hoping they dodge because lol xd Hustle is bad. Durant has basically 3 "switch-ins," being Hippowdon, Milotic, and Mantine. The thing is though, that none of them are remotely comfortable switching in. Generally, they'll be forced to use their respective recovery moves immediately if they are to check Durant during the next sequence (which it has an abundance of between teammates' U-turns and Speed/typing/physical bulk). That's where this man comes in.
So maybe you'll notice; Milotic and Hippowdon are theoretical Gigalith counters, or at least they were pre-Pokemon Home. I could legit hard switch into the sand rock on the recovery move of any of those Durant checks and continue the momentum. Throwing a Toxic on Milotic or Hippowdon essentially neutered them as long-term Durant checks and obviously Mantine gets its shit pushed in, while also not appreciating the sand chip since they're all boots. Point here is,
supporting Durant has never been easier.
Random tangent: something that's frustrated me at times is that the Hustle misses are even further looked down upon because people will use Durant as their primary check to the threats I mentioned above. CB First Impression is more of an insurance layer versus these threats than anything. If you rely on a one-time 80% chance to beat them, or let it get to that point in the first place, it isn't Hustle's fault. It is the support system placed around Durant. Place as little pressure on the ant in dealing with these threats as you can, and the the consistency in dealing with them will follow. With all this said, I did gas it up for that very reason earlier, and it is definitely a great tool to have. The flexibility it provides in-game is awesome, but it shouldn't be a crutch to be leaned on unless absolutely necessary.
Last thing, I honestly think why Durant largely went under the radar as a broken Pokemon was of course, Hustle. This sounds obvious, but since everyone was so reluctant to use it and it didn't have some outrageous new toy bolstering it like Dracozolt did, it's overall presence wasn't as powerful as it theoretically should be. I don't have the usage stats in front of me or anything, but I've seen way more talk about Weavile, Diggersby, Haxorus, etc. and I think that's due in large part to those mons not having such a glaring flaw. People see nothing wrong with throwing them on teams, leading to obviously increased usage and eventually to a more overwhelming presence in the mind of a given player. This isn't me trying to downplay the others, but if Durant saw the same usage and community gassing, this tier would be 100x worse because of its sheer dominance it can offer. Durant ban rant over (I didn't even mention Hone Claws).
I won't touch too much on the other threats at hand, but
I would definitely vote ban on Diggersby and Weavile as well. The discussion on those two, if I'm remembering correctly, has been more thorough to this point. Simply put, SD Diggersby is stupidly brain dead. Click SD, hope your opponent doesn't have one of the handful of faster normal resists in the tier, profit. Weavile: Knock Off is stupid and made its immediate offensive presence way more significant. Before, a boots Weavile would switch in, make no progress versus a Weezing, and switch. Knock Off setting itself up for some tom foolery later is too powerful, other sets too.
Another random tangent: Knock Off is everything Tsareena could've ever wanted this gen. I was just running Power Whip/U-turn/Spin/Knock, and it was flames. Previously, it was annoyed to hell and back by three of the tier's most common mons in Noivern, Weezing, and Doublade. Noivern gets its boots Knocked Off and now suddenly it can be pressured in gen 8 underused (shocking I know). Weezing is the same shit as what I said for Weavile on a much smaller scale, but cutting off passive recovery for a potential spin clean later is pretty fire. Finally, Doublade takes more then 8 from one of Tsareena's attacks now, which also removes Eviolite. Overall, it makes spin blocking with Doublade wayyyyyy less reliable long-term and of course losing its Eviolite hurts its own potential to significantly impact a game. Also Tsareena checks SD Diggersby since they're all Adamant bop. Last thing: you'll notice my "win-condition" on that team is literally spinning with Tsareena, not sure if that says more about Durant killing everything or about Tsareena being a pseudo-set-up-sweeper at times.