Merry Christmas! The National Dex OU Council has decided to suspect Darkrai down from Ubers for the ninth test of Generation 9.
For the next stage of the suspect process, we have Darkrai coming down from Ubers. It's no secret that Darkrai has been a name thrown out a lot when thinking of potential Ubers that could be deemed OU-worthy, so it was placed as an item on the most recent tiering survey. After five days once the votes were tallied up, Darkrai had received a 3.41/5, with a resounding amount of people heavily supporting the notion of some sort of tiering action being taken on it. As such, we deemed as a council that a suspect test would be appropriate.
Darkrai's offensive traits are astounding, sporting a 135 Special Attack in tandem with a stellar 125 Speed allowing it to get a jump on common Pokemon in the current meta, such as Iron Valiant and Tornadus-T. Furthermore, access to Nasty Plot turns it into an incredibly dangerous wincon with an array of coverage to complement Dark Pulse, such as Sludge Bomb and Focus Blast. With Z-Moves also being a potential option for Darkrai, it has access to a terrifyingly strong one time Dark-type attack with Darkinium Z equipped, but it can also run Fightinium Z to turn Focus Blast into a reliable option for destroying Heatran, Ferrothorn, and Mega Mawile. It can also effectively wield Terastallization to become a Poison-type most notably, which can turn the tables of revenge killers such as Choice Scarf Urshifu-R, Choice Scarf Tapu Lele, and Zamazenta. Alternatively, it can drop Nasty Plot for a fierce all out attacker set wielding Ice Beam to reliably OHKO Gliscor, Landorus-T, and Garchomp.
However, Darkrai is not without its flaws. Its Speed, while good, still leaves it behind common metagame threats such as Tapu Koko, Mega Lopunny, and Zamazenta. This is not to mention common Choice Scarf users such as Tapu Lele, Urshifu-R, and Kartana. While it can Terastallize to flip these matchups, it leaves it without a Z-Move and often relying on a relatively weak move in Dark Pulse to break through neutral targets. Furthermore, 70/90/90 bulk while not terrible, is certainly not good and leaves it with even worse matchups into the aforementioned revenge killers. Darkrai also lacks a real ability, with Bad Dreams being highly situational accompanied by Darkrai itself having to rely on Hypnosis to induce sleep, which is incredibly unreliable especially when considering Darkrai's frailty. Defensively, Pokemon such as Alomomola and Toxapex can scout all out attacking variants while Nasty Plot can suffer versus Zamazenta and often find itself missing the ability to OHKO the omnipresent Landorus-T or Gliscor.
Given the litany of options to revenge kill Darkrai and appropriate pivots or checks to it found on many teams, the council feels it is just to suspect Darkrai.
- Reading this is mandatory for participating in the suspect test. The voting requirements are a minimum GXE of 80 with at least 50 games played. In addition, you may play 1 less game for every 0.2 GXE you have above 80 GXE, down to a minimum of 30 games at a GXE of 84. Also, needing more than 50 games to reach 80 GXE will suffice.
- The table for this can be found below:
[*]
GXE minimum games 80 50 80.2 49 80.4 48 80.6 47 80.8 46 81 45 81.2 44 81.4 43 81.6 42 81.8 41 82 40 82.2 39 82.4 38 82.6 37 82.8 36 83 35 83.2 34 83.4 33 83.6 32 83.8 31 84 30 - You must signup with a newly registered account on Pokemon Showdown! that begins with the appropriate prefix for the suspect test. For this suspect test, the prefix will be ND9DRK. For example, I could sign up as ND9DRK sealoo.
- Laddering with an account that impersonates, mocks, or insults another Smogon user or breaks Pokemon Showdown! rules may be disqualified from voting and infracted. Moderator discretion will be applied here. If there is any doubt or hesitance when making the alt, just pick another name. There are infinite possibilities and we have had trouble for this repeatedly. If you wish to participate in the suspect, you should be able to exhibit decent enough judgement here. We will not be lenient.
- We will be using the regular National Dex ladder for this suspect test, and Darkrai will be legal throughout the entire suspect test.
- Any form of voting manipulation will result in swift and severe punishment. You are more than welcome to state your argument to as many people as you so please, but do not use any kind of underhanded tactics to get a result you desire. Bribery, blackmail, or any other type of tactic used to sway votes will be handled and sanctioned.
- Do not attempt to cheat the ladder. We will know if you did not actually achieve voting requisites, so don't do it. Harsh sanctions will be applied.
- The suspect test will run for approximately two weeks, lasting until January 7th at 11:59 pm (GMT-5), and then we will put up the voting thread in the Blind Voting subforum.
- No unhelpful one liners nor uninformed posts;
- No discussion on other potential suspects;
- You are required to make respectful posts;
- Failure to follow these simple guidelines will result in your post being deleted and infracted without any prior warning.
- Please also take a moment to read over some suggestions from the National Dex Council and the National Dex Moderation team for posting in this thread; adhering these will help out our time moderating the thread and present your arguments better and more educated.
- Do not argue because it's your favorite Pokémon. This should be common sense, but please don't do this, because we will delete posts like this.
- You do not need a boatload of experience to have an informed opinion, but please try to minimize the theorymon aspect and use your experiences watching and playing. Playing some on the ladder before posting is plenty if you're concerned about this.
- Do not flame, belittle, or be disrespectful to users in this thread. While not everyone will read this post in its entirety nor will everyone have informed opinion, please be sure not to be disrespectful. If there's an issue, bring it up to a moderator.
- Do not use the argument of broken checking broken. Should your argument rest on your opinion that banning the Pokémon or mechanic being tested in this suspect test will make a Pokémon or mechanic broken, overpowered, and/or uncompetitive; don't. If something needs to be banned because of the result of this suspect, then so be it.
- This is not the place to complain about the suspect process. Please PM Kyo or Kaede if you have any questions regarding this, and any broader questions about this test.
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