OU council has been having a fair amount of discussion about Darkrai lately as you can likely see given Finch, Vert and ima's posts on it. I wanted to give my own opinion on what changed for Darkrai to make it go from mid to potentially overbearing and then discuss what I think would be best for the tier.
So if you've been keeping up with CTC's line of thought you'll know that he believes Volcarona's ban is what put Darkrai into questionable territory (though I believe he's no-ban on it regardless). I think this is pretty much correct. While it may not be a healthy dynamic necessarily, one of the biggest reasons to /not/ use a Pokemon is that using it can lead to getting counterswept by another common Pokemon off the rip; this has been one of Gholdengo's biggest flaws all gen, since it gives Kingambit and to a lesser extent Roaring Moon that free setup turn they need. Volcarona feared nothing from Darkrai, even tanking +2 hits, and could then shred it back, but that's not the case anymore. This in turn led to Darkrai's punishes being a lot more passive than before, which makes it easier to get Darkrai in multiple times to keep putting pressure on.
Defensively we haven't really lost anything against Darkrai, all the stuff that checked it sans Volcarona is still here and still usually good enough. Some other useful mons like Tinkaton and Iron Hands are popping up a bit more too and they help a lot with it while being pretty good in their own right. To me the big annoyance with Darkrai is the set roulette; it's not really easy to tell what coverage it's running at all and that can change things a lot. Clefable's a great check till it has Sludge Bomb, Gliscor can take on sets without Ice Beam, Ting-Lu isn't too scared of Ice Beam but Focus Blast pushes it a bit too far, Garg is also fine until it gets Focus Blasted, etc. though there are some mostly-true counters like Clodsire and Blissey if you wanna take that route.
Offensively is where I think the problems start to arise. The list of mons that naturally outspeeds Darkrai is limited to Deo-S, Dragapult and Zamazenta, Scarfers generally suck in this tier, and all the priority is heavily abusable (Sucker/Thunderclap have their obvious drawback, ESpeed can be beaten by Tera Ghost, etc). There are some other options like Tera Ogerpon and Weavile's Ice Shard (or winning the tie) but like the problem here is pretty visible.
So a Darkrai test seems valid to me, I don't necessarily think it should be banned but it's fair enough to put it under the microscope and see what happens. I understand the fear that Gliscor becomes dishonest but there are a number of big threats to it that are being kept down rn due to not outspeeding Darkrai (Meowscarada, Latios, etc) and even if it does become silly we certainly don't need that asshole in the metagame either. However, another thing that would help with Gliscor is something I've been wanting to talk about for a while now:
For a while now I've been talking about Palafin and why I think it would be a very nice addition to the tier. Let's start with some of the obvious positives:
- Strong, non-abusable priority; you can Tera into a type that resists Jet Punch but you can't be immune to it, and there is no funny business with it either like there is with Sucker/Thunderclap. Big for revenging Tera Flying Roaring Moon, Kingambit, Iron Valiant, Iron Moth, and of course Darkrai; kept honest by the fact that numerous excellent Pokemon already resist it and prevent it from snowballing, like Ogerpon-Wellspring and Teal, Raging Bolt, Dragapult, Primarina, Kyurem, Rillaboom, etc.
- Great and somehow kinda unique Speed tier that puts it above some big annoyances in the current metagame like Kyurem and Gholdengo that could really do with one more good check.
- Good way to punish Gliscor, Ting-Lu etc. and prevent those Spikes balances from becoming too overbearing should Darkrai get the boot.
Some players have expressed fears that Palafin's Bulk Up + Taunt set, which got it banned a few days into SV, would invalidate fat teams and skew the tier more towards offense, which seems silly to me. Things have changed quite significantly since then and we have some mons that cause Palafin pretty big issues; Scald is back and Alomomola loves to spam it, Dondozo became much more relevant and stopped running mono-Liquidation most of the time, the metagame centered itself around Spikes teams that cause big problems for a mon who literally needs to switch to be useful (and it isn't a particularly effective Boots user), we've gained mons that are bulky enough to account for the fact that Palafin's moves are not strong due to their low BP (think Zapdos, Amoonguss, etc), we have some new hard counters like Sinistcha, Ogerpon-W and Rillaboom, etc... I don't think the slow pace of BU + Taunt will even have a place in this metagame given the one matchup it's fishing is both uncommon and has plenty of ways to beat it. There's also just much more status going around from stuff like Slowking-G and of course it's completely stuffed by Zamazenta.
Choice Band on the other hand has to contend with the ever-present issues of hazards & Wave Crash recoil if it wants to do significant damage on top of a middling Speed tier. It'll hit hard and bring some nice priority, which is a good thing to keep offense honest here, but I doubt it will be a problem.
Perhaps a Boots attacking set could be overwhelming. I don't think there's much of a way to know without trying, though; Palafin has only ever been legal in OU for eight days! And it was in a much, much newer and more uncharted metagame, we barely knew how Tera worked and nothing had been "solved" or optimised at all back then. I think it will act as a great balancing anchor and we should seriously consider giving it a try.
TL;DR: Darkrai is not super broken by any means but a suspect is valid if that's the route the community wants. We should retest Palafin both because it would provide great utility in the tier rn and also for fair dues since it's only ever been legal for a week in a completely different metagame.
Thanks for reading ^^