Durant Suspect Discussion

[SilentVerse]

What you're expected to do in this thread:

1. Post which sets you used in the round and what you found good about it, what beat it, etc.

2. Discuss Durant's place in the tier, has the metagame adapted properly to it? Does it break the metagame? What counters are there to Durant?

3. All Council members are expected to post their thoughts on, experiences using, and experiences against Durant in this thread.

4. The Council should also figure out a time when they can get on IRC to have a dedicated discussion on the suspects. When decided, this discussion time will be edited into this post, and all council members should do their damnedest to participate.

Remember, your posts in this thread will contribute to whether or not you get a seat on the rotating council, so get posting!

 

[Oiawesome]

Durant @ Salac Berry
Trait:Hutsle
EVs:252 Atk/252 Spe/4Hp
Moves:
-X-scissor
-Iron Head
-Substitute
-Hone Claws

If you have battled me you know I try to be as original as possible so I tried exploring Substitute and since hutsles accuracy drop is unbearable so I used Hone Claws add a salac berry and dual STAB and you get a extremly fearsome sweeper once all steel/bug resists are down.Since durant forces switches,a LOT its easy to sub so they bring in something to take it down,you sub agian till the salac berry activates know your at +1(hutsle)/+1(salac) and behind a sub all you have to is hone claws and sweep with dual STAB.their are I think no true counters to Durant but their are a hell of a lot of checks,just slap a scarf on a fire mon and revenge it lol.I know that dosen't work 100% of the time but hey this is how 5th gen threats are usualy tooken care of:checks.A great partner is slowking as he can absorb all of the fire hits like scarf magmortars fire blast and Durant can wall grass moves to no end.I would add more but this is already so long.

 

[New Breed]

Durant (M) @ Life Orb
Trait: Hustle
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- Hone Claws
- Iron Head
- X-Scissor
- Superpower

The set I mainly used for this round, the most common and most effective Durant set. Durant is an interesting Pokemon, on paper it has everything you look for in a sweeper, sky high attack, a blistering base 109 speed and good physical bulk that allows Durant to set up on most of the physical attackers in the RU metagame. In practice however Durant has many downfalls that seriously hinder it's ability to sweep, base 48 Sdef and base 58 Hp are Durant's biggest downfalls, leaving it vulnerable to even neutral special attacks from Pokemon such as Sceptile, Accelgor, Fire Blast Aerodactyl (which also acts as a great Tangrowth lure!!!!) and common Choice Scarf Pokemon such as Rotom-N, Rotom-C, Manetric, lolTyphlosion and the champion of the ladder Electrivire who is surprisingly and heartbreakingly common.

While the unbanning of Cresselia has seen a rise in more Balanced and Semi Stall teams, Offense is still easiest playstyle to use and therefore the most common playstyle. Durant just simply isnt effective in such an offensively orientated tier, however if the metagame takes a shift towards slower, more defensively orientated teams I would not be surprised to see Durant's name come up as a potential suspect again.

Durant has 0 counters but plenty of checks and easily manageable in the tier, in fact I can't even put it in the top 5 Pokemon in RU at the moment.

Do Not Ban.

 

[Molk]

Durant has the potential to be an unstoppable monster on paper, but i honestly think its nowhere near as good in practice as it is on paper at the moment. Sure it has a monster Attack stat, a very good (and also very trolly!) Speed tier, as well as having a new addition to its movepool in the form of Superpower, but Durant has a few downfalls that are holding it back imo. First, and most importantly, the very thing that gave Durant the potential to be broken in the first place also bites it in the butt quite a bit. If you didnt know already (you probably do but w/e) Hustle, aside from boosting the power of your moves by a considerable amount, also lowers the accuracy of the move you are using by 20%. This essentially gives all of Durant's attacks the equivalent of Stone Edge's accuracy before it gets an accuracy boost, and Stone Edge has been rightfully deemed the worst move in the game many times for this very reason. Durant is also held back by its absolutely horrible special bulk, 58/48 isnt just bad, it is atrocious, and this makes it significantly harder to set up a hone claws with Durant and/or switch the little bugger in. Honestly, you know your special defense is shit when uninvested resisted attacks are doing upwards of 40% to you (i took 42% from a defensive cryogonal ice beam once >_>). The shitty Special Defense also makes Durant much easier to revenge kill from the special side when using something like Rotom-C, normal Rotom, or hell even sceptile if your lucky with focus blast/can stall out enough LO recoil for hp rock to KO.

So far from what ive seen of durant, ive been able to handle it pretty well with some intelligent play and maybe something to revenge kill it just in case (or something like Poliwrath on a more defensive team, seriously, that shit is great). But i honestly cant say is Durant is broken or not for sure, i feel like i havent fought them enough to actually form an opinion on the iron ant, and looking at the october usage stats....i was correct.

| 85 | Durant | 499 | 0.974% | 352 | 0.831% |

This alone makes me want to give Durant another round personally, because we really cant see what effect Durant has on the metagame, if any at all unless people actually use it enough for you to see more than 3 times max in a month. Even Cresselia, who was released at the exact same time as Durant has more than double the usage of Durant, which is kinda sad tbh.

| 62 | Cresselia | 1232 | 2.405% | 1014 | 2.393% |

^ cress usage

Anyways, atm, Do Not Ban, it seems manageable for me and its usage is too low to see if it affects the metagame at all, so it should be given another round at least imo.

 

[Antar]

I haven't used Durant. Also, due to the nature of this suspect test (testing in the tier rather than in a devoted suspect tier), I faced Durant far too infrequently.

Still, I'd like to share my thoughts.

I play full stall on the RU ladder. RU is by far the most offensive of the standard metagames, with an average stalliness of -.211 (compared to -1.80 for OU, -.114 for UU, -.175 for NU and -.155 for Ubers). Another way of looking at it: only 2.1% (3.9%) of RU teams are full (semi) stall, compared to 3.1% (5.1%) in Standard OU.

My point is, stall is a dying playstyle in RU, and my opinions are colored by what elements will "break" stall even more.

Durant is a monster. 109 base speed. Hustle. The addition of Superpower to its arsenal in BW2 means that not even steels are safe anymore (+1 Superpower will get 252/0 Steelix down to Sturdy). That being said, this guy is extremely frail and is incredibly vulnerable to scarfers and anyone with priority. Qwilfish is an excellent check to most Durant sets, resisting Iron Head, X-Scissor AND Superpower, with Intimidate cancelling out Hone Claws. I mention Qwilfish specifically because it's already prominent as a pretty strong counter Entei, but other prominent non-steel physical walls in RU (namely Amoonguss, Dusknoir--lol...) can come in on a predicted Hone Claws and either scare out Durant or cripple it with status. [Edit for blara: my point is that there are plenty of checks and counters for Durant, even in the realm of full stall. Durant isn't going to break (or even significantly hurt) full stall, at least as far as I can tell]

So bottom line: Durant is good, but it's not game-breaking. From a stall perspective, there's really no reason it should not be unbanned.

 

[Molk]

That being said, this guy is extremely frail and is incredibly vulnerable to scarfers and anyone with priority.

Just going to point out that a lot of revenge killers who rely on priority struggle to revenge kill Durant thanks to its typing, which is one of the reasons it was considered to be so good before! Out of Quick Attack, Extremespeed, Mach Punch, Aqua Jet, Vacuum Wave, Ice Shard, Shadow Sneak, and Bullet Punch, Durant resists all of them except Aqua Jet, Mach Punch, and Vacuum Wave. It surely has the bulk to take the first two and nobody uses Vacuum Wave afaik so Durant actually ends up being pretty priority resistant.


Nonthenless, looking the the numbers and damage calculations, Durant looks even less broken than before to me, i overestimated the little guy at first tbh haha. Durant may have the highest immediate Attack stat in the game with Hustle taken into account, but its often held back by the relatively low BP of its STAB moves. 80 is enough to sweep a team after a boost or knock something out without one if need be, but its nowhere near as powerful as moves such as close combat and earthquake. Because of this, Durant is actually quite a bit weaker than what you would expect, for example:

252 Attack Life Orb Durant X-Scissor vs 252/252+ Sandslash (80 Base Power): 153 - 180 (43.22% - 50.85%)

252 Attack Life Orb Primeape Close Combat vs 252/252+ Sandslash (120 Base Power): 148 - 175 (41.81% - 49.44%)


I know nobody uses Life Orb Primeape, but hear me out, Life Orb Primeape actually hits about as hard as Life Orb Durant with its STAB move, and something stronger such as gallade will obviously hit much harder. So what this shows is that while on paper, Durant is immensely powerful and hard to stop, in practice, its Attack, while high, is manageable thanks the relatively low BP of its moves. I personally think Durant should stay atm

 

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

Durant is an offensive powerhouse, to say the very least. It has 109 Attack and Speed, plus Hone Claws and Hustle giving it power and speed that is off the charts. It has the potential to OHKO the whole tier without fail. As Superpower makes it so even Steelix and Escavalier are not safe against this monster, it seems on paper as though Durant is all time broken. However, it has its flaws. It needs a Hone Claws boost to be consistent, otherwise, it has accuracy issues. Although it sports incredible physical defense, its Special Defense falls nothing short of atrocious. Any Special Attack will OHKO Durant without fail. This stops Durant from being unstoppable, I've usually had some trouble getting Hone Claws up. Qwilfish and Poliwrath are both Solid checks to Durant, while Quagsire could be too.

Overall, I've had much success with Durant. But he has issues that prevent him from being broken. Atrocious special bulk is bad. Also, he's like the Scrafty of RU; he needs to grab a boost before he can become the true menace he was made to be.

So in short, Durant is awesome, but not broken. Do Not Ban.

 

[Honko]

I used the standard Life Orb Hone Claws / X-Scissor / Iron Head / Superpower set.

It was decent. Drapion and non-WoW Spiritomb are both fairly common and easy to lure in with Cress, and Durant can set up against them. Once set up, it would pretty much always get at least one KO, and often more if I had paralyzed/KOed whatever outsped it.

What I had forgotten and found surprising and disappointing was how little else Durant can safely set up on though. Everyone knows how weak to special attacks Durant is, but its physical bulk isn't all that impressive either. It's about as good as Tauros's; it can usually take one neutral hit, but that's it. For example, if you see a Hitmonchan without Fire Punch and without Close Combat, that sounds like a possible opportunity for Durant to set up, right? Wrong. Drain Punch + Mach Punch KOes. In fact, almost every common physical attacker either OHKOes, outspeeds and 2HKOes, or can 2HKO with priority. So don't expect to be setting up every game. The list of Pokemon that Durant can set up on without getting KOed, paralyzed, or burned is quite short.

But Durant has over 600 Attack (!!!) with Hustle and Life Orb, so it doesn't need to set up, right? Wrong again. As I said in the NP thread and Molk reiterated here, Durant's power is pretty overrated. 600 Attack sounds great, but it's held back by the fact that its STABs only have 80 BP. That makes a huge difference. In fact, it basically cancels out Hustle. Durant's power is the same as a Pokemon with 109 base Attack, 120 BP STAB moves, and no Hustle. Primeape is probably the closest common example. Primeape is decently strong, but nobody's calling it a "powerhouse", and yet Life Orb Primeape hits just as hard with its STAB as Life Orb Durant does, and it doesn't have to worry about missing 20% of the time. I'm not saying Primeape is as good as Durant, because obviously Durant has some major advantages, but the point is that a Durant that hasn't boosted is not going to be accomplishing that much. CB Durant can punch some holes, but so can lots of CB mons, and some of them can punch much larger ones without worrying about accuracy. Same for Scarf Durant.

One more thing to note is that Durant has a perfect counter in Qwilfish that is already the best Spiker for defensive teams (smd Roselia).

Pretty clearly not broken.

 

[BattleStar]

A first I was pretty set in saying Durant should be banned. I never really liked it and always hear how broken it is. Then when I looked into this more and realize it is quite a bit overrated. I think this is mainly due to Hustle and LO making its attack "600"!!!!!!! This sounds really good, but in reality many other pokemon can boast something similar to this. This not saying that Durant is incompetent for RU. It still is a good pokemon for RU. Durant has some nice attributes going for it. An sometime overrated but nonetheless impressive attack, a high, unique speed, and access to some great moves.

Durant has the capacity to become a fiend to virtually any poke in RU. But to really get to its full potential, it has to use a turn for a boost, which isn't always as easy as it sounds. It's quite predictable that Durant will try to boost so you have the opportunity to switch in. Not just that though, Durant has below par Special Defences. This is a bad thing in a tier such as RU where special attacks play a large role. Though even on its sturdier side which is the physical spectrum Dutant isn't winning any iron wall awards. There still are a large range of moves that can critically dent or KO it. Summed up Durant in reality has more trouble setting up and engaging members in RU. It very likely will be able to be KOed before it KOs a whole team. Durant also has several good checks and solid counters.

So even more summarized. Durant is a great pokemon if utilized right, but not broken so Do Not Ban.

 

[DittoCrow]

It was much easier to come to a conclusion on Durant than I thought x). That's because it isn't as good as I thought! Durant plays very inconsistently. It's stronger on paper than it is in the actual game. Pokemon such as Nidoqueen, Rotom, and Escavalier can all take a hit and do massive damage back due to Durant's piss-poor defenses. Among its other flaws, Durant has bad accuracy (which is a reason why it's inconsistent), four-moveslot syndrome, and trouble switching in. It does have counters as well (such as Qwilfish and Poliwrath), and many checks such as Choice Scarf users, Tauros, Sceptile, etc. Durant has not had a big impact on the metagame at all and is a good fit in the tier.

 

[complete legitimacy]

It was much easier to come to a conclusion on Durant than I thought x). That's because it isn't as good as I thought! Durant plays very inconsistently. It's stronger on paper than it is in the actual game. Pokemon such as Nidoqueen, Rotom, and Escavalier can all take a hit and do massive damage back due to Durant's piss-poor defenses. Among its other flaws, Durant has bad accuracy (which is a reason why it's inconsistent), four-moveslot syndrome, and trouble switching in. It does have counters as well (such as Qwilfish and Poliwrath), and many checks such as Choice Scarf users, Tauros, Sceptile, etc. Durant has not had a big impact on the metagame at all and is a good fit in the tier.

I completely agree with everything in this post; there's no reason to keep Durant banned anymore.