in the case of CTC's balance, life orb darkrai doesn't have many safe entry points due to how sketch it can be coming in hard on gholdengo's make it rain or dondozo's body press for example. I'm not convinced dropping darkrai would suddenly fuck up the metagame, far from it in fact. to give even more context i want to drop a list of the more passive balance, bulky offense, and stall structures spammed towards the end of home & OLT swiss: 135/125 offensive stats are nothing new to fairy gens while it has an impractical ability, barely passable bulk, a reliance on focus miss, and a singular 80BP stab option. In no way am i saying darkrai = tornadus-t / sneasler but if you look past the fact of 'omg it's darkrai,' it's really not all that. sneasler and tornadus-t also have actual abilities in poison touch and regenerator unlike bad dreams which has few in-game applications. on the special spectrum i'll bring up tornadus-t, whose sole stab at +2 has similar rolls to darkrai's dark pulse because bleakwind storm is 100BP. add tera fighting and shadow claw as coverage and a list of damage calculations can show you how this 'mon has no counters bar physically defensive landorus-t. sneasler unlike darkrai has two stab options: one being 120BP close combat and the other being dire claw, one of the most broken moves of all time. for example sneasler has similar offensive stats and can use swords dance + life orb. You can post a laundry list of damage calculations regarding +2 life orb darkrai all you want but the same can be said about other threats in our metagame, all of which don't opt for it. hazard control is also in an awful state this gen which makes the item choice even more questionable in my opinion.

the only 'mon that *commonly* ran life orb pre-DLC was baxcalibur and that was only due to ice body cheating life orb recoil on that amazing mind gaming team. priority distribution is only getting wider now with vacuum wave iron valiant & bloodmoon, grassy glide rillaboom, and next dlc raging bolt. in SV i think life orb is even worse as priority has doubled, lowkey tripled in strength. in SS the only 'mons that often ran it were clefable (magic guard) and weavile most offensive options such as rillaboom, garchomp, kartana, and blaziken ended up settling with other item choices in leftovers and protective pads as the metagame progressed. I am not convinced life orb is a good item in modern gens. The biggest weakness i feel is zapdos, atm i just chip it and then wave crash into it but it's always a pain. I've tried manaphy (both with tail glow and the funny acid armor+take heart set) and sinistcha, but they always feel like they're not carrying their weight. Just don't.īut i really can't find a fit for the 6th member.

I don't see why the same won't apply to Darkrai.ĭont' question the all-water-moves bascu. But in practice, mons like Amoongus, Bulky Dengo, and Moltres has been consistently used to check it as Valiant can't afford to run whatever move it pleases. On paper, Valiant can run moves to beat every single check it has.

Its offensive potential is less than Iron Valiant, who can be equally dangerous both on the physical and special side, has a much better offensive, and defensive typing. But it comes with 4MSS and opportunity cost. It's going to be a dangerous sweeper on the merit of being able to run a coverage move such as Thunderbolt, Ice Beam, or Psyshock alongside it's neutral coverage to beat certain threats. While Dark + Fairy is amazing for neutral coverage, Darkrai doesn't have the power to abuse it to warrant it staying Ubers. The NP Dark Pulse + Tera Fairy Blast set will be really bad in practice as without life orb boost, it will miss KOs even at +2, not to mention that it will barely threaten OHKOs unboosted. People freaking over Darkrai need to understand just how weak an 80 BP move is as your only STAB.

Call me meta meme