Durant

### How GOOD was Durant ACTUALLY? History of Durant in r/pokemonroleplays

The patrons have spoken and they have requested durant! And we'll be examining how this iron insect splits time and defenses in both the nba, and various pokemon metagames in this crossover of an episode. And so we ask how good was durant Actually? And in this video we'll be going over these competitive formats: **Smogon** rip VGC lol

#### B/W and B2/W2 Gen 5

Despite its excellent speed and solid attack boosted to huge levels with the built-in choice band of hustle durant was not able to break into OU in its debut generation, as it struggled to switch in as a result of its abysmal hp ensuring it couldn't take many hits. Its defense stat was great, but not enough to make up for such a deficit and its pathetic special defense meant it actually folded to just about every one of the many special attackers in the tier. It was a decent offensive threat but there was little reason to use it when it could not hope to match the effectiveness of OU's reigning bug/steel type: Scizor. Who, in addition to better utilizing its useful defensive typing by virtue of its superior bulk and roost, was also more effective offensively thanks to its excellent move pool consisting of swords dance, u-turn, pursuit, and of course its trademark bullet punch.

As such, durant never had any impact on OU, or UU for that matter. The tier had too many water, fighting types, electric, fire, and ground types for it to ever consistently threaten a significant enough portion of the tier. However in RU durant not only came into its own but came to be one of the tier's best, most dangerous and defining pokemon. It tore through much of the meta game and could fulfill a variety of roles with its numerous excellent sets. With choice band it was one of the tier's most vicious wall breakers, easily able to threaten KO's against the large portion of the tier it outsped and being able to threaten two hit kills on even the tier's sturdiest defensive pokemon thanks to its massive power being perfectly augmented by its coverage options. For example, defensive steelix and intimidate qwilfish both twarted durant's stab easily, but got destroyed by superpower and thunder fang respectively.

Durant was also one of the tier's best late game sweepers when utilizing hone claws, a move seemingly tailor made for it. In addition to providing the attack boost that allowed durant to drop targets left and right, hone claws also allowed it to bypass the often crippling nature of hustle's accuracy impediment. Durant also ran another tremendous late game set with choice scarf, which allowed it to clean up weakened teams with ease. frailer offensive teams that relied on outspeeding durant with naturally faster pokemon and or choice scarfers were easily ripped apart. Durant was the fastest scarfer in the tier which wasn't only a great advantage in getting the jump on the tier's other fast scarfers in manetric and rotom, but also made it a great check to speed boosting setup sweepers like quiver dance liligant and dragon dance feraligatr. Durant was tremendous not just because these sets were incredibly consistent performers on a game-to-game basis, but because despite his relatively small movepool it has several great options for other sets as well.

For example it could brutally punish defensive answers like alomomola and qwilfish with a substitute baton pass set, which easily set up its destructive teammates. With items like insect plate and iron plate it could power itself up while potentially bluffing a choice item and lending another layer of danger to its capability of switching its attacks up, potentially luring in and grabbing a surprise KO against the pokemon thinking it was safe against the resisted attack durant has seemingly locked itself into. For this purpose several gems were also effective with potentially even greater destructive power. Some players even utilized protect on durant for the purpose of racking up more damage against poisoned targets like alomamola and scouting the intentions of choice scarf revenge killers. Durant was absolutely amazing to the point of being controversial. Several players believed its presence was negative for the ru tier. It wasn't just because it was so dangerous, it was the rng factor innate to durant many games were affected by hustle turning 100% accurate attacks into stone edge.

This wasn't all of what players thought made durant undesirable though, after all this wasn't much different from choosing to use focus blast or hydro pump. No, the part several players didn't like was durant's ability to cheese its way past would-be checks with iron head's nasty 30 flinch rate. It was so strong that it often needed just one flinch to knock the opposing pokemon into ko range when paired with hustle. End games involving durant had a nasty tendency to get messy, leading to players experiencing rng induced heart attacks left and right.

Nevertheless tiering action was not taken against durant and it continued to hold one of the most prominent places in RU. Some players used swarm as the ability instead of hustle on scarf durant as they didn't quite need the extra power against frail or offensive pokemon and really just needed it to hit its attacks late game. However, hustle was still one of durant's most defining features. For better and for worse many games were won if durant hit its attacks, but that was a big if. 80 accuracy meant a battle with durant was an exciting event 100 of the time.

#### XY/Gen 6

Durant returned to RU with a vengeance in generation 6. It was dangerous right out of the gate in xy and continued into early ORAS, happily preying on the newly added fairy types with its vicious iron heads. However, it wasn't considered broken yet. It was a massive threat but the tier had several solid options to check it through a moltres, now supported by the buff defog as well as the massively bulky eviolite duo of duoblade and gligar. However all three of these pokemon eventually rose to UU and durant jumped to the precipice of potential brokenness teetering on the edge as the metagame struggled to keep it in check.

Forced to resort to desperate measures such as hidden power fire dugtrio, every team was threatened by durant. The best offensive pokemon in the tier for its speed, power, and coverage, bulky teams feared it above all else as it ripped through defensive staples like slowking, cresselia, diancie, reuniclus, and rypherior. And even its more effective defensive switching such as emboar and mega steelix could still take heavy damage. Offensive teams weren't much better off as durant's excellent speed gave it the jump on common offensive pokemon already considered fast such as verizion, delphox, and sigilyph. It could also ruin offensive teams even more efficiently with its choice scarf set removing their few options to outspeed it such as the aforementioned dugtrio as well as blazing past other scarfers like tyrantrum and medicham in the late game.

The tier tried to adapt for some time, but eventually the playerbase realized that there was simply no reconciling with durant in RU. It was just too strong for the tier. the vote on durant's fate in the tier wasn't close, it was universally viewed as overbearing which was reflected in the fact that over 80 percent of the voters voted to ban it. Durant was one of the most devastating, impactful pokemon in ORAS RU, sadly it was not able to find a niche in UU. It wasn't nearly as capable of threatening the faster bulkier metagame as it was denied opportunities to switch in and the ability to wreak havoc once it had switched in. As such durant languished in RUBL, unable to move either upwards or downwards.

Still the sixth generation was a successful one for durant, as it established itself as an RU icon once again.

OK im fucking done writing the whole script this is too much work for one joke. -Tusk