The Future of Darkrai

FearThePegasus

FearThePegasus

or PegFear for short.
Member
I was just wondering what people think is going to happen with Darkrai when Dark Explorers gets rotated out. Do you think Yveltal / Yveltal EX / Shadow Circle will keep Darkrai relevant in high level play or do you think it'll just get phased out and other decks will fill its place?
 
RE: Sableye/Dark Patch-less Darkrai

I was just wondering what people think is going to happen with Darkrai when Dark Explorers gets rotated out.
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It will cease to be.

Dark Patch is what makes the deck so consistent and amazing. Theoretically you could go without Sableye, or at least not use it that often, but you cannot run Darkrai without Dark Patch. It's too slow without it.
 
RE: Sableye/Dark Patch-less Darkrai

I think darkrai will simply become a tech in decks that run prisim/rainbow energy but the deck as a whole (unless we get a very good replacement) will finally be gone from competitive play .
 
RE: Sableye/Dark Patch-less Darkrai

The thing is, I really want to say that Darkrai will finally stop being tier 1. But everyone said the same thing when HS was rotated, then again when BW was rotated, then again when the new rules happened. But every single time, it remained incredibly powerful. I think they'll all have to include regular Yveltal for sure, and I also think Yveltal EX will be the main focus of the deck (although my testing has shown that's probably going to be the case anyway), due to only needing 1 Dark and 1 DCE to attack as opposed to Darkrai's 3 Dark. I don't think it will be tier 1, but I think Yveltal/Darkrai will still exist until Darkrai is rotated. It might be in small numbers, but it will exist.
 
RE: Sableye/Dark Patch-less Darkrai

Machamp The Champion said:
The thing is, I really want to say that Darkrai will finally stop being tier 1. But everyone said the same thing when HS was rotated, then again when BW was rotated, then again when the new rules happened. But every single time, it remained incredibly powerful. I think they'll all have to include regular Yveltal for sure, and I also think Yveltal EX will be the main focus of the deck (although my testing has shown that's probably going to be the case anyway), due to only needing 1 Dark and 1 DCE to attack as opposed to Darkrai's 3 Dark. I don't think it will be tier 1, but I think Yveltal/Darkrai will still exist until Darkrai is rotated. It might be in small numbers, but it will exist.
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Which proves my point more that Darkrai will be more of a tech/support pokemon just because it takes 3 dark to attack and no effective acceleration outside of an attack. I also agree that whatever gets rotated Yveltal EX will probably step up to the main attacker just because of evil ball being a dark mewtwo.
 
Darkrai EX probably won't be rotated for at least 2 years due to its reprint in legendary treasures, so don't count out anything Darkrai immediately. But without Dark Patch the deck will be so inconsistent and slow it won't be worth playing without either victini EX or Virizion EX... which already makes the deck worst. In addition, with all of the hype over fairy, and fairy having dark resistance, darkrai will be weakened.
 
With possibility of losing Sableye, people will switch over to Darkrai/Yvelta. We are gonna see a huge number of players play Rai/Sable/Yvel at Nats and worlds before dark patch and other key items are rotated out.
 
You can always keep Darkrai-EX as a main attacker. Darkrai-EX IS incredibly slow without Dark Patch, but the bench is a safe place, I'll tell you that much.
 
Assuming Darkrai isn't rotated out with Dark Patch and Sableye, yes, I could see it being viable. Giving free retreat to everything is still a valuable ability, and Yveltal EX is a strong attacker in it's own right. Yveltal (non EX) provides some nice acceleration + damage (you could theoretically never run out of energy). Professors Letter gets the energy in your hand for discarding (hopefully Ultra Ball will be reprinted).

What I'm wondering is if Darkrai Decks now can function without Sableye and just go pure beatdown. A couple of Dark Patches Early game should set things up and then Yveltal can be the main source of energy acceleration. The thing holding the deck back is that it 2HKOs things in a format where 1HKOs are becoming the norm. I don't know if it can keep up with all that.
 
pokedan24 said:
Assuming Darkrai isn't rotated out with Dark Patch and Sableye, yes, I could see it being viable. Giving free retreat to everything is still a valuable ability, and Yveltal EX is a strong attacker in it's own right. Yveltal (non EX) provides some nice acceleration + damage (you could theoretically never run out of energy). Professors Letter gets the energy in your hand for discarding (hopefully Ultra Ball will be reprinted).

What I'm wondering is if Darkrai Decks now can function without Sableye and just go pure beatdown. A couple of Dark Patches Early game should set things up and then Yveltal can be the main source of energy acceleration. The thing holding the deck back is that it 2HKOs things in a format where 1HKOs are becoming the norm. I don't know if it can keep up with all that.
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Darkrai wont be rotated unless then do a hard roatation (like DP-HGSS) unlikely but you never know, because it was reprinted in Legendary Treasures so it will be around for a while and Ultra ball was reprinted as a Secret rare in one of the Plasma sets.
 
In around 2 sets, Faries will probably get an incredibly good EX attacker and will most likely be tier one. Darkrai alone can't beat that, but maybe Yvetal can help.
 
@JungleBeatz Yes, there will be many people playing that at tournaments at first, but how well will it work with or without Garbodor? Straight Darkrai these days isn't as good as last format, and even with Yvetal/ Yvetal EX it wont make it much speedier. I plan to see more of a tech Yvetal EX rather then being in the spotlight...and the same for Yvetal in Absol's case.

@Chanderperior Depends on the deck. Yes, you can slowly set up darkrai on the bench and have an EX wall to guard it from your opponents, but that is just wasting time for your opponents to do things too. Especially if your opponent is running Landorus EX, Kyurem, or even another Darkrai deck, they can get your Darkrai up damage-wise quickly.

@Pokedan24 If pokemon does a rotation, it will definitely include Dark Patch and Sableye on their OOF list for next year...considering they are from the next 2 sets after NVI. I do agree Yvetal is a very good starter, but without the dark patches and sableye the deck will be very had to play. I guess if you ran both it would be hard to go from setting up energy to getting things back from the discard, but honestly until Sableye rotates out I double regular Yvetal will receive much play.

@Cortel II Ultra ball was also reprinted in PLB not as a secret rare.
 
TheLuxChomp said:
In around 2 sets, Faries will probably get an incredibly good EX attacker and will most likely be tier one. Darkrai alone can't beat that, but maybe Yvetal can help.
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There have been rock paper scissors formats before and there could be again.

I feel that with the right support (or if a good card had weakness to dark types) dark types could be good again however, there is no telling. There is no point in guessing if there will be future dark support or not.
 
Darkrai will be good still after Dark Patch will be rotated for its ability. I think Virizion EX may be good energy acceleration for Yveltal EX because Yveltal needs only 1 Dark for both attacks and Darkrai gives free retreat cost for Yveltal and maybe Virizion if it has attacked even 1 Darkness energy on it. Virizions ability will be very good always when HTL is in format (I think next format will be PLS - on but can't be sure of course).
 
Also, one thing to add. Most decks will probably opt to play Fairy Garden over Darkrai for free retreat (aside from Dark decks, obviously), so he won't be kept alive by Dark Cloak.
 
Chanderperior said:
You can always keep Darkrai-EX as a main attacker. Darkrai-EX IS incredibly slow without Dark Patch, but the bench is a safe place, I'll tell you that much.
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It's not always safe though, you have Chandelure EX and Landorus EX able to snipe it on the Bench. Pokemon Catcher and Garbodor trap Darkrai in the Active and it needs to discard energy to retreat now. And without Dark Patch/Tool Scrapper, you're going to have a harder time getting set back up.
 
I don't know, with Tool Scrapper most likely rotated with dark patch Darkrai/Garbodor could become really good again just because the opponents will have no way of getting rid of the tool attached to Garbodor. It will be a little slower then most variants, but that was the point anyways to stall out the opponent. this will probably make big basics/Garbodor even better also.
 
Cortel II said:
this will probably make big basics/Garbodor even better also.
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Except Landorus will be rotated. Chandelure/Mewtwo/Garbodor will probably be pretty good, especially with Dark types becoming so much worse, Chandelure's weakness isn't a big deal anymore.
 
I don't think landorus will be rotated . I'm thinking best guess will be boundries crossed -on
 
Hmmmm i disagree. I think it will be Plasma Storm on. No matter what they need to print some other version of scrapper, if its not reprinted then bye bye Blastoise / Rayboar / Fairies / lugia.
 
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