BH NDBH Suspect #3: Darmanitan-Galar-Zen

[anaconja]

​

What?
Based on community feedback I am suspecting Darmanitan-Galar-Zen. If passed, DGZ will be banned from the metagame, and if not it will remain in the metagame.

Why?

Darmanitan has a formidable statline, sporting 160/135 physical offense which allows it to outspeed many relevant attackers besides MMY and Zacian-Crowned. In addition, it receives STAB on the highest BP physical attacks Glacial Lance and V-Create, allowing it to do significant damage every time it attacks, and even claim a kill every time it comes in, if it is positioned correctly. Using Mold Breaker allows it to 2HKO one of its strongest checks in FC Arceus-Water and most other FC users, and the combination of Glacial Lance, V-Create, and Bolt Strike allows it to 2HKO basically everything in the tier.

However, it is not without its flaws. Its mediocre bulk means that if it does not KO its opponent it is likely to be KOd itself, and its 4x weakness to Stealth Rock and reliance on Mold Breaker + Choice Band/Life Orb to score 2HKOs causes some reliance on prediction and team support to keep hazards off the field. While defensive counterplay is hard to come by, there are still ways to deal with it such as Prankster Glare, Dauntless Shield Groudon-Primal, or relatively unexplored walls/pivots such as Arceus-Fire/Rock or Darmanitan-Zen/Victini.

How?

• We will be using the new suspect process laid out by Zarel here (aka no COIL).
• The voting requirements are a minimum GXE of 78 with at least 28 games played.
• Do so by making a new alt with the prefix “zen”. For example I could register the alt "zen anaconja"
• The alt must have a creation date on or after September 1, 2022

Where?
You must post your proof of reqs in this thread and play your games on the main pokemonshowdown.com sim.

DGZ will be allowed in the ladder for the duration of this suspect; I would recommend using it as much as you can to get a feel of how they are in the meta and have a good idea of if they are broken/unhealthy or if they are perfectly manageable after all.
Do:

• Post your proof of reqs and, if you wish, your stance on the matter briefly, in this thread. Read the following CAREFULLY on how to do so:
  • you MUST FIRST AND FOREMOST PROVIDE AN IMAGE OF THE ALT WITH PROOF OF OWNERSHIP. We can't stress that last part enough. Refer to these examples of how to do this: example1 example2 example3
  • If you don’t do at least the above, your vote won’t be counted. We will be very strict about this.
• Post in this thread if you have any questions about THIS SUSPECT PROCESS.

Do NOT:

• Post your stance on the matter in this thread without proof of requirements (This should be posted in the main thread instead)
• Post anything in this thread unrelated to this suspect (with or without proof)

When?
This suspect period will last until September 15, 2022, 11:59 pm GMT-5. We will try to begin the voting process immediately after and post the Voter ID Thread similar to past suspects.

GLHF!
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TLDR?

• 78 GXE after 28 games with a new alt
  • “zen” alt with image proof IN THIS THREAD
• DGZ is ALLOWED on ladder
• DEADLINE: September 15, 2022

tagging Kris to setup the suspect alert

 

[anaconja]

first blood, hellish ladder experience but it worked out in the end

graveyard

(gave up cause 2 instant losses made me mald lol)

a bit on the fence on dgz right now - having been on both sides of using and playing against dgz i see it's got some mixed results. perhaps its the ladder overpreparing for it by having every prankster have glare or pack dauntless pdon or psea solgaleo or fc slowbro or something else silly on the team but w/e.

what i found as oppressive, or even more so, was ggarm (gengar-mega). could be again cause the meta shifted to focus so much on dgz that they subsequently became weak to ggarm (everything except prank glare users i mentioned are weak to it) but with the shift from regenvest to ice scales specs adapt is really scary (it 2hkos ogre with moongeist even with timid). similarly to dgz it relies a lot on specs for power and therefore is somewhat prediction reliant but ghost special is harder to prep for than ice/fire/elec physical when considering the rest of the meta i think. idk. part of the last several games on my first alt was spent losing to sevag's ggarm team, and when i made my own ggarm team it got like 22 straight wins (though a good amount was low ladder).


most of the laddering i did on zenaconja 1 was using lydia's and city's ndbh teams. this was the team i used on zenaconja 3, which is a rework of this team, which is a touchup of this team, which is a port of this gen 7 team, which is a spin on this city team. not being able to fit prank is pretty sad and the team is pretty weak to fairies with coverage for solgaleo - mostly mg mmy, though darkceus takes ~60 from lor and removes its orb which is good. you can also put eviolite on imposter so it can switch in more. team also struggles with pheal setup users. you could probably put worry seed on solgaleo and/or swap swampert to something that handles that.

 

[DuGuo]

my first try and thank anaconja for posting his team.
In the 28 games I played, I didn't meet any Darmanitan-Galar-Zen, lol.

 

[Tea Guzzler]

holy shit this ladder run was hell

rip in peace

idk what i'm voting, DGZ is a mixed bag where you can bowl over common fur coaters (waterceus/mbro) with moldy LO but then you sack the ability to kill off misc ones (such as fairyceus/darkceus) by not running moldy band. similar-ish to ash-gren and mgar, however DGZ is a lot more of a prediction game than these. heavily punishes reckless play, hates psea steels/rocks/pdon (which doesn't even need dauntless to check lo sets).

 

[shadowpea]

(one loss to afk, cringe)

first time i got reqs never thought id see the day huh

my thoughts on darm rn is that its really similar to other dumb breakers like spexgar and ashgren with its own perks and disadvantages. i havent found darm super overwhelming or at least not especially overwhelming compared to its peers. if anything, i feel that gren and gar are more powerful and broken than darm because they carry similar amounts of breaking power while having actual defensive utility and not be boned by rocks. do note that i have never built for this tier yet so the type of pressure that darm exerts on the builder might be the culprit that im unaware of.

not 100% sure what im voting rn, leaning no ban but maybe that will change when its time to vote

https://pokepast.es/622beaabe809c7fb here are all the teams i used for my run. they're all anaconja's teams except for the rain which i believe was city's. (the mg fireceus one is outdated as you can see with the goggles dont use it)

band moldy ashgren is stupid you literally 2hko the entire tier (or at least the entire ladder) after a layer of hazards lol that mon and gar made like most the run free.

also run multiple teams :/ its a very small ladder people will cteam you and it is not fun

e: tried building a bit, leaning a bit more toward ban now, mainly cause primsea solgaleo suck soooo much i hate that mon

 

[Onyx Onix 7]

Edit: As for my opinion on Darminatan Zen Galar, I'll likely be voting for a Ban. Pre-Glacial Lance DGZ was manageable since Triple Axel could be consistently be punished and other Ice moves had notable drawbacks. However, with Glacial Lance entering the fray Darminatan has become obnoxious to deal with due to it lacking the consistent answers and punishes it once had. Consequently, it has become an unfun constraint on team building. While I supposed a similar argument could be made for Ash Greninja and Gengar, what sets them apart from Darminatan is the consistency of their answers and ability to actively punish those mons. Gengar has an easy punish in Pursuit and Dark types while Ash Greninja is straightforward to brick and even actively punish with literally any FC Arceus, Guzzlord, Primal Groudon+Zacian, Eternatus etc . . .

 

[Stories]

reqs

Surfing Blissey Team

Didn't run into any Darms, it forces fat Water-types like MegaBro and WaterCeus but so does the move Fishious Rend lol. Adaptability Ash Gren does the same shit Darm does and both are offensively pressured quite easily. I don't think Darm is broken but its really hard to tell since the tier lost an official spot on ladder, the hardest part of getting reqs was just finding games lmao

 

[martinvtran]

I stole this team from Onyx Onix 7's post but I tweaked it to fit what I lost to on the ladder. I always led off with Zamazenta to get webs up, as it's incredibly difficult to stave off webs against 2 spinblockers. I adjusted Electrify Gengar to a Normalize + Entrainment set just for fun, but it ended up accounting for 90% of my wins because nothing without priority can touch it without letting it get to +3 and sweeping a -1 Speed team. I also added Topsy-Turvy on Prankster Dialga because I found opposing HO a problem. I added Fur Coat on Arceus to help against Darm-G and Regigigas spam on my run.

 

[fwqef]

I used this team for most games. SF MMY is pretty great with all the coverage in the world to hit things, although it needs some prior chip damage to actually clean teams.

My stance on DGZ:

I am leaning towards No Ban. It's a very good mon but I don't think it's on a banworthy level.

First of all, it's a very one-dimensional mon. If it's out, you can expect it to click glacial lance, v-create, and bolt strike. For the other banned mons like Unrestricted Zac-C, PDon, and MRay, they can run a variety of great sets that all have different checks. Calyrex-Shadow also had alternate sets that could let it bypass Arceus-Dark and Umbreon effortlessly. I don't feel like DGZ has that same adaptability to overcome its checks besides better prediction or team support. DGZ Checks, namely bulky waters, are already quite good in the meta outside of DGZ, so I don't feel like there's a huge strain on teambuilding.

The second reason is its crippling weakness to stealth rock. DGZ seems impossible to handle on paper but I feel like in practice you can definitely dance around it for long enough until it crumbles to rocks or you win before they do. DGZ is forced out easily by Zac-C and MMY which means it can't keep clicking buttons on you forever.

I don't even think DGZ is the top 1 or 2 offensive pokemon right now, maybe top 3. Feel free to change my mind though. For the remaining few days, I'm gonna try using DGZ more so I can make a better judgment.

 

[Tanny89k]

Here's the team I used

 

[GeniusFromHoenn]

Confirming as zen saturn

 

[tzaur]

Getting in last-minute reqs. Finding matches was absolute hell. Very close to an undefeated run, but one of my Ls was due to losing a potentially game-deciding speed tie with Imposter--but I won't pretend I didn't get lucky in some of my Ws.

Team

Used this gang pretty much my entire run. Foundation was built by the brilliant a loser which he used for Gen 8 Nuzzle suspect, and I adjusted for this format. Arceus-Ghost pretty much carried the team on its back, though lol. Lots of matches were basically MGar getting a clutch surprise 1-for-1 then having Ghostceus clean up. The thing is pretty much impossible to kill once it gets a QD or two up. Still a solid team overall; IMO your positioning just really needs to be spot-on especially vs. teams stacked with speedsters such as DGZ, AGren, Zac-C, the Mewtwos, opposing MGars, and MGLO Deo-A.

Thoughts

Not much to say here, honestly. This thing has no real switchins; Mold Breaker can blow through FC Waterceus especially after a layer of spikes; Moldy PBlades/Tinted blows through PSea Steel-types; Moldy STABs blow through every FC non-resist since they cover everything else aside from bulky waters (I hardly consider any Fire-types that resist both STABs aside from maybe FC Fireceus worthy of a mention). These are all on top of the sheer potency of other variants such as Adaptability, Desolate Land, and MGLO. These are also on top of the fact DGZ is granted STAB on two of what I consider to be the most bullshit of the "nuclear" moves: V-Create and Glacial Lance--both coming from a base 160 attack furnished by a 135 speed. Ban.