I'm hella tired so I'm not gonna make a big post or anything, but since my continuous complaining about Durant on Discord and PS obviously isn't enough, I'll cry a bit more here on forums about how stupid I believe it is. Its main set has two counters, Quag and Rest Talk M Amphy, one of which only fits on stall, the other one being awkward to fit on any form of team. Hell, you can even go as far as to argue the latter isn't even viable. This means we're left with one counter in the entire tier. Given that the mon only fits on stall, which to make matters worse is in a bad spot now as well, just makes Durant even harder to handle.



On more offensive teams defensively checking it is completely out of the question. And by "more offensive" I don't just mean Offense and HO, I mean Balance. Because of Durants great speedtier and sheer power, paired with set up in Hone Claws and the possibility to run two different Z-moves, it just runs through teams. Usually you just have to sack a mon when it comes, so that you can get in your scarfer safely to revenge it (or one of the few mons that actually outspeeds it). And even then, Durant can retreat and come back in later to wreak havoc once again.



When I play it, it feels like i have to make a gamble on what it will do every single turn, as just one wrong step can mean death. Will it set up to kill my incoming Milo with the Z-move? If so, should i just attack and get whatever chip I can? Or will it just attack and kill my mon, which I need alive in order to win.



And that's not even taking into account that Durant has several other sets it can run as well. What if it isn't even HC Z-move, but LO, CB or Scarf? How do i play around this? The obvious answer to this is "scouting". The only problem with this, is that if your opponent capitalizes on this and goes for something you didn't expect, you're fucked anyway. Bop, one mon dead. You found out what set it was, but at what cost? You lost a mon, and you're likely to lose the momentum next turn again, as the one mon on your team can't risk clicking any other move than the one that kills Durant. Or maybe you didn't find out the set. What if the mon you went out into died to for instance Superpower or Iron Head regardless of whether the Durant is Scarf, Z or CB. And if it's not CB or LO, how do you even pick between Scarf and Z? The only reasonable thing to do would be to expect the best set, being HC Z-move.



Now, you can argue that by looking at team preview, it should be possible to tell what item it is. Or at least whether it's scarf or so. But contrary to (somewhat) popular belief, it's not that easy to guess. Is it SD Normalium Bear + Scarf Ant? Is it Sub SD Bear+ HC Z-move Ant? Is it ScarfGon + HC Durant? Is it DD Gon + Scarf Durant? Is the scarfer Shay or Ant? Hell, you can even play off what's more likely the scarfer, and put Specs Garde+Scarf Ant. And the list goes on...



TL;DR: Durant has one counter. It's near impossible to check defensively. You're usually forced to sack and revenge it with a Scarfer. Durant having many sets only adds to its unhealthiness by adding a "guessing game". A suspect would be fitting in my opinion. And yes, this is a relatively short post coming from me....