Darkrai
Pitch-Black Pokémon
It chases people and Pokémon from its territory by causing them to experience deep, nightmarish slumbers.
Base Stats
Type Effectiveness
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Evolution Chain
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Details
Sprites
Competitive
Strategy Overview
Darkrai continues its reign as a potent offensive threat in the Ubers tier, having access to the formidable Dark Void and Nasty Plot. Being capable of sleeping a target with reasonable consistency makes checking Darkrai a challenge, often forcing the opponent to fodder something to sleep. Darkrai is rather unique as an offensive threat because it has the potential to circumvent nearly any check with an appropriate coverage or utility move, making Darkrai particularly dangerous for defensive teams. Dark Void also allows Darkrai to lead reasonably well, limiting faster foes to a single turn and preventing slower leads from being able to move at all initially. Its fantastic Speed tier of base 125 is slightly higher than that of Arceus and higher than that of a majority of the Ubers tier, while a solid base 135 Special Attack gives Darkrai enough power to make use of this Speed. Its unique combination of stats, movepool, and typing gives Darkrai everything it needs to annihilate common threats such as Arceus-Ghost, Latias, Latios, Lugia, and Giratina-O. Darkrai is also fairly easy to fit onto an offensive team, as a great amount of pressure can be placed on the opponent due to the combination of Dark Void and Nasty Plot. Its signature ability Bad Dreams is quite handy, dealing passive damage to sleeping targets and breaking Focus Sashes and Multiscale. Unfortunately, Darkrai is dependent on a Life Orb to deal the amount of damage it needs and thus can only attack so many times. Yveltal also competes with Darkrai to an extent; however, Darkrai has the unique advantages of Dark Void, Nasty Plot, and a superior Speed stat. Due to its fragility, Darkrai is hampered by common methods of revenge killing such as priority moves and Choice Scarf users. While Dark Void is accurate enough to be consistent, it's still not perfect and is notorious for missing.
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Common Teammates
Competitive data from Smogon University via data.pkmn.cc