[NXD-ON] Help With Speed Darkrai

[Joltic]

4 ultra balls are too many, even with a 3/2 darkrai/absol split but if you chose to run single copies of certain Pokemon, 4 may become viable. Also, a couple more energy switch would be good in the deck since you can easily power up pokemon with the help of the dark patch/energy switch combo. When darkrai was big last season it always ran 3-4 energy switch and in testing I find 3 is a good amount to consistently power up darkrais very quickly.
Hi shiney mewtwo!

 

[TuxedoBlack]

But 4 Ultra Balls maximizes "consistency," (word that is so over-used and not really understood by many players... Lol), i.e., your opportunities to a) draw into 1 and b) dump D energy into the discard pile facilitating the power-up of the benched D Poke... Be that as it may, I too run only 3 UBs and find, through playtesting, the 3 to be quite sufficient.

By the way, I'm finding that Ht Lasers are not that effective in the top cut. In my area, the top cut is usually comprised of Blastoise (37.5%), VirGen (37.5%), and "other" (25%: e.g., Empoleon, RayBoar, etc.). So, I've dropped the Ht Lasers (which have very little/no impact on Virizion EX decks/variants) in favor of Hammers and Silver Bangles. Thoughts?

 

[Joltic]

By the way, I'm finding that Ht Lasers are not that effective in the top cut. In my area, the top cut is usually comprised of Blastoise (37.5%), VirGen (37.5%), and "other" (25%: e.g., Empoleon, RayBoar, etc.). So, I've dropped the Ht Lasers (which have very little/no impact on Virizion EX decks/variants) in favor of Hammers and Silver Bangles. Thoughts?

I find that Ht lasers can be useful to get nice KO's on your opponents pokemon, but as you said, in your area top cuts are full of Viren and blastoise so running silver bangles are better since they will mostly always have an effect and they remain attached rather than lasers effect which can be canceled out. But then, if you concentrate on absol then silver bangles are viable, but since there effect is nullified on darkrai, they become less viable in the deck. I think that it comes down to a Metagame decision whether to run lasers or silver bangles.

A problem with not ruining Ht lasers is that you won't be running virbank which can really help in the stadium war against opponents beaches witch don't benefit you as much as it benefits your opponent. I run lasers in my deck and have found that virbank really does slow your opponent down by making them have to waste cards to get a beach in to play.

As to concentrating on more hammers, I find that this is a good idea since when I was playing at a city championships last weekend, both cursing hammers and enhanced hammers really did mess up my games on more than one occasion by being able to set me back a few turns and really messing up my strategy.