to be fair, i have a tainted biased opinion on marzocchi. i was unlucky enough to have bought one of the dreaded 2008 production 55 ata piece of ****, after 3 rebuilds and warranty replacement cartridge it went in the bin, bloody thing was crap. never did work correctly, so we vowed never to buy marz again. if that wasnt bad enough the fork was purchased in whistler at whistler prices to,:eekster::eekster:
as for the deville, cant fault them. i had teething troubble at first. i got one of the pairs that was shipped from bos with out oil. (apparantly this is a common thing with bos, they reccon 1 in 10 of thier forks ships with out oil, not sure how true this is, just somthing i heard)
so after my first ride was cut short due to the fork feeling very crap, and strange black rubber marks appearing on the airside stanchion. i sent them back to r53. chris confirmed the fork had no oil in the air side leg, and they stripped them down rebuilt them greased the seals. new seal and fresh oil. the fork has been fine since.
i have never noticed any flex and i have rode them pretty hard, they handle the rocky road (aka devils drop. aka the ice cream run) at my local spot at rivington. that is an old washed out road thats full of baby head size rocks. even hit 2-4ft drops without issues, and tables. have road them at lee quarry, ( my local spot) gisburnforest, and did a week up at the staines last year, ae forest, kiroughtree, and dalbeatie, again the fork performed flawless, no flex or anything. if they were flexy i wouldnt have got a second set for the endo. i will give more feedback when ive blitzed them on some whistler singletrack next month.
i know my mate toby had some devilles on his stumpy back in 2011 all season in whistler while he was guiding for bearback. he rides fast and hard on all the doubble blacks, he rated them. think the only issue he had was the seal at the end of the season, but to be fair almost all forks would require a seal and oil change after a seasons abuse in whistler.