Litwick Community Day
Saturday 15th was Litwick Community Day, with the cute little candle Pokemon. I have a feeling that Litwick is semi popular, and it’s definitely a favourite of my sister’s. While the event was nothing special, there’s still a few things that were a bit odd. Plenty of new shinies but some unusual choices in special moves.
A nice day
Personally, I had a really nice Community Day. Mostly by sheer coincidence, I actually ran into some of the other members of my Pokemon GO community. I met with three friends and long-term players, all of whom wanted some shinies and some candy. The four of us wandered around catching Litwicks, pausing only to go and do a Xerneas raid, then have a coffee. I had originally only intended to spend an hour or so playing this event, but spending it with friends was much nicer.
I also caught quite a few shinies. At least 12. Litwick’s shiny line is actually kinda weird. Litwick’s shiny just has a blue flame rather than a purple flame. Lampent goes a slightly redder black colour, and a pink flame inside its head. Chandelure though has awesome orange flames, which make it even more fiery.
A move that isn’t good for PvP or PvE
What’s weird about this Community Day is Chandelure’s special move. Evolving a Lampent during the event (up until about 9pm) would give you a Chandelure with the move Poltergeist. This move is a slow-charging high damage ghost-type move. The problem is, Chandelure already has a high damage ghost-type move. Shadow Ball is the de-facto move for pretty much every ghost type. What makes this weirder is that Poltergeist just isn’t as good as Shadow Ball, and it doesn’t even have a niche use in PvP.
What Chandelure probably needed more was a good fire move, since it does work great as both a fire type and a ghost type. Or, alternatively, it needs a more of a bait move for PvP? I’m not sure. But this is the first time that an exclusive move is actually a worse choice.
Even though the move isn’t great, I did evolve a couple of Chandelures. You never know, Poltergeist might be buffed some time in the future.
No one seems to do the after-event raids
One odd addition to Community Days is a post-event raid thing. Basically, the middle evolution appears in special 4-star raids that can only be done in person. If you manage to beat the raid, a bunch of Litwicks will spawn around the gym, with Community Day levels of shiny chances. However, I’ve never seen anyone have any interest in doing these in-person raids. Even in my little group, none of us really cared. After all, we’d already just spent 3 hours catching Litwicks. And we’d already done a Xerneas raid.
I suppose the raids do allow players a chance to get a shiny after the Community Day ends, but it’d be far easier to just make Community Day last 6 hours. That way more people can play and no one has to do a raid for a Lampent.