Hisuian Typhlosion Raid Day

It’s nice that we’re getting more raid days. So far, we’ve had Hisuian Samurott, Wyrdeer and now Hisuian Typhlosion, with Hisuian Decidueye coming next month. It’s nice to get some free raid passes, not get a shiny and start eating into your premium raid passes, hoping you’ll finally get some better luck. But yeah, on Jan 14th, we had a raid day for Hisuian Typhlosion.

Now, there’s something about Hisuian Typhlosion that kinda creeps me out. It’s too… drunk. It looks like it wants to seduce you in an alleyway, steal your soul then take your car on a joyride. Hisuian Typhlosion is a Fire/Ghost type, which apparently cleanses souls and guides them to the afterlife. It is also permanently high on weed and weirdly feminine, making it a good contrast to the other two Hisuian starters, which are much more combat-based.

Also the shiny sucks. Like, it’s Gengar and Garchomp levels of bad. With Hisuian Samurott and Decidueye, I can see what they’re doing, the colours match the original, non-Hisuian Pokemon. But I went and looked up normal Typhlosion, and the colours… don’t match. Like, I checked. Hisuian Typhlosion and normal Typhlosion are closer in colour than the shiny version is. And at the same time, the flames don’t change colour to match the normal version, nor does the cream skin. If it was supposed to match the normal version, then they failed miserably. But at the same time, I kinda don’t know what they were trying to do in general.

Anyway, the raids themselves were 3-star raids, meaning you didn’t need much planning. I played with my brother and, with three accounts, we were taking them out fast. There were lots of Pokemon you could use, as it had lots of weaknesses: water, ground, rock, ghost and dark. That being said, I avoided water because Hisuian Typhlosion knows Wild Charge. While it doesn’t have STAB, that move will greatly hurt any Kyogres you might want to move. I used my Primal Groudon and did plenty of damage, including soloing a Typhlosion later on, without losing any Pokemon. The only tricky move was Shadow Ball, only because it does a TON of damage, while also being kinda spammy, so the raid boss will throw a lot of them out. Not a problem if you are using Mega Tyranitar or Houndoom, trickier if you are using something else.

Is Hisuian Typhlosion useful? I, uh, guess? Thing is, we already have a good fire/ghost type in the form of Chandelure. It’s alright as a ghost type but it only has the fast move Hex, despite learning Shadow Ball. We have better ghost and fire types, and the additional typing doesn’t really remove any weaknesses. Hisuian Typhlosion also can’t seem to learn Blast Burn, which is the best fire move normal Typhlosion has. Overheat and Fire Punch are alright, but Blast Burn is the superior fire move. Not having Shadow Claw is also pretty damaging, since it can’t really outdo the likes of Gengar or Giratina either.

Overall, it’s a nice Pokemon to have, but it’s nothing special. Plus, the shiny sucks.