On Not Bothering With Shadow Ho-Oh

Today (at least, the day on which I’m writing this article), there’s an event in Pokemon GO where Shadow Ho-Oh is appearing in shadow 5-star raids. The boss itself isn’t that difficult, and can be taken out with two players with strong counters, with Party Play making that even easier. Sure, you need a bunch of Purified Gems, to stop the raid boss from having double attack and double defenses, but overall, it’s not that hard a boss. Ho-Oh has a double weakness to rock, and there are a LOT of Pokemon which can deal a lot of good rock type damage. Between Shadow Rampardos and Rhyperior, Mega Tyranitar and Aerodactyl, Primal Kyogre, normal Rock Wrecker Rhyperior and Party Play, Ho-Oh goes down somewhat easily.

However, I haven’t bothered. I’ve got enough Shadow Ho-Ohs. Shadow Ho-Oh isn’t even that good, mostly because it’s mostly defensive. While it does have decent moves these days, what with finally learning Sacred Fire with an Elite Charge TM, Ho-Oh’s main use is in PvP. There are stronger fire types that do more damage. That’s not to say that Ho-Oh is bad, it’s definitely a lot better now that it can learn Incinerate as a decent fast attack, but there’s better, faster stuff out there. Ho-Oh is best used as a tanky final Pokemon on the end of your team. Although, personally, I prefer Heatran for that role, especially now that it has Magma Storm and I have a 98% shiny one.

And that’s assuming you have a good one. I actually have two shiny, lucky Ho-Ohs, but neither of them have particularly good stats. With Shadow Pokemon, sure, they’re arbitrarily better than normal Pokemon, but their IVs fluctuate much more wildly. The Ho-Ohs I could have gotten in these Shadow Raids, the base IVs are 6/6/6, meaning the majority of the ones I’d catch would be 1-star at best. Only my secondary account has good luck like that, with its 100% Shadow Lugia. Which, somehow, is even less useful than Shadow Ho-Oh. After all, psychic types are all overshadowed by Shadow Mewtwo, and even just normal Mewtwo.

In fact, I have a Shadow Ho-Oh that’s far better than any Shadow Ho-Oh I could have gotten over this special weekend. A while back, I bought a special research that allowed me to unlock Apex Shadow Ho-Oh and Lugia. While the two Legendaries I got ended up with basically the lowest stats possible, these Pokemon are a billion times better than normal Shadow Ho-Oh because they have Sacred Fire+, a special move unique to these Apex Shadow Pokemon. They also have additional sparkly effects on them, to make them look cooler. Okay, sure, I haven’t actually leveled up either of my Apex Pokemon, but still, there’s no point farming candy for Pokemon that aren’t utterly amazing. It’s not so much the raid passes that are the issue, it’s the farming of purified gems in order to calm down the raid bosses – you need at least 8 per raid, you only get a handful back and the rest have to be obtained by doing Team Rocket fights

There’s also the randomness of these raids. I’ve only seen three Shadow Legendary Raids so far, and I NEED to get people to help me with them. While I think I MIGHT be able to pull off a Shadow Ho-Oh on my own with my two accounts, I’d have to use Party Play, and Party Play has been weirdly buggy lately – back when we had Wyrdeer in raids, the Party Power button didn’t even appear in raids.

That being said, there is still a reason to go out, and that’s Team Rocket stuff. Shadow Kyogre is now available via the seasonal research, and it is going to be a BEAST. Literally the best water type, behind Mega Swampert and Primal Kyogre. I just hope my one isn’t awful. While Shadow Ho-Oh is definitely skip-able, I very much recommend going out there and getting Shadow Kyogre while you can.