[Guide] Best skills and moves for the legendary Shadow Ho-oh in Pokemon GO

Jun 24, 2021

The legendary Pokémon Ho-oh is available in shadow form. By completing “A Seven-colored Shadow”, players will get a chance to capture Shadow Ho-oh and the task set will be available until Sept. 1.

Shadow Ho-oh

The Shadow Ho-oh is a Fire/Flying type legendary Pokémon. Although its weakness against Rock-type Pokémon is double, Ho-oh has an advantage over many types, and as much as there aren’t that many good Fire-type Pokémon, Ho-oh is a decent pick. Ho-oh’s basic stats are quite high up in the tier list. Its attack and HP are ranked in the 100s and its defense is ranked 31st.

One of the frustrating parts of leveling up your Shadow Ho-oh is that it’s stuck with the skill Frustration. Although it’s a pretty good Pokémon to include in your deck, if the only charged skill you can use on the Pokémon is Frustration, the utility is reduced significantly. There are a few solutions to this: Adding a new attack skill by using up stardust and Ho-oh candy, purifying the Pokémon (which is less preferred as users normally want to keep the shadow bonus), or waiting for the next Team Rocket GO event. Team Rocket GO events don’t come around that often so you would need to collect enough charged skill TMs to give your shadow Pokémon the skills you need.

*We can't change Frustration just yet in the shadow form*

Best skillset for Ho-oh

The best skillset for Ho-oh is Incinerate and Brave Bird, whether it’s PVP or PVE. Using Incinerate for the fast move is a must as it has the highest DPS and charges the most amount of energy. Brave Bird requires the least energy and the highest DPS. The best secondary charge move for PVP is Earthquake since you can have three different attack types in Fire, Flying, and Earth. However, since Earthquake is a legacy move, you would need to use an Elite Charged TM. If you don’t want to use up an Elite Charged TM and if you only want to use the Ho-oh in PVEs, the best choice would be Fire Blast.

Overall, the Shadow Ho-oh will become a decent Pokémon for both PVPs and PVEs only if you could learn new charge moves for it. Until you can change Frustration, take walks with your Shadow Ho-oh as your buddy since it’s dangerous to go alone, and to collect more Ho-oh candy.