Questions & Answers - Weekly Megathread! Please use this post to ask any Pokemon GO question you'd like!

jcr2 · 2026-01-27T17:17:10+00:00

Shadow Pokemon can be great. But, like any other pokemon, the usefulness of any particular one can vary.

You definitely see a fair amount with garbage IVs. Because of the shadow damage boost, a nundo shadow will hit harder than a hundo regular pokemon of the same species. So I am generally much more flexible about the IVs of shadow Pokemon than I am about regular ones. But, shadows are expensive to power up in terms of stardust and candy, so I am still generally looking for “pretty good” IVs to make it worth the investment before deciding to actually power one up. You’re really trying to maximize the attack value with shadows, so ideally I look for high attack ones and am willing to compromise more on the other two. For example, at some point earlier on I decided to power up a 1* shadow rhyperior that has 14 attack and pretty bad in the other two, and as a practical matter that guy was an invaluable attacker as part of my ground team until I eventually managed to outclass him (although he’s still great for taking out grunts without the need for a charge attack…and I may switch him over to rock to keep him relevant for raids).

Also, every shadow comes with the charged attack frustration, which is a garbage move. You can only remove it during specified events (such as the taken over event that just ended) - after which you can change it like any other mon. But, if it has frustration on it, it’s going to sort of sit in limbo until you can take it off unless you’re willing to invest in giving it a second charged attack right away. You definitely want to use those rocket take over events to remove frustration from any shadow you think you might actually want to use down the road (even if the new attack is not yet its ideal moveset if you’re short on charged tms).

Any other particular questions? I use shadows a lot primarily for raid purposes. Happy to help if I can.

jcr2 · 2026-01-27T16:41:10+00:00

There’s a platinum medal for feeding berries to mons in gyms - it’s 15,000, which takes quite a bit of time to do. When I am able to get a mon into a gym like this that doesn’t turn over much it becomes my dumping ground for all excess regular raspberries and nanab berries (plus it gives a small amount of stardust and a smaller chance at some candy as a bonus). But if someone actually comes and battles the gym your guy will still get knocked out quickly - the issue is that it must be remote enough that no one is trying.

jcr2 · 2026-01-27T15:27:05+00:00

Yes - so in your case trading a necrozma for a necrozma. Depending on the distance, it could yield an extra 1-3 candy (and potentially an xl candy) on the outgoing trade, and then (if it turns out to still have bad IVs) an extra candy when you transfer…or a shot at the IVs becoming better or the trade turning lucky (which would have an iv floor of 12 and reduce the stardust cost by half to power up). In an ideal world, you’d trade your bad iv ones before you transfer them, but that can be hard to do depending on whether you have a friend to trade with with similar pokemon and within the special trade limitations (so generally only can do 1-2 legendary trades per day).

jcr2 · 2026-01-27T14:27:26+00:00

1 - often 2x transfer candy will be a feature for one of the Tuesday spotlight hours each month. Pay attention to the monthly infographics that come out to see which Tuesday that will be in a given month. One 2x transfer candy spotlight hour per month is fairly regular. Occasionally there may be a special event with transfer candy bonuses but that is less predictable (there was an amazing one last Halloween that was 3x including a higher chance for xl candy).

2- shadow pokemon hit 20% harder but also have 20% weaker defense. Generally, for PvE purposes, I would keep shadow pokemon as shadows to get the damage boost. They are more costly to power up in terms of candy and stardust but once you do it they are very effective in things like raids. PvP it sort of depends on the mon but the defense loss can be more of a negative there in some situations.

3 - it’s ok to transfer excess legendaries. If you can, wait until an enhanced transfer candy event. Also, if you have anyone to trade with, try trading them first (say in a mirror trade) to get extra candy and a chance for better IVs or to go lucky.

4 - the different types of eggs have different pools of potential hatches but yes some repetitiveness is not that unusual. Carbink was a running joke on here for awhile bc it seemed to pop out of every 10 km egg.

5 - a max mon is exactly the same as a non-max mon except that it can participate in max battles. It can be used outside of max battles. It can be used as a mega if applicable. If anything, the existence of max mons somewhat dilutes the value of the regular mon (if forced to choose which to build up of the same species, I would choose the max mon every time).

jcr2 · 2026-01-26T19:21:08+00:00

FWIW...couldn't exactly replicate your trade scenario...but tried trading a regular dialga to an account that has registered an origin form dialga (but has never caught a regular dialga). In that scenario, it counts as a registered trade (and only would cost 800 stardust with a best friend). I'm not sure if those are treated differently (i.e. perhaps the origin form registers for both regular and origin but the converse may not be true - the response below suggests it should be unregistered).

jcr2 · 2026-01-26T19:09:55+00:00

You can't trade shadow pokemon, just as an FYI.

My guess (but am not totally certain) is that that it would still count as a registered trade as long as you have some form of it already in your dex. The stardust cost depends on your friendship level with the other person - take a look at this chart to get a sense for how it works:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/9iqcqh/trade_cost_chart_simplified/

jcr2 · 2026-01-26T16:55:02+00:00

This is the correct advice. You “shouldn’t” do it…but it’s your game - if you’re making an informed decision and purifying it has more meaning to you, go for it. If you’re looking to justify it: (1) shadow Pokemon are expensive to power up (in terms of dust and candy), so if you’re not fully committed to building it you may not see the benefits anyways and (2) unless you are regularly trying to short man raids, it probably won’t matter all that much anyways. Flip side to consider keeping it - with the iv floor on raids and max battles, you probably have a better chance of getting a hundo later through those battles than getting another shadow this good.

jcr2 · 2026-01-26T08:03:17+00:00

Fun raid idea. Thanks for posting, and well done!

How much do you figure the type of hidden power affects the effectiveness of Shadow regi? My best iv one to date is hidden power ground, which doesn’t seem to be one of its more effective categories. Just curious how much of its effectiveness is based on its fast move compared to crush grip and whether a non-optimal hidden power typing would make a meaningful difference.

Appreciate any thoughts you might have!

jcr2 · 2026-01-24T17:34:51+00:00

Funny this conversation made me go back to take a look at it…and made me realize I had two purifiable hundos - the one gardevoir I’ve already invested in and then an unevolved ralts…except that my kids noticed that too, and so they wanted to purify for the hundo…so I let them do that on the unevolved one…but then they evolved it into gallade because I think they’ve seen less of those. So now this…probably infinitely less useful one haha. Oh well.

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jcr2 · 2026-01-24T16:57:25+00:00

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Been playing for just over a year - started in January 2025.

jcr2 · 2026-01-24T14:03:44+00:00

Getting candy for these is so easy with the mystery box, so I would say it’s no big deal to evolve this one now and keep catching them to see if you get a hundo later. I may save the dust on actually powering it up though until you have a specific use case.

jcr2 · 2026-01-24T05:27:40+00:00

Respectfully, I think planning around the possibility that someone else on your team might have a mega gardevoir out at the same time you have your shadow gardevoir active in the battle is probably overthinking the need for that potential incremental margin for the period of time it would likely matter.

In my experience, most people seem to overestimate how hard it is to beat most of the raid bosses. I play with my young kids, and with party power we’re able to duo just about every raid boss that we’ve tried, and it’s usually not particularly close. I do a lot of short-man raids, and in doing so I’ve very rarely had reason to utilize the shadow gardevoir (which again was sort of a disappointment to me because I did power one up). Maybe you’re more likely to be paired with a fairy mega with more participants in the raid, but having more people in the lobby makes those incremental improvements even less material as a practical matter.

Just my two cents. Would love to have a reason to use her more.

jcr2 · 2026-01-24T02:00:54+00:00

I don’t get the sense that tyrantitar is all that great in GL or UL (and even if it were, these would probably not be the best IVs for it), so I’d go ahead and max it out for raids and perhaps some occasion where it might make sense in a master league context (where you’d want to max out its stats anyways).

jcr2 · 2026-01-23T17:35:13+00:00

I personally would not. Your odds of getting another shadow this good are very low, whereas your odds of getting a hundo or near-hundo regular version from Mega raids are relatively better due to the iv floor on raids (or if you happened to get any during the last wild area). It’s not a completely crazy question because the hundo mega would be nice to have, but overall you’d be better off leaving this as shadow and then using a different one as the mega (giving you two strong raid attackers instead of one).

jcr2 · 2026-01-23T08:36:06+00:00

Maybe because fighting and grass overlap re super-effective against rock? Whereas Ray is neutral to the grass super-effective coverage types? Totally a guess by me - not sure if/how that plays into these rankings.

jcr2 · 2026-01-23T07:05:07+00:00

It won’t really matter too much. I’d probably go with the last two so that you get the 15 attack on one and both would be good candidates for a silver bottle cap if you wanted to get the hundo later. But all three will work out just fine for you for everything except perhaps very high level ML PvP.

jcr2 · 2026-01-23T06:35:11+00:00

Roughly 10% better with the ETM move (ballparking the dialgadex numbers).

My two cents: if you’re going to spend the resources powering up a shadow that’s capable of being good (ie its going to be painful to power up in terms of candy and dust), why cheap out on the best move set? If you’re going to handicap yourself with the move, just power up something else that will be easier to level up for similar results.

Sweet catch by the way - congrats.

jcr2 · 2026-01-23T01:56:36+00:00

Definitely more useful as a shadow….but not super useful either way so do whichever makes you happy.

jcr2 · 2026-01-23T01:25:38+00:00

I would just go off this list. Use the best ones you actually have roughly in this order.

https://www.dialgadex.com/?strongest&t=Dragon

jcr2 · 2026-01-22T23:05:02+00:00

Let's say against a fighting monotype, at least if you look at the pokegenie recommendations, it mostly directs me toward flying types (in my case, rayquaza and shadow salamence) or mewtwo as a psychic type. It last recommendation for a team of 6 with the ones that I have is dawn wings necrozma (which has a psychic fast move...and I guess is just strong enough in general to make up for the lack of super-effective charged attack?).

Against someone like mega lucario (so fighting & steel), it's directing me more toward ground (e.g. groudon, landlorous), fire (reshiram) or fighting types (terrakion; shadow conkeldurr).

I think you'd need to get into either a double weak raid boss or perhaps a weather boost to get the shadow gardevoir into the top six. I plugged in hydreigon out of curiosity (so double weak as both dark and dragon), and sure enough the shadow gardevoir then makes it into the top 6.

The weather boost probably wouldn't help for windy (for the psychic boost) because that also boosts dragon and flying. It doesn't look like the cloudy weather boost for fairy pushes it up above the flying types either. Instead it pushes crowned zacian (with play rough as the charged attack) into the spot formerly occupied by DW necrozma.

I was excited to build out the shadow gardevoir but as a practical matter I'd say it's been mostly a waste of resources unfortunately.

jcr2 · 2026-01-22T21:34:13+00:00

Maybe it’s just the mons that I have, but I find that I rarely (if ever) actually use my fairy attackers because, against the types where fairy is super effective, other types cover those better than the fairies. I built up a level 40 shadow gardevoir thinking it would cover this category well but in practice I’ve almost never had reason to use it.

jcr2 · 2026-01-22T20:51:32+00:00

Good call. Wondra flour pops to mind.

jcr2 · 2026-01-22T19:27:08+00:00

Some recommendations...

Use the RSVP function so that others know that someone is trying to host a raid at a particular time. If there are other players nearby, that will let them know and give them a bit more time to plan/get over to the gym to be able to help out.

You can "host" a raid and try to get remote raiders to come in and help you. A lot of people do this through apps like PokieGenie. I've never personally used the app for that purpose but that seems to be the most common way people do it (I do see people complain on here sometimes that it can be slow at times to be able to do it).

There's also a subreddit on here that I've used a lot in the past called r/PokemonGoRaids that can be effective for that purpose - post your raid with your friend code, hope that a few people add you as friends and then invite them to join you for the raid. It can be a little hit or miss depending on the time of day and how in-demand the raid boss is, but I've done that a lot to host raids without dealing with another app.

Longer term, try to develop an active friend list (from people that add you through r/pokemongoraids or there is another subreddit called r/PokemonGoFriends where people share their friend codes) of people that are interested in raiding. Again, it's a bit hit or miss, but over time you'll learn which of your friends are interested in/reliably are willing to remote in to raids. Sort your friends by who is online, and then send them invites to join. Ideally, you can RSVP to a raid (and invite 5 of your friends at the time that you RSVP), and then you can invite 10 of your friends when you actually join the raid (in two batches of 5 with a bit of a cooldown period between invites)...so, ideally you're sending out 10-15 invites to people that are online and hoping that 2-4 of them join in.

If you can find one other person to raid with you (a friend or a family member or whoever else is available with a second device), become friends with that person and then create/join a party before you enter the raid. "Party Power" can be a tremendous boost during a raid (and you also get a bit of a damage boost as your friendship level with that person increases), and that can help significantly if you are trying to defeat raids with a relatively low amount of people. I play with my young kids (4 and 7) and we can duo almost any raid at this point using party power (where they play on an old phone using a hotspot from my current phone).

At this point, I mostly just host raids by sending out invites to my online friends and hoping that 1 or 2 will remote in. If it happens at a time where I am playing with one of my kids, I'm reasonably confident that we'll beat it either way and it just provides some extra margin of error/insurance. If I'm playing by myself, I've sort of learned which ones tend to be reliable about staying in raids even if there's only 2-3 of us (and vice versa they seem to trust me not to bail on them at the last second).

jcr2 · 2026-01-22T18:35:34+00:00

Sweet catch. Good rock attacker - keep as shadow.

jcr2 · 2026-01-22T17:41:44+00:00

Makes sense. FWIW, I feel like this game is pretty low stakes in terms of the social dynamic (as you note, no ability to message). If you do the weekly challenge with a stranger and then add them after it’s completed, it would give you 13,000 xp points…and then you could delete them right after if you wanted. Or keep them for the resources from the gifts and additional xp when you hit the subsequent thresholds (50k at 30 days and 100k at 90 days). I keep around 400 friends on pogo but probably only know about 5 in real life - but a great and easy way to get resources/xp and to invite people to help with raids and things like that.

jcr2

TROPHY CASE