Shadow Darmanitan has been released during the Rocket takeover last week, from March 27-31. Shadow Entei will also be in Shadow Raids on weekends in April, with the first raids coming up this Saturday, April 6. In this article, we will take a look at how well both of them function in raids as fire-type attackers.
Main Points (TL;DR)
Shadow Darmanitan is a top-tier fire-type attacker, only trailing Fusion Flare Reshiram among non-megas at the same Pokemon level. (If you dodge or never relobby, it can be even better than FF Reshiram.) It also generally outperforms Shadow Chandelure by a tiny little bit, albeit without the ability to double duty as a ghost attacker.
Shadow Entei is in a “lesser top tier”: It’s better than the vast majority of non-mega fire attackers — except the 3 mentioned above. Its gap with them is small, but consistent.
- Additionally, Shadow Entei performs very similarly to Shadow Moltres (and Apex Shadow Ho-Oh with SF+), but it’s IV-dependent. With the same IVs and level, the fire birds take an almost negligible lead on average. In practice, your “best” shadow legendary fire type is probably the one with the highest IVs.
My analyses of other types are in this spreadsheet. You can also follow me on Twitter (X) and Threads!
Charts
More details on comparisons
Shadow Darmanitan vs. Fusion Flare Reshiram:
- Shadow Darmanitan has higher DPS, and thus would have produced more damage output if both live forever, or in some practical situations where the boss has low attack or weak moves.
- However, Reshiram has almost twice as much bulk, more than enough to make up for the lower DPS in average estimator (an empirical metric accounting for faints and relobbies).
- On rare occasions (7% in my dataset), Shadow Darmanitan virtually “collapses” compared to Reshiram, likely because a single charged move OHKOs it. The most notable cases are Hyper Beam Genesect, Earthquake Regice and Close Combat Mega Lucario.
Shadow Darmanitan vs. Shadow Chandelure:
- Overall, they perform similarly enough that I wouldn’t stress about it. The “better” one is the one that you can afford to reach a higher level, the one with better IVs, and the one that’s the most useful to you. But with all these equal, Shadow Darmanitan is slightly better on average.
- The main differences are due to typing: Chandelure’s added ghost typing makes it vulnerable to ghost and dark attacks (with Shadow Ball Mega Lucario being the most extreme case), but also gives it a huge boon against fighting and normal moves (such as Focus Blast Regis and the aforementioned Hyper Beam Genesect).
- Otherwise, their raw powers and bulks are extremely similar: the median cases only have a 1% difference in performance, in favor of Shadow Darmanitan.
These factors suggest building a mixed team with Shadow Darmanitan, Shadow Chandelure and Fusion Flare Reshiram of varying quantities is likely a good idea.
Shadow Entei vs. Shadow Moltres:
- Honestly, you can take whatever I said above regarding Shadow Darmanitan vs. Shadow Chandelure, and apply them here. The two shadow legendaries have very similar stats and raw power (Moltres higher DPS, Entei bulkier), and the difference mostly comes down to level, typing and IVs in practice.
- All else equal, Shadow Moltres has an advantage, but by a mere 1-2%.
- As shown in this post and the previous Shadow Moltres analysis, a 11/11/11 of either shadow legendary is worse than 15/15/15 of the other (at L40).
Imgur Links and Additional Charts
General attacker charts: ASE and ASTTW*
Comparisons:
* indicates additional charts that are not in the main post.
