The best Shadow Pokemon in Pokemon GO

Now that Shadow Pokemon have dominated the Pokemon GO meta with their boosted Attack stats, which one is at the top?

As trainers may know, Shadow Pokemon get an Attack stat boost of 20%. The drawback is that their Defense is lowered by 20%. This puts many offensive Pokemon at a much stronger advantage than their original or purified forms have.

As a result, PvP has been loaded with Shadow Pokemon on trainer’s teams, and tier lists for Pokemon GO now have multiple Shadow Pokemon in high classes. So, since these Pokemon have become so potent, which of them is the most powerful?

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The best Shadow Pokemon in Pokemon GO

Image via Niantic

So, the answer to this question might not sound good to most trainers, since they might want to hear about other Shadow Pokemon that are more easily accessible. In this case, though, there’s no point in beating around the bush: the best Shadow Pokemon is Shadow Mewtwo.

Of course, it’s sadly one of the rarest Pokemon in the game, but with good reason. After the stat modification, Shadow Mewtwo gets a 360 Attack stat. That’s enough to singlehandedly beat Tier 3 Raid bosses and possibly Tier 5 Raid bosses too. Psycho Cut into Psystrike does a solid 27.69 DPS. Shadow Mewtwo also gets access to Shadow Ball, making it a perfect counter to other Psychic-type Pokemon.

While Psystrike and Shadow Ball are both excellent for charge moves, Shadow Mewtwo also has a wide movepool, making it harder to prepare for. It gets Flamethrower, Ice Beam, Thunderbolt and Focus Blast. This means that it can prepare for basically any threat.

Is a team weak to Landorus? Put Ice Beam on Mewtwo. Is a team weak to Blastoise? Put Thunderbolt on Mewtwo. This Pokemon can simply fix any holes a team might possibly have.

The bittersweet part of this is that, unless they beat Giovanni during the month Shadow Mewtwo spawned from beating him, most trainers probably don’t have Shadow Mewtwo handy. Fortunately, there are a couple other strong Shadow Pokemon that trainers have a better shot at catching.

Although strong Fighting-types are abundant nowadays, Shadow Machamp might be the best of them. In Shadow form, this Pokemon has about 281 Attack. This would seriously boost its Karate Chop into Dynamic Punch DPS.

Shadow Weavile is another very impressive Pokemon. It’s 243 Attack stat gets boosted to just under 292. This will make Snarl a highly effective fast move, as it deals 14 damage as well as charges 14 Energy. This will allow trainers to have powerful Avalanches ready to use more quickly.

One other Pokemon that can be a huge threat is Shadow Charizard. This is simply because, in the sun, Blast Burn can unleash a heavy amount of neutral damage. It only hits a little under 268 Attack in Shadow form (which is still really good), but because of the movepool, it will inflict high DPS regardless.