A PvP Analysis on Shadow Palkia, Shadow (and Purified!) Diggersby, and other Fashion Week Taken Over Shadows

Hello again, Pokéfriends! The latest GO Rocket Takeover Event is upon us, this time targeting Fashion Week! (Though honestly, with the way that event is running this year, many of us may be okay with that. 🤭) So today we check in on the newest batch of Shadow Pokémon and see how they might perform in PvP. Today's analysis may be a bit more streamlined than usual, as ol' JRE is feeling pretty under the weather, but let's do this... after our customary Bottom Line Up Front, of course.

B.L.U.F.

  • Shadow Palkia represents a nice sidegrade to non-Shadow, which I think is actually a sneaky upgrade based on the strength of its new wins against the established meta. That said, Origin Palkia remains almost a strict upgrade to non-Origin Palkia of any variety, and it's often not all that close.

  • The biggest winner overall has to be Diggersby, who has new utility as both a Shadow AND as a purified specimen! I consider it the highest priority chase during this event.

  • The Shadow starters are okay, but none drastically move up from their current roles in PvP. Samurott remains okay in certain metas, Serperior remains awesome, and Emboar... we don't talk about.

  • The other newly Shadowed Pokémon frankly remain below the competitive cutoff. Boooo.

  • All-new Grafaiai and Shroodle have a little potential but don't really stand out versus other available Poison types.

Alright, on to the detailed analysis!

TIDAL WAVE, OR JUST ALL WET? 🌊

Starting as we usually do with the new Shadow Legendary: Palkia. No, you probably still don't want it in Great League (where it becomes eligible for the first time) or Ultra League. But that's okay... you're here for a look at Master League anyway, right?

Obviously, Origin Palkia and its special move Spacial Rend is king of the Palkias, and I won't tease this out... it remains so even with Shadow Palkia entering the chat. But Shadow is, at worst, an intriguing sidegrade to non-Shadow.

In 1v1 shielding, Shadow Palkia is basically a straight sidegrade, now overpowering Dawn Wings, Yveltal, Altered Giratina, and Dragonite, as opposed to the Zarude, Rhyperior, Metagross, and Waterfall Primarina that non-Shadow beats. Yes, the win/loss numbers are the same, but I think there is more value overall to the Shadow wins, no? However, neither can match Origin, which beats ALL of those (all eight of the two groups of four listed above) PLUS Zygarde and Palkia (and Shadow Palkia) itself.

There IS one thing regular (and Shadow) Palkia can outrace with shields down that Origin Palkia cannot: Zygarde, as Spacial Rend is not quiite powerful enough to knock it out, while Draco Meteor is. But otherwise it's again advantage Origin, which beats Dialga, Groudon, and Palkia. As for regular Palkia versus Shadow Palkia, the advantage here falls to non-Shadow, which can beat Dusk Mane, Altered Giratina, Yveltal, and Ursaluna, whereas Shadow's only unique wins are Mewtwo and Solgaleo... and Origin beats both of those too.

Shadow finally flexes in 2v2 shielding though, beating everything non-Shadow can except Mewtwo and adds on Solgaleo, Dragonite, and Shadow Rhyperior. It even compares pretty well to Origin Palkia, who beats everything Shadow Palkia can except Shadow Rhyperior, and adds on only Palkia (regular or Shadow) as its own truly unique win. Not bad!

In short, if I had to pick one, I would probably prefer Shadow Palkia to regular, based not entirely on the number of new wins, but more on the value of those new wins. But really, if you want Palkia in Master League, you want Origin and its Spacial Rend.

Only other thing I'll point out real quick before moving on is that purified Palkia with Return is interesting too, and obviously quite a bit less expensive to max out. Return doesn't have the self-nerfing drawback that comes with Draco Meteor, and beats all the same stuff in 1shield and 2shield, and is sidegrade material with shields down, adding on Tapu Bulu and enemy Palkias, though giving up Zygarde, Altered Giratina, and Yveltal that Draco Meteor can do in.

A NEW START? 🌿️‍🔥💦

I want to group all the new Shadow starters together, though I think only one is worth spending a decent amount of time on.

  • Starting with TEPIG and its later evolution EMBOAR. The latter has almost no use in PvP, having pretty nice charge moves but being locked behind unimpressive fast move Ember, tanking its viability. And Shadowification really does nothing to help with that. If you want a fiery Fighter, while it's not ALL that much better, just stick with Blaziken instead, including in Ultra League, where Emboar (regular and especially Shadow) just flop. For what it's worth, though, little Tepig is actually pretty awesome in Little League, if you didn't already know, with Ember doing much better work there alongside buffing Flame Charge and widely neutral spam with Body Slam. So I'm happy to report that Shadow is an overall upgrade, unfortuntely dropping bulkier neutral stuff like Mandibuzz, Umbreon, and Vigoroth, but gaining Vulpix, Nidoqueen, Golbat, Drifloon, and most impressively, evil Bronzor to more than make up for those few losses. That'll do, Tepig... that'll do. 🐽

  • SAMUROTT has far more use in PvP than Emboar, and far less competition as a Water type that deals a ton of Bug damage with Fury Cutter and Megahorn (alongside obvious Community Day move Hydro Cannon for its Water damage output). That said, it's still rather niche, better suited for Limited metas than Open play. I'm gonna call the new Shadow version a viable sidegrade, adding some good names in 1shield like Cresselia, Mandibuzz, Bibarel, and the Shadow variants of both Alolan Sandslash and Quasgsire, but losing to huge names like Clodsire, Shadow Feraligar, Dunspace, and Diggersby in the process. However, similar to Palkia, the results swing wildly depending on shields.... One place where Sammie excels -- having two excellent closing moves -- is with shields down. However, Shadow Samurott flounders a bit, gaining Bibarel and Shadow Quagsire but dropping all of the following: Carbink, Clodsire, Lickilicky, Shadow Drapion, Ariados, and the new (and awesome) Dachsbun. On the plus side, Shadow is far better than non-Shadow in 2v2 shielding, gaining Diggersby, Bibarel, and the Shadow versions of A-Slash, Feraligatr, and Quagsire, and giving up only Carbink and Dewgong to do it.... In Ultra League, the differences are pretty miniscule, with non-Shadow uniquely beating Greninja in 1shield, and Shadow uniquely besting Shadow Golurk with shields down, but otherwise no big differences between them.... Overall, not much to get excited about here, but if there's a meta where you would already want Sammie, you may want to scoop up the Shadow version to have on hand as well.

  • And then there's SERPERIOR, easily the best Gen V starter in PvP. A lot of this, however, comes down to its excellent bulk, the highest among not only all fully evolved Grass starters, but among ALL fully evolved starters in the game... period. (Only middle evolutions Servine, Bayleef, and Wartortle surpass it, and not even any of them drastically so.) As a Shadow, it obviously loses some of that bulk to gain higher Attack prowess, but how does that affect its performance? Well, overall, it's a little bit worse, as often seems to happen with very bulky Pokémon. ShadowPerior overpowers the new, on-the-rise Dachsbun, but otherwise it's all bad news in 1shield, with losses to Lickilicky, Dunspace, Primeape, and the also new Galarian Corsola, all of which non-Shadow can handle. Now that said, Shadow IS a bit better than non-Shadow in 2shield (losing Malamar but gaining Lickilcky and G-Corsola now) and seemingly quite a bit better than non-Shadow with shields down (dropping Licky again but potentially picking up Cresselia, Clodsire, Malamar, and Chesnaught), so perhaps this isn't such a downgrade after all? As with Samurott, it's probably worth getting while you can, though not sure if it will supplant non-Shadow. I will close by saying it's not really worth the grind to push it up into Ultra League, though... it's generally a little worse than non-Shadow or, at best, a sidegrade that struggles against Feraligatr and sometimes even Ampharos.

ODDS AND ENDS 🕊️🗑️

Very briefly, two other Shadows you can mostly forget about....

  • SWELLOW was legit interesting in PvP not too long ago, with Aerial Ace and Brave Bird at its disposal... but was gutted by the nerf to Wing Attack due to having poor bulk and needing the extra energy Wing Attack used to give it. Swellow IS notably better as a Shadow, but really it's just an even more inferior Pidgeot than ever. Just run Pidgeot and its Feather Dance and superior bulk that make it work so much better.

  • Even worse is poor GARBODOR. It has interesting enough charge moves (Body Slam, Seed Bomb, Gunk Shot), but only halfway decent stats and only one halfway viable fast move in Infestation, leaving it in a pretty sad state that somehow gets only worse as a Shadow. Who is this one for, Niantic?

DIGGING DEEP 🐰

Okay, time for the main event: DIGGERSBY.

So first off, there's the question of whether Shadow Diggersby is better than regular Diggersby, and the answer is a pretty resounding "yes" overall, though far from a straight upgrade. In 1v1 shielding, Shadow Diggs gains Wigglytfuff, Bibarel, and the Shadow forms of Feraligatr (!!!) and both types of Marowak, Kanto and Alolan. But it does give up Greninja, Gastrodon, and Shadow Alolan Sandslash (with Powder Snow) to do it. In 2v2 shielding, Shadow uniquely takes out (in alphabetical order) Ariados, Bibarel, Gastrodon, Jumpluff, Mandibuzz, Shadow Alolan Marowak, and Shadow Quagsire. Shadow does fall a little behind in 0shield, with Shadow gaining Shadow Feraligatr and Shadow A-Slash, but losing Shadow Marowak, Shadow Quagsire, Chesnaught, and Ariados that non-Shadow Diggs can beat. That's a shame, but considering the other results, there is NO doubt that this is a Shadow Pokémon you want.

But that's not the really exciting thing, and not the reason I've been itching to get to Diggersby in this analysis. What really excites me is purified Diggersby, as that grants it Return... with the Same Type Attack Bonus (STAB), which most purified Pokémon don't get. More importantly, it provides a notable upgrade to another Normal closing move that many trainers have taken advantage of: Hyper Beam, an extremely powerful move with wide neutral coverage that will KO a ton of the meta if it lands, including against Flying and Water types that otherwise terrorize Diggersby, like Feraligatr, Talonflame, and Mandibuzz. Just look at how superior Hyper Beam is (alongside bait and coverage move Fire Punch) as compared to Scorching Sands, with losses to speedy Greninja and Sands-weak Carbink and Toxapex, but tons of new wins including (alphabetical order again) Ariados, Bibarel, Cresselia, Feraligatr (regular and Shadow), Guzzlord, Malamar, Shadow Marowak, Talonflame, and Wigglytuff, along with the mirror versus Punch/Sands Diggersby. That is kinda crazy improvement.

But now we have Return, which deals 20 less damage than Hyper Beam (130 rather than 150), but for 10 less energy (70 rather than Beam's 80). 130 damage is still plenty to KO a lot of things, especially coupled with the fast move damage that has led up to its use (typically 36 or so if you've rushed straight to Return, and obviously quite a bit more if you baited with another move first). Hyper Beam and Return have virtually identical Damage Per Energy (1.87 for Hyper, 1.85 for Return), so running Return is just as energy efficient as running Hyper Beam and often just as lethal. You can probaby see where I'm going with this, and yes... Return is an upgrade over even the awesomeness of Hyper Bean. But more than that, its cheaper cost makes for a new, winning combination by pairing it not with Fire Punch, but with Scorching Sands, something that just doesn't work with Hyper Beam. In those 1shield scenarios, while Hyper Beam alone can knock out Guzzlord (after proper Fire Punch baiting), Return with Fire Punch can add Mandibuzz and Shadow Quag, which is nice, but Return with Sands gets Carbink, Toxapex, and Greninja back.

Now it's not perfect, as we're really just talking about a sidegrade in 0shield -- Fire Punch/Return beats Cresselia, Greninja, and the mirror, while Fire Punch/Hyper Beam instead beats Feraligatr, Malamar, and Bibarel, and Scorching Sands/Return defeats Carbink, Cresselia, Greninja, Shadow A-Wak, and the mirror, while Hyper Beam/Fire Punch instead takes out Abomasnow, Bibarel, Chesnaught, Feraligatr, and Malamar.

And in 2v2 shielding, Fire Punch/Return may actually be the best, as it can beat everything that Fire Punch/Hyper Beam does plus Jumpluff and the mirror match, whereas Scorching Sands/Return now represents a slight downgrade with new wins against Carbink and Toxapex again, as well as the mirror, but new losses (as compared to Hyper/Fire Punch) versus Ariados, Bibarel, Dachsbun, Gastrodon, and Mandibuzz.

But overall, but only do want a good Shadow Diggersby, but a good purified Diggersby as well!

MONKEYING AROUND, POISON EDITION 🐒☠️

And finally, I would be remiss to not mention GRAFAIAI, the Poisonous new monkee coming to us in 12k eggs starting with this event, joining other 12k exclusives Sandile, Salandit, Larvesta, and Varoom... and this is more on the Varoom, "why did this make this artifically rare?!" side than the actually useful evolutions of Sandile, Larvesta, and especially Salandit. In fact, it has the same overall record as Revavroom... which is not a very good record. I think its best bet is likely in really Poison-heavy Cups where the fact that it can learn Mud Slap will be pretty huge, as it can beat every Poison type out there that isn't Flying, a couple of Bugs (Dustox and Beedrill), also slinging Mud (Grimer, Clodsire, Nidorina), or named "Roserade" with its super spammy Weather Balls. This also seems to be the best method to try out pre-evolution SHROODLE... in Little League. Though uh... Grimer and its double Ground moves is right there and better in Little League AND even Great League, soooooo... yeah. These two are not something I think you need to chase too hard for PvP purposes, folks.

IN CONCLUSION

Alright, that's it for today. Hopefully this is a help to you as you hunt! Until next time, you can always find me on Twitter with regular GO analysis nuggets or Patreon.

Stay safe out there, Pokéfriends, and beware what lurks in the shadows! 🌑 Catch you next time.