I’ll tease out how much it could swing things in a moment.īut first, let’s take a look at what this move does for Ho-Oh, debuff or no debuff. 2.00 DPE is a sign of an excellent PvP move, and while the debuff is not guaranteed, it’s going to go off a LOT and turn the tide of battle even further when it does.

Additional Effects: 50% Chance to Decrease Opponent Attack -1 Stage.

Thankfully, not only did Niantic drop the cost as I hoped, but they even buffed the damage too! Let’s see what we have ended up with. Didn’t even have to touch the damage, which was not all that impressive for a big flashy signature move, but workable. I practically begged for the cost to drop to 65 energy. So yeah, 70 energy would have been awful. How bad does it stink? Observe the Master League meta win/loss record. Sacred Fire, costing 70 energy, means we now need one extra Incinerate (20 energy) but only need 5 energy from it. Earthquake (65 energy) + Brave Bird (55 energy) takes exactly 6 Incinerates to charge. The reason this thing is so bad is because of the cost. I try not to drag my Twitter presence into these analyses very often, but in this case I talked about this in a long-ish topic there. Not because Earthquake is necessarily better in a vacuum, but because of that cost. Like, bad enough that I think everyone that had a choice would have kept on using Earthquake, which deals the same 120 damage (albeit without STAB bonuses) for 5 less energy (65). As noted above, our first hints about its stats were a dreadful 70 energy for only 120 damage. Yeah, it’s really been that long.) Meanwhile, Kyogre and Groudon give it the stink eye as they STILL await their own signature moves (already coded into the game years ago!)… but that’s a story for another day.Īlright, Sacred Fire.

(Ho-Oh arrived in GO in November 2017, folks.

So first up, we have HO-OH, finally receiving its signature move SACRED FIRE after over four years. SOME BIRDS JUST WANT TO WATCH THE WORLD BURN 🔥 Ho-Oh Fire Flying

Sacred fire classic wow