Ho-Oh
Attack
Defense
Stamina
Best Movesets
Analysis
Even after years since its release, and with Sacred Fire being introduced into the game, Ho-Oh remains just disappointingly adequate in raid viability. Its strong stats and resistances allow it to be used in many raids, but it is often outclassed by many other Fire-type options. Sacred Fire's parameters are nothing to write home about, being not much better than the existing Fire Blast. Ho-Oh is best used against Grass- and Bug- type raid bosses, as they are weak to both Incinerate and Brave Bird, its best attacks. Additionally, if you are lucky with the Hidden Power roulette, Ho-Oh is actually a fairly competent Flying-type attacker. However, bosses where Flying is optimal is rather scarce.
For those who bought the GO Tour: Johto ticket, Apex Shadow Ho-Oh is available as one of the rewards in the Masterwork Research. It comes with the exclusive move Sacred Fire+, and said move becomes Sacred Fire++ when Ho-Oh is purified. With this move, Apex Purified Ho-Oh becomes a competent Fire-type attacker, with a performance surpassing Moltres. However, purifying Apex Shadow Ho-Oh results in a significant decrease in DPS despite the move's upgrade. As Apex Shadow Ho-Oh is one of the best Fire-type attackers in the game, and players will only receive one, purifying it is not recommended.
Offense
- Incinerate is the best fast move available due to STAB.
- Extrasensory is better for effectiveness vs. Fighting-types specifically.
- Hidden Power is only viable if it is Flying type. Otherwise, Incinerate or even Extrasensory are better options.
- Steel Wing is mostly useless.
- Sacred Fire++ is exclusive to Apex Purified Ho-Oh, and makes Ho-Oh a competent Fire-type attacker. However, Ho-Oh's performance drops when it is purified.
- For all other Ho-Oh, Sacred Fire remains the best Fire-type charge move at its disposal. However, its performance is rather lacking.
- Brave Bird is the best charge move available, and benefits from STAB.
- Fire Blast is much slower and doesn't perform as well, except against Ice or Steel-types. It is also outclassed by Sacred Fire.
- Solar Beam is the charged move of choice against Water, Ground, and Rock-type Pokemon, but lacks STAB.
- Earthquake is a bit of an awkward move on attack for Ho-oh and doesn't do much for it.
Incinerate is Ho-Oh's only viable fast move option due to its high STAB damage and energy generation, though it is quite cumbersome being a 5 turn fast move. Extrasensory and Steel Wing are both inferior choices by a considerable margin, though they don't suffer nearly as much from the slow animation that Incinerate has. Hidden Power is not a great attack in PVP, but it can have some niche utility on Ho-Oh if given the proper typing.
Brave Bird demands quite a bit of energy, but is the cheapest charge move available to Ho-Oh. While its self-debuff makes it somewhat risky, its high STAB damage makes it considerably threatening if unshielded. Sacred Fire is a very powerful STAB move with a 50% Attack debuff chance, and burns down Steel-type targets. Earthquake provides coverage against Rock types and certain targets such as Zekrom. Solar Beam and Fire Blast are very expensive in terms of energy, but the former provides coverage against Water and Rock Pokemon that Ho-Oh can struggle against, while the latter is best avoided because it is completely outclassed by Sacred Fire.
Ho-Oh can only join the Great League if obtained as a research breakthrough reward from long ago and traded afterwards to reroll its IVs. This makes Ho-Oh very costly, but also not great due to the the CP cap.
