Trainers, your strength and determination are truly unparalleled. We’re excited to announce that you’ve unlocked Houndoom’s Mega Evolution and Mega Houndoom raids! These will be available on Tuesday, September 29 at 1 p.m. PDT. pic.twitter.com/QKDkPCQgOY
— Pokémon GO (@PokemonGoApp) September 24, 2020
Mega Houndoom is coming to Pokemon Go on the 29th, when it will join the raid scene. While a popular Mega Evolution with good overall stats, how does it actually fare in Pokemon Go?
Mega Houndoom's Performance
In most cases, we as Pokemon Go players tend to instantly gravitate towards the "best" option for a given raid and turn away from lesser viable choices whenever possible. Afterall, why should we use Golem as a rock attacker when we have Rock Wrecker Rhyperior? This has long been a fact of life for us, but Mega Evolution is changing this for the first time since raids dropped!
First of all, let's look at Mega Houndoom as a Fire attacker and a Dark attacker:
Top Fire Type Attackers sorted by DPS, including Mega Evolutions.
Top Dark Type Attackers sorted by DPS, including Mega Evolutions.
The conclusion is pretty easy to see:
- On the Fire side, it's outclassed by the two Charizard formes, many Shadows, and even Reshiram currently. It's good, but not exceptional.
- As a Dark attacker, it is among the top DPS options with a very solid TDO in comparison to the other DPS options for the type. One of its top rivals is Tyranitar, which sports less DPS but a huge TDO by comparison
But we have another potential hidden advantage here: it takes different mega energy. If Niantic can give us a very viable way to farm energy, possibly even mega energy for multiple species at once, Mega Houndoom becomes even better as a Dark Type mega due to the fact that it's likely to be cheaper to Mega Evolve than Mega Tyranitar. It also becomes even more viable as a Fire Type Mega Evolution, as it will provide another choice for any given raid that calls for it.
We don't know exactly how mega energy generation will be handled in the future, but this could make Mega Houndoom viable long-term despite other Mega Evolutions that can surpass it on paper.
Conclusion
With the annual Halloween event, Mega Gengar raids, and Giratina - Origin Forme on the near horizon, Mega Houndoom is a perfectly viable investment for the near future. While the Gamepress Teams still has issues with the way that Mega Evolution is still handled, this is one that has the potential to be very useful in the near future and will likely give a nice return on investment moving forward.
