Is Shadow Claw a good choice in competitive battling?

Question

I mean, 70 base power is really bad. Lets say its Excadrill vs Cofagrigus, Excadrill has Shadow Claw and Earthquake. Shadow claw= 70x2=140 Earthquake= 100x1.5=150. That's not keen. Should I be using Shadow Claw at all in Competitive battling? If so, when?

Answer 1

There are quite a few times you can use Shadow Claw. You mention a base power of 70. Night Slash has a base power of 70. Fire Punch, Thunder punch, and Ice Punch only have base powers of 75 and yet they are fairly common.

Anyway.

Shadow Claw can be used on Zekrom for coverage, when the battler doesn't want to be locked into Outrage. Can also be used on Blaziken to take down Giratina and Arceus-Ghost. BandFerro uses Shadow Claw. There are several options in which to use Shadow Claw, although you will sometimes find that there is a preferred move for coverage or to take advantage of STAB or a particular stat.

Comments

'Can also be used on Blaziken to take down Giratina'

What was that you were saying earlier, about Giratina saying "B**ch pls" to Blazekin's Shadow Claw? :P

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Can being the key word, I amended at the end by saying
"although you will sometimes find that there is a preferred move for coverage or to take advantage of STAB"

So yeah, Giratina still says B**ch plz to Shadow Claw by Blaziken.

Answer 2

Shadow Claw is good on Pokemon who's main STAB can't hit Ghost types, or not very effective against Ghost or Psychic types. For example, most ExtremeKiller Arceus sets carry Shadow Claw to hit Giratina, which ExtremeSpeed and Brick Break can't hit (and E-Quake sometimes).

So it depends on how effective the Pokemon's go-to attack is against Psychic or Ghost types.

Hope I helped! :)

Answer 3

Shadow Claw really isn't a move to use for coverage as it only hits Ghosts and Psychics super-effectively. A good physical Ghost would be the best fit, but even then there are really only two physical Ghosts that come to mind (Golurk and Dusknoir) and they generally lurk way in the lower tiers and should be using Shadow Punch anyway. If you were to use Excadrill better coverage moves are out there like Rock Slide or Brick Break.

TL;DR
Nah, Shadow Claw doesn't have great coverage or power compared to other moves.

Comments

Excadrill can't learn Stone Edge.

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Erm, Rock Slide.

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Don't forget about Banette.

Answer 4

I usually use those moves like shadow claw for the critical ratio as well as STAB.