"Shadow & Purified Pokemon need to be Reworked"

#PokemonGO: I'm sure most of you have noticed, but... shadow and purified pokemon are just not very useful overall. How many of you have bothered to power up and use any? I bet not many!And this is a real shame, since I think shadow & purified pokemon look great and have a lot of potential! I believe Niantic should rework them, and I'm curious about what the Silphroad community thinks of this.Speaking primarily as a PvP player, I think it's strange that the rewards from Rocket battles (a PvP-esque activity) are actually so ill-suited for PvP.Shadow Pokemon are very stardust-expensive! I actually don't think this is a big problem, but then when you consider this in conjunction with...Shadow Pokemon cannot learn community day moves. Just why...? Wouldn't it be sweet to use a Shadow Charizard, Venusaur, etc in PvP? They look amazing! But without their CD moves, they just aren't very good...Frustration is a horrendously bad charged move! In fact, it's the worst one in the game! Worse than Struggle! What in the world...?You can't even tm away Frustration! It's just there to permanently cripple Shadow Pokemon, I guess... I suppose Niantic made it this way for lore reasons or something, but it's really sad and frustrating (lol) that this results in Shadow Pokemon being completely useless.Well, it's a shame that Shadow Pokemon are useless even though they look so cool... but at least we have Purified Pokemon, right? Well...Return is a bad charged move overall.It costs 40 energy and deals 50 damage. For reference, this is the same as Ominous Wind, but OW also has a 10% chance to greatly increase your pokemon's Atk and Def! To compare Return to another Normal-type charged move, Body Slam costs less energy to deal even more damage (35e for 60d)!To be fair, Return still has some niche uses in pvp, mainly for pokemon that only have access to energy-expensive charged moves (e.g. Banette), that use a fast move with poor energy-generation (Gloom & Gardevoir), or that need a neutral coverage move (any of the Eeveelutions). This is the slim silver lining.Return is overwritten by Community Day moves. I think this is much better than the situation with Frustration, but it's still disappointing for PvPers who want both moves! Ideally (IMO), Niantic should have it so that (for example) if a player unlocks a second charged move on an Ivysaur and then evolves it during the December CD, it receives both Frenzy Plant and Return.Purified Pokemon have their IVs (Atk/Def/Stam) increased by 2 across the board. This is beneficial in PvE, where you always want higher IVs, but it's often detrimental in Great and Ultra League PvP, where you generally want low Attack but high Defense & Stamina IVs. I don't think this is a big problem - just sometimes annoying.Purified Pokemon have their combat level boosted to 25 when you first purify them. This is convenient (saves stardust) for some pokemon, but it also entirely prevents other pokemon from being used in Great League PvP! Many pokemon, due to their base stats, will be above 1500 cp when they're at level 25... and thus unusable in the (by far) most popular PvP league. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯Trading Purified Pokemon counts as a special trade, even if both players have the purified pokemon registered in their dex. Just why...? Niantic apparently thinks your purified zubat is valuable and as deserving of a special status as a shiny or legendary pokemon, LOL. Being restricted to trading just one purified pokemon a day doesn't make any sense, in my humble opinion...All of this is just so irritating. Don't get me wrong, I've been loving battling Team Rocket - it's a lot of fun and a nice shakeup! But why do Shadow & Purified Pokemon have to be so bad...? So much missed potential!I realize I only talked about them in the context of PvP, but I don't think they're very useful in PvE either. The slight IV and level boost is nice, I suppose. And you can theoretically hunt for perfect IV pokemon via Rocket battles (although tbh, I've only found one that will purify to 100% out of 400+ battles). But other than that, there's similarly no point. Return is even more useless in PvE than in PvP!tl;drShadow & Purified Pokemon look cool, but they're mostly useless overall. Niantic should rework them!I'm curious about what all of you think and if you agree, so please share your thoughts below! via /r/TheSilphRoad https://ift.tt/2pQl17q