Flying

Ghost Attacks

Grass

Ghost attacks are a diverse, peculiar lot.

Ghost attacks are most effective against their own type, which is unique among all Pokémon attacks.

They are also completely ineffective against Psychic and Normal Pokémon, even though they made a three-part series of episodes in the cartoon about how Ghosts are the best way to beat Psychics.

However, the above applies only to standard Ghost attacks, and the only standard Ghost attack is Lick. More on this below.

Confuse Ray is extremely accurate and, if it hits, will confuse the victim 100% of the time. On a fast Pokémon, this can be a devastating attack. See the Confusion page for more information on the effects of confusion.

Unlike other Ghost attacks, however, Confuse Ray does not directly damage the victim.

Lick is the only Ghost attack that takes type modifiers into account. It has a chance to paralyze, and so in that way is like a really under-powered Body Slam. But it's just ridiculously bad.

Since Ghost attacks are Physical (which is also a little strange), Lick is based on the Attack score, which is considerably lower than the formidable Special scores of the Gastly series. And not only is it a terribly weak attack, it's only super-effective against other Ghosts. Since all Ghosts are half-Poison and can also learn powerful Psychic attacks (which are strong against Poison types), Lick is just about as pointless as an attack can be.

Night Shade does Calculated damage, and is not affected by type modifiers. It is therefore effective against both Normal and Psychic Pokémon (and is likely the reason most people have difficulty believing regular Ghost attacks cannot affect Normal or Psychic Pokémon), much in the way that Seismic Toss can affect Ghosts.

Night Shade always inflicts 1 HP of damage for each Level of the attacker. So a L100 Gengar will always do 100 HP of damage with Night Shade, if it hits, regardless of any defenses that the victim might have in play or any debilitating effects of other attacks it might be suffering from. Note that the attack must hit normally for the damage to take place.

Because of this, Night Shade is an excellent (and accurate) finishing move for whenever the victim has fewer HP than your Pokémon's Level, and is also useful for when the victim is employing strong defensive moves.

If you're a big fan of this attack, you might consider using the Seismic Toss TM on Gengar, since it has 5 more PP and is functionally identical, though somewhat less cool. Those extra PP can come in handy when you're trying to wear down a Resting or Recovering opponent.

If you really don't want to lose the coolness factor, you can console yourself with the knowledge that while Seismic Toss can be Countered, Night Shade cannot. Well, it's something!

At any rate, there's clearly no question here...Night Shade will almost always be more damaging than than Lick. However, you'll probably want a strong Special-based attack on your Gengar to use as your primary damage inflictor.

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