Chandelure

Chandelure

            Hello, my name is Jaehong Min, and I’m also known as “Purity” or “PurityVGC” on the internet. Today, I’m going to do a Pokémon Analysis on Chandelure. Chandelure was a quite popular Pokémon in the VGC ’11 metagame, and was used for many purposes such as to set up Trick Room, Choice variants, and etc. So let’s get into this!

Overview

Chandelure is a Ghost/Fire type Pokémon, with a massive Special Attack base of 145. With the new typing in Gen VI, Game Freak completely buffed the Ghost type, making Ghost attacks only immune on Normal types, and resisted by Dark types. In my opinion, the value of Fire types have gone up greatly in the VGC ’14 metagame, since there are a lot of Steel types here and there, which counters the very common core of Fairy and Dragon types, and a lot of Grass types that counter one of the most common Pokémon ever in the metagame, Rotom-W. In addition to that, Fire-types also have a resistance to fairy-type attacks. Since Chandelure packs both of these types, it will do a lot if you just slap it on a team. Its abilities are Flame Body, which could burn Physical attackers that target Chandelure, Flash Fire, which could be a great ability for any Special Attacker with Mega Charizard Y being so common, and Infiltrator, which can ignore screens, substitutes, and more. I won’t list Life Orb Chandelure since I don’t think Life Orb is viable on Chandelure. So let’s get to the sets, shall we?

The Sets

Chandelure @ Choice Scarf

Ability: Infiltrator

EVs: 92 HP / 244 SAtk / 172 Spd

Timid Nature

- Shadow Ball

- Fire Blast/Overheat

- Heat Wave

- Energy Ball

This is the Choice Scarf Infiltrator Chandelure I run. This Chandelure counters many things like Choice Scarf Gardevoir, Gengar/Mega Gengar, Substitute Leftovers Aegislash, Ferrothorn and more. I wanted to use Chandelure on my team because of its superb typing, but I couldn’t find out how to use it to fit my team. I looked at the previous Chandelure that were used in previous events. Almost everyone used Fire Gem or Life Orb, but I didn’t think either one was viable this year, considering the fragility of Chandelure. Then I discovered some people used Choice Scarf. With the speed boosted from the Scarf and with the 172 speed EVs, it can outspeed Timid max speed Mega Gengar, and the rest is self explanatory.

Chandelure @ Choice Specs

Ability: Infiltrator/Flash Fire

EVs: 188 HP / 60 SAtk / 40 SDef / 220 Spd

Timid Nature

- Shadow Ball

- Fire Blast/Overheat

- Heat Wave

- Energy Ball

Choice Specs Chandelure is also nice. Chandelure’s Special Attack stat is massive, so if you slap on those Choice Specs on Chandelure, you’ll only need any Special Attack investment to around 60. I had a lot of trouble with Substitute Aegislash, so if you have Infiltrator, you can bypass the substitute. If you have Flash Fire, you can switch into something like a Heat Wave from Mega Charizard Y, and get a boost in Special Attack.

Pokémon that Support/Benefit from Chandelure

Meowstic-M @ Sitrus Berry

Ability: Prankster

EVs: 252 HP / 124 Def / 120 SDef / 12 Spd

Bold Nature

- Safeguard

- Swagger

- Quick Guard/Sunny Day

- Charm

I found this Meowstic to work extremely well with Chandelure, or with any Goodstuffs team. Charm can completely cripple physical attackers that threaten Chandelure, and Swagger can give special attackers a chance to not move, which keeps Chandelure safe.

There are a lot of other item/spread choices for Chandelure, this is just a few. An example is Leftovers Sub/Protect defensive Chandelure, which works really well for me. Feel free to try any of these spreads that I listed. I hope my article helped you, even if you’re not looking to use Chandelure or Meowtsic in the near future. Thank you for reading, and feel free to share opinions in the comments below!

-Jaehong-