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Fire Pokemon are not as common as Water types, but they still serve a useful purpose as one of the best counters to the powerful Steel types. In this guide we’re going to go over our picks for the best Fire Pokemon in Pokemon Sword and Shield. Let’s dive right in shall we?
Sadly, both of Charizard’s mega forms don’t return in Pokemon Sword and Shield and subsequently, Charizard’s viability in the competitive scene takes a major hit.
Still, Charizard has at least one thing going for it in Sword and Shield, a Gigantamax form and a powerful G-Max move: G-Max Wildfire. It’s a hard-hitting Fire move that continues to damage an opponent for four turns after using it, adding to its total damage.
Even still though, there are better Fire Pokemon and G-Max in Sword and Shield.
Salazzle, while not the most powerful Fire Pokemon in Sword and Shield, still has a few useful niches.
First, its typing of Fire/Poison is still unique as of Sword and Shield. Second, while its base stats aren’t the highest, it does have strong distribution in the two most important areas: Speed and Special Attack.
Finally, it still has its signature ability: Corrosion, which allows it to poison Steel and Poison types that would otherwise be immune.
Salazzle is niche, but it at least does some things that only it can do.
Chandelure is among the hardest-hitting special attacks in the game with 145 base Special Attack which can be leveraged even more if you take advantage of its ability, Flash Fire, which allows it to absorb any Fire attacks and boost its own Fire attack power by 50%.
Using Chandelure effectively requires some prediction. Ideally, you want to bait a Fire attack and switch Chandelure in to eat it instead.
A Choice Scarf will help make up for its very average Speed, but there’s not a whole lot you can do about its so-so move pool, which is what ultimately holds Chandelure back a bit despite having such raw power.
Coalossal has a terrible defensive typing in Fire/Rock. It’s what basically has made Macargo irrelevant since it was introduced. However, Coalossal is a much better Pokemon than Macargo because it has very useful abilities and a very diverse move pool.
It has everything you could ask for making it extremely unpredictable: Stone Edge, Spikes, Rapid Spin, Stealth Rock, Scald, Will-O-Wisp, Earthquake, Iron Head and more. You can surprise players by hitting them with attacks they wouldn’t expect, but you do need to avoid its 4x weaknesses to Water and Ground as much as possible.
It can also use its Signature Ability, Steam Engine to great effect. Steam Engine maxes out Coalossal’s Speed when hit with a Water or Fire attack. Obviously try not to eat the Water attack and come in on a Fire move instead if possible.
Finally, Coalossal can go Gigantamax and use G-Max Volcalith which is a powerful Rock attack that does damage for four turns afterward similar to G-Max Wildfire.
Centiscorch is a very cool, powerful, and surprisingly bulky Bug/Fire type. It kind of reminds me of an Attack-oriented Volcarona but it does have some stark differences of course.
Centiscorch has a very nice movepool which includes Fire Lash, Knock Off, Leech Life, and Power Whip. It also has Flash Fire which allows it to absorb Fire attacks and boost its own power with Fire attacks by 50%. Considering Centiscorch would otherwise take 1x damage from Fire attacks because of its Bug typing, this is extremely useful.
The problem Centiscorch has is that it has a 4x weaknesses to Rock attacks and worse, Stealth Rock. This has to be dealt with if you want to use Centiscorch so try and keep at least one Pokemon that can clear hazards on your team otherwise you’re going to lose 50% of your health on switch in if they are up, ouch.
Ninetales isn’t really a great Pokemon, but like Pelipper it has one very useful niche: automatic sun on switch in for teams built around taking advantage of harsh sunlight.
Aside from this though, Ninetales is a very one-dimensional Pokemon with an extremely limited movepool other than having access to Hypnosis and Nasty Plot, but Ninetales has a hard time surviving long enough to take advantage of the latter.
Cinderace is arguably the best starter Pokemon this generation even without its hidden ability, Libero which is a clone of Protean.
Libero is not yet obtainable but when it does expect Cinderace to shoot up in usage as it allows it to switch its type before using a move, guaranteeing every attack hits with a STAB bonus, and making it harder to hit for super effective attacks.
Aside from Libero which technically isn’t a thing yet, Cinderace is extremely fast, has high attack, and has awesome signature moves in Court Change and Pyro Ball. Court Change swaps hazards. Meaning if you have Spikes on your side, you can swap them over to the other side instead and flip the script.
Pyro Ball is a just a very hard-hitting (120 power), fairly accurate (90%) Fire attack that has a chance to burn.
Its main weaknesses right now is that mono-Fire isn’t the world’s greatest typing and its defenses are very shoddy, so you need to be very careful about what attacks you allow Cinderace to eat.
The Rotom forms keep chugging along in Pokemon Sword and Shield. Rotom-Heat form is just as useful as ever, and plays pretty much the same role it always has.
It uses its unique and deep move pool which retains some of the useful moves usually seen on Ghost Pokemon such as Pain Split. It can Volt Switch out of trouble, and has support moves such as Will-O-Wisp and Defog.
In order to get the Fire typing on Darmanitan’s Galar form (which is a lot better than the regular form) you need to be running Zen Mode as an ability. That’s not a given though because its other ability, Gorilla Tactics which is found on its mono-Ice form is quite good too.
But if you do decide to run Darmanitan with Zen Mode, you’ll find it more helpful than its non-Galar form. Zen Mode this time further boosts its stats into even more Attack and Speed increasing them to an insane 160 and 135 respectively and adds a Fire type creating the unique combo of Ice/Fire.
While an argument can be made that you’re better off going with Gorilla Tactics and just sticking with Ice, there’s no doubt that Darmanitan is still extremely formidable as an Ice/Fire Pokemon and is one of the hardest hitting and powerful Fire types in Sword and Shield.
That does it for our choices of the best Fire Pokemon in Pokemon Sword & Shield. What are your favorites? Let us know in the comments below.
For more tips and tricks, be sure to check out our Pokemon Sword and Shield wiki guide.
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