Why Night Shade is better than Seismic Toss on a Gengar

[itdrcorp]

Why is Night Shade better than Seismic Toss?

Night Shade only has 24 pp while Seismic Toss has 32. So it would seem Seismic Toss is better right?

The only two reasons I can think of is:
1) perhaps Night Shade cannot be countered?
2) Night Shade as a better looking animation?

Any ideas why do people prefer Night Shade over Seismic Toss on Gengar?

 

[Heika]

Since counter only works on normal and fighting moves, Night shade can't be counter, even If getting counter is not a pressure for gengar itself, it could nail things on the switch.
+ Neither seismic toss nor Night Shade suffer from immunities (Night shade affect normal and psychic types and seismic toss affect ghost types)

 

[Hipmonlee]

It's because of counter. Counter is a much more dangerous move than you might think. It isnt simply a matter of seismic toss itself being countered directly but also counter being used on subsequent turns.

EG. if you seismic toss a hypno and it OHKOs you with a CH psychic. On the next turn, if you were to send out a sleeping pokemon, then the hypno could use counter and would deal twice the damage that psychic did. IE 646 damage.

If you seismic toss an exeggutor that puts you to sleep. You switch to chansey and before chansey can attack eggy explodes. Then you send out say tauros and your opponent sends out chansey, if you switch your tauros out that turn, chansey could counter and OHKO whatever switches in.

Stick with Night Shade. I've used Gengar a hell of a lot, and you almost never run out of PP..