>>49013292If you're just starting out and are an absolute midget among midgets that for some reason can't operate either pokegenie or a discord to piggyback off of remote invites then you should firstly fuck off and die and secondly consider purifying some raid counters without fully investing in them.
If they're nearly max statted as shadows you should probably keep them as shadows until you can use them as shadows later, but there's a small argument to be made for purifying solely to bump a mon to level 20 and then just leaving it at that to use for raids and to throw out as gym trash until you find something really good. That argument should only be made if you can only spare the 1/3/5K dust it takes to purify. You should be saving until you can answer whether or not something is worth powering up for yourself.
Shadows are almost always better for PVP, which you would know if you had been playing for more than a day.