There is a system to the madness of the battles in Pokémon GO, be it against grunts and their leaders, Pokémon in gyms, etc (PVE), or other Pokémon GO players (PVP). Mastering the Pokémon GO combat system requires practice, skills, and an element of luck.
Whether you want to depend on practice, skills, luck, or all of them to get consistent wins, there are basics that every Pokémon GO player needs to know. The basics are simply about Pokémon-move effectiveness. With 18 different types of Pokémon moves currently in the game, it is important to know which Pokémon-move deals either super effective (double damage) to which Pokémon-type. Knowing these helps with your battle team whether during PVE or PVP.
Here is a simple breakdown of which Pokémon move deals super effective damage on which Pokémon type. In case you are wondering, Pokémon move refers to both a Pokémon’s fast attack and charged attack.
Super Effective Damage
To understand the Pokémon-types below, I list them in this order, attacking Pokémon-move: defending Pokémon-type. For example, Fighting-move Pokémon: Normal-, Rock-, Steel-, Ice-, and Dark-type Pokémon means a Pokémon with fighting-move deals super effective damage to normal-, rock-, steel-, ice- and dark-type Pokémon. Now you got one down already. The others are as follows
- Flying-move Pokémon: Fighting-, Bug-, and Grass-type Pokémon.
- Poison-move Pokémon: Grass-, and Fairy-type Pokémon.
- Ground-move Pokémon: Poison-, Rock-, Steel-, Fire-, and Electric-type Pokémon.
- Rock-move Pokémon: Flying-, Bug-, Fire-, and Ice-type Pokémon.
- Bug-move Pokémon: Grass-, Psychic-, and Dark-type Pokémon.
- Ghost-move Pokémon: Ghost-, and Psychic-type Pokémon.
- Steel-move Pokémon: Rock-, Ice-, and Fairy-type Pokémon.
- Fire-move Pokémon: Bug-, Steel-, Grass-, and Ice-type Pokémon.
- Water-move Pokémon: Ground-, Rock-, and Fire-type Pokémon.
- Grass-move Pokémon: Ground-, Rock-, and Water-type Pokémon.
- Electric-move Pokémon: Flying-, and Water-type Pokémon.
- Psychic-move Pokémon: Fighting-, and Poison-type Pokémon.
- Ice-move Pokémon: Flying-, Ground-, Grass-, and Dragon-type Pokémon.
- Dragon-move Pokémon: Dragon-type Pokémon.
- Dark-move Pokémon: Ghost-, and Psychic-type Pokémon.
- Fairy-move Pokémon: Fighting-, Dragon-, and Dark-type Pokémon.
As you can see, Normal-move Pokémon are not on the list above. This is because they are NOT super effective against any Pokémon. On the other hand, you see that Fighting- and Ground-move Pokémon have the most coverage against the other Pokémon-type. They both are super effective against 5 other Pokémon types respectively.
This is the basic thing you need to know about the Pokémon GO combat system. You then need to learn more about how to use Pokémon with double Pokémon-move, team composition, and many other things you need to know to become a pro in Pokémon GO battles.
