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Pokemon GO: Top 20 Most Powerful Battle Moves

Pokemon GO: Top 20 Most Powerful Battle Moves

By Dominik Bosnjak
July 26, 2016

A couple of days ago, a tenacious group of Pokemon GO players discovered some hidden game mechanics which significantly changed the way competitive players started looking at Gym battles. Namely, although pure Combat Power (CP) is great to have, a more important factor when ranking the viability of certain Pokemon in battle is their attack speed, i.e. the amount of damage-per-second (DPS) they can dish out. Given how attack speed also depends on the attack itself, mobile gamers came up with a list of most viable attacks-or Moves, as Pokemon GO refers to them—in the game. You can check them out below, listed by DPS in descending order.

Best Quick (Standard) Moves in Pokemon GO:

  1. Psycho Cut (Physhic, 26.32 DPS)
  2. Mud Shot (Ground, 21.82 DPS)
  3. Scratch (Normal, 20 DPS)
  4. Lick (Ghost, 20 DPS)
  5. Water Gun (Water, 20 DPS)
  6. Metal Claw (Steel, 19.05 DPS)
  7. Shadow Claw (Ghost, 16.84 DPS)
  8. Wing Attack (Flying, 16 DPS)
  9. Pound (Normal, 14.81 DPS)
  10. Frost Breath (Ice, 14.81 DPS)

Best Charge (Special) Moves in Pokemon GO:

  1. Body Slam (Normal, 32.85 DPS)
  2. Chross Chop (Fighting, 30.94 DPS)
  3. Dragon Claw (Dragon, 30 DPS)
  4. Aqua Tail (Water, 21.81 DPS)
  5. Stone Edge (Rock, 22.18 DPS)
  6. Power Whip (Grass, 21.43 DPS)
  7. Iron Head (Steel, 20.5 DPS)
  8. Gunk Shot (Poison, 20.5 DPS)
  9. Brick Break (Fighting, 21.09 DPS)
  10. Sludge Bomb (Poison, 19.71 DPS)

As you can see from these two lists above, certain Psychic Pokemon like Alakazam are awesome in regards to normal attacks but you might as well completely ignore their special meters as their Charge attacks simply aren’t worth it in the current version of the game. Also, while some trainers with a bunch of mythic Pokemon may be laughing at your Rattata, it’s you who’ll be laughing in the end after Rattata body slams their pocket monsters into oblivion in an instant given how it can quickly charge up its special meter.

Unfortunately, there still isn’t a way to teach your Pokemon normal and special attacks. All of them are randomly assigned to a Pokemon once you’ve caught it and once again randomly change each time a Pokemon evolves. Granted, there may be some kind of a naming trick for keeping or getting specific moves—not unlike the one allowing you to choose Eevee’s evolution—but if such a cheat exists, players are yet to find it.