GO Battle League analysis: The psuedo-legend of Tyranitar

Tyranitar is one of the most notorious and respected Pokemon in the entire franchise. How does it stack up in Pokemon Go’s GO Battle League, though?

With a massive maximum CP of 3,834 and excellent stats to compliment it, Tyranitar, on paper, should be a ferocious option. In reality however, it isn’t.

Typing not as good as it sounds

The Johto pesudo-legend has a dual dark and rock typing. Sounds good, right? Not exactly.

Dark and rock-type moves have many useful advantages. However, when you combine them for a type of Pokemon, there are not only plenty of resistances but vulnerabilities, too.

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This means while you can match up well, it is also easy to be on the receiving end. Its weaknesses include bug, fairy, grass, ground, steel and water. Additionally, Tyranitar has a double weakness to fighting-type moves.

Conversely, it is resistant to dark, fire, flying, ghost, normal and poison. It does have one double resistance though – to truly even them both out – which is psychic attacks.

Bulbapedia

Tyranitar is the only pseudo-legend from the Johto region…

Lacking purpose

When you look at the likes of Togekiss, it has an obvious use case – to defeat the ultra-powerful Giratina. Similarly, Metagross is the perfect foil for Togekiss. Nothing stands out for Tyranitar, though.

It’s most advantageous strengths come against commonly used ghost and psychic-type species. However, firstly, there aren’t that many commonly used Pokemon of these types.

The ones that come to mind are Mewtwo, Metagross, Lugia and both Giratina forms. While Tyranitar is perfect for Mewtwo, elsewhere there are better counters.

You could argue there are Pokemon down the max CP scale that may tell a different story but Tyranitar, with a high max CP itself, is best suited to Master League. This makes it strangely redundant – at least in the Pokemon Go PvP scene.

Moveset – lacking energy

In addition to lacking a clear purpose in GO Battle League, its moveset doesn’t help at all. Tyranitar has three Fast Moves available:

• Bite – 4 DPT, 2 EPT
• Iron Tail – 3 DPT, 2 EPT
• Smack Down (Elite) – 4 DPT, 2.66 EPT

None of these are particularly exciting and make Tyranitar more dependent on its Fast Move than a lot of trainers would like. This problem is exacerbated by the importance of Charge Moves in GO Battle League. You could utilize Smack Down but given its place in Pokemon Go, we’d recommend not wasting an Elite Fast TM on it.

The Armor Pokemon has three Charge Moves available as well:

• • Crunch – 70 damage, 45 energy
• Fire Blast – 140 damage, 80 energy
• Stone Edge 100 damage, 55 energy

With such low energy gains from its Fast Move, Crunch is the obvious choice. Fire Blast and Stone Edge while decent moves will take too long to generate and with the risk of Protect Shields still being in play this is far from ideal.

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This leaves most Tyranitar’s relying on dark-type moves. This is fine against ghost and psychic-types but as discussed above there are better alternatives such as Darkrai and Hydreigon. It also makes it predictable for your opponent.

The likes of Metagross may be underrated but unfortunately Tyranitar falls into the overrated category – at least for those who aren’t experienced in GO Battle League. Who knows though, Niantic may decide to give Tyranitar a much needed buff in the future.