Mewtwo is Overrated. In Pokemon Go At Least.

When I first started doing raids on a regular basis, everyone was always like “where are your Mewtwos? Mewtwo is the best!” And I was always like “give me a break, I’ve never caught one!” or “I’m literally helping you fight a raid so I can catch one!”. As cool as Mewtwo is, as a Pokemon Go newbie, I was always recommended to load up on Mewtwos because Mewtwo was the damn best and I needed an army of them.

Nowadays, I’m sitting here at level 37 and I don’t have a single powered up Mewtwo. Well I have one that I started powering up then got bored of powering up because I wanted to power up a Giratina instead. I definitely don’t have one maxed out, mostly because I get my Pokemon to 2800-3000 and stop about there. As far as I’m concerned, it’s better to have several high CP Pokemon than one maxed out Pokemon.

But back to Mewtwo. Mewtwo isn’t a bad Pokemon. Not at all. He comes with a huge range of abilities and now has a pretty cool Armoured Form which, while being weaker than normal Mewtwo, is a bit bulkier and has even more attacks at his disposal. Because Mewtwo’s attack stat is so extremely high, this means that Mewtwo could be given almost any move and still do good damage with it, even if he doesn’t get any Same Type Attack Bonuses (STAB). Things like Thunderbolt Mewtwo and Ice Beam Mewtwo are genuinely pretty strong, and you can build a small collection of very strong generalists – doubly so if you gather your candies and give a Mewtwo two charge attack moves.

Mewtwo is also by far one of the most powerful Psychic types around, so if a fighting-type boss comes around (like the recurring Machamp in tier 3-4 raids) then Mewtwo is the one to pick.

Mewtwo is a great Pokemon and probably one of the best generalist Pokemon ever.

But Pokemon Go has no room for generalists.

Let’s look at the most recent level 5 raid bosses. We just had Groudon disappear (and I failed to get a shiny one, fucking typical since Groudon’s my favourite). Even when weather-boosted, we managed to defeat Groudon using four accounts. What did we use? Kyogres and Feraligatrs, with the odd Sceptile or Roserade. When Kyogre was in level 5 raids, we used electric and grass types, like Raikou, Roserade and Sceptile.

These are all Pokemon that we recently obtained in large numbers. Kyogre was the raid boss before Groudon so we got those a few weeks back. Raikou was given out like candy via Research Breakthroughs for about 6 months. Feraligatr and Sceptile both had Community Days that netted everyone a huge amount of candy. Roselias are common as fuck and only need a Sinnoh Stone to evolve.

Sure, you could get a Mewtwo with Thunderbolt and Ice Beam and whatever to fight against Kyogre and Groudon and possibly even Cresselia too, but that means having and powering one up.

My point is, it’s a lot easier to catch and power up specialists to do specific tasks. Kyogre and Groudon are recent examples, but Cresselia was around recently and most people used Gengar, Tyranitar and Giratina (wormy form, not stompy form). Gastly is a semi-common Pokemon that you can catch out in the wild, Tyranitar is a staple of level 4 raids and Giratina had been in the raid pool before Cresselia came out, so people had those ready to go as well. Heck, with the Raikou raid day and the recently-passed Entei raid day, we’d just been given a ton of Groudons and Kyogres for those raids too.

But on top of all of that, unless you managed to catch a Mewtwo in an Ex Raid (or in a very, very tiny window), you won’t ever have a Mewtwo with Shadow Ball, and that’s the best Mewtwo you can get. Even then though, Gengar and Giratina Origin Forme do Shadow Ball Mewtwo’s job just as well.

So you might as well spend a bit less effort getting a handful of good Pokemon of each type, so you can cover each fight with a bunch of dedicated fighters.

At least Mewtwo is a blast for PvP. You never know what he’ll bring to battle…