Pokemon You Should Definitely Give Second Moves To

Second Charge Moves have always been expensive in Pokemon Go. For a hefty chunk of stardust and a ton of candy, you can give your Pokemon a second Charge Move, opening up their available attacks and giving them more leeway. The problem is, aside from a handful of Pokemon, doing so costs a huge amount of stardust and don’t really offer much in return. Most of the time, second moves only really have a use in PvP, and are useless in PvE raids, Team Rocket fights and gyms.

That being said, some Pokemon do really well with second moves. Or their second moves are cheap enough to obtain without breaking bank. Here’s a few Pokemon you should consider.

Starter Pokemon

All starter Pokemon have a discount on their second moves. A second move costs 10,000 stardust and 25 candy. And since most starters appear regularly in events or have community days, having extra candy is pretty easy to do. Ideally, you want the second move to give the Pokemon more coverage and more options in PvP more than anything else.

But not all starter Pokemon are equal. Some get better moves than others. Blastoise does well with an Ice second move so it can hit dragons, which normally resist water. Swampert gets a variety of both spammy water moves and ground moves. Normally Earthquake is the best second move, but Muddy Water is an insanely fast and spammy charge attack that works great in Team Rocket fights.

Gyarados and Altaria

Magikarp and Swablu are two expensive Pokemon to evolve. Both require 400 candy and a lot of care and maintenance. Thankfully though, you can give them a second move for cheap. Gyarados has a lot of options, from Aqua Tail to Bite to Twister, all of which allow for different PvP builds. Altaria has less options, but it is EVERYWHERE in Great League.

Frankly though, you’ve spent 400 candy evolving (hopefully) your best Magikarp or Swablu. You only need 10 more candy. You might as well give them a second move. At the very least consider it for Gyarados, who works pretty damn well as a strong Water type attacker.

Machamp and Chandelure

Conkledurr and Lucario may both be better than Machamp, but neither are never going to be as common or as easy to obtain. All you need to get a Machamp is get 25 candy and trade a Machop, then get the free evolution. Since you’re not spending 100 candy evolving a Machamp, you can then spend 50 candy on giving it a second move. And that second move HAS to be Rock Slide. Rock Slide covers most of Machamp’s main weaknesses, such as Flying and Bug. But it also charges fast enough to spam against any Pokemon.

You could give a Machamp Cross Chop for spammy Team Rocket fights, but it’s honestly easier just to have a separate Machamp with Cross Chop instead.

Chandelure on the other hand is actually quite an expensive one. But Ghost and fire are regular counters against a myriad of legendaries, and Chandelure is an AMAZING Pokemon for both. It is a great Fire and a great Ghost type attacker with plenty of power behind it. Giving Chandelure two moves means you can save candy powering up extra ones for raids, and can just use Fast TMs to change the fast attack as needed.

Melmetal

I wasn’t going to put any legendaries or mythicals on this list. For 100,000 stardust and 100 candy, you are often better off powering up your Pokemon. Melmetal however is the exception. Although 100k stardust is still a lot, Meltan candy is at least accessible. Sure, it might take a while to get the start dust, but you can obtain a Meltan box at least once a week. This means that Meltan candy is genuinely really easy to get.

When it comes to moves though, Melmetal doesn’t have that many moves. The only STAB move he has is Flash Cannon, which takes forever to charge up. That being said, just like Machamp, Melmetal can learn Rock Slide, and Super Power comes in handy for PvP. I personally use Thunderbolt though as I don’t like the massive debuff Melmetal gets from using Super Power.

Riolu

Riolu’s probably the number one on this list for one reason: giving Lucario a second move is stupidly expensive. But because Riolu is a baby Pokemon, it gets the same discount starter Pokemon get. So, instead of spending 75k stardust and 75 candy, it only costs 10k stardust and 25 candy.

As for Lucario’s uses, it’s the best fighting type around, even beating out the three fighting type horse legendaries, all thanks to Aura Sphere. But it’s also insanely easy to give Lucario a strong covering move, Shadow Ball, which protects it against Psychic types. Alternatively, you can also give Lucario Power Up Punch, which makes him insanely useful for both PvP and Team Rocket fights. Heck, we have a whole list of different Lucario setups.

There are a few other Pokemon worth giving second moves to, but most of these work best in the Go Battle League. And even then, the moves there are to cover the Pokemon in question’s weaknesses. Most of these moves are expensive too, like Earthquake and Meteor Mash on Metagross or Iron Head and Draco Meteor on Dialga. The options here at least are cheap enough to get on a budget…