The Team Rocket Leaders Are Actually Worth Fighting Now!

After three months of awful shadow Pokemon, the Team Rocket Leaders now actually have good Pokemon! In fact, all three of them have pretty good Pokemon! It looks like it’s time to equip those Rocket Radars I’ve been holding on to.

With the Halloween Rocket Takeover event, we got three new Pokemon from the Leaders of Team Rocket, and Giovanni is also back with a new shadow Legendary. Sierra is back with Sableye, Arlo is skulking around with Bellsprout and Cliff is now everyone’s new best friend with Dratini. All three Pokemon have the potential to be shiny, and are all useful in their own way.

Out of the three, Dratini is almost certainly the most useful. Not only is Shadow Dragonite a monster in PvP, but it’s also a damn good option in PvE. While Mega Rayquaza is essentially busted, shadow Salamence and Garchomp are only a tiny but better, but Dragonite has slightly more bulk to it. Sableye and Bellsprout on the other hand are more PvP-orientated. Shadow Victreebell is a bit flimsy, but it’s an amazing Grass type that does a TON of damage in Great League and Ultra League. Grass types tend to do pretty well since they easily counter Water types which are very common in PvP. On the other hand, Sableye is actually the ONE Pokemon that you don’t want as a shadow Pokemon. It works better as a purified Pokemon, and uses Return as a coverage move. Sableye’s unique typing means it has few weaknesses, but it also doesn’t have very many moves. Somehow, Return just somehow works really well on Sableye.

The weakest of the three is probably still Arlo. He always seems to get the worst Pokemon, except back when he had Scyther as his starter. While Bellsprout is good, it’s not game-changing, the way the other two can be. Plus, Decoy Grunts, the grunts that sometimes appear instead of Giovanni, also have shadow Bellsprout, and they are easier to farm than Rocket Radars. I don’t know WHY they’ve always had Bellsprout though.

As for beating these guys, well, I’ve had a surprising amount of luck using Lucario as my starter Pokemon. Power Up Punch is so good at getting rid of shields, and Aura Sphere is also pretty handy. You can also use Poliwrath, who also has Power Up Punch, as well as Ice Punch, which is also a spammy move. Melmetal is also a great option, as Rock Slide charges up fast and does alright damage, even without STAB.

Unfortunately though, Giovanni isn’t doing as well. After three seasons of Regis, Giovanni now has Regigigas as his shadow Legendary. Regigigas is unfortunately not very good at all. Normal type Pokemon generally don’t have a use because Normal isn’t super effective against anything. While a purified Regigigas with STAB and Return might sound cool, it’s sadly still not very good, and it doesn’t even really have a good fast move. There are perhaps a couple of niche movesets and bosses that Regigigas might prove good in, but it’s so niche that there’s no point. Plus, if you want really high but neutral damage, Shadow Mewtwo and Mega Rayquaza do it better.

So yeah, for once, it’s actually worth using Rocket Radars. They’re all pretty good, for a change. And good riddance to Arlo’s old Aipom. That thing is even more useless than a lowest-stats-possible shadow Regigigas. Which, ironically, is pretty much what I got.