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Tier 6 Mewtwo Counters and Raid Guide: September 20, 2018

Update with new moves and hp

Mewtwo has had some dramatic changes including becoming available WITHOUT an EX raid pass as a Legendary raid boss starting today through October 23rd. While normally legendaries are called Tier 5, Mewtwo has been buffed with 50% more hp! This means you are going to have a much rougher time of it and need help more than ever. We are calling this Tier 6. Also, he has some totally new moves, and Shadow Ball, which in our opinion is his best move, is now a legacy move. But the new moves make him a top three option against a lot more raid bosses now which is exciting. Hopefully, you have at least one or two Shadow Ball Mewtwo in your arsenal from before and are ready to expand your Mewtwo army with these unique new moves.

Mewtwo Raid Guide

Mewtwo is a tough Raid Pokemon and is a strong and highly useful attacker. While rarely the #1 counter for any particular fight, Mewtwo is often a top 3 counter when given the right special move, and now has a wide variety of special moves to choose from. With enough TMs around, Mewtwo can be thought of as a hyper-generalist who can change to whatever you need for that 6th slot.

Psycho Cut is great on offense but terrible on defense due to it being a very fast attack.

Confusion, on the other hand, is awesome on defense while still being good on attack if a bit slow.

You can tell the difference between the two by how quickly the attacks are coming out and how big a chunk of your life is going away with each hit.

Big slow attacks are Confusion, smaller faster attacks are Psycho Cut.

Mewtwo is also equipped with 5 different moves:

Ice Beam is a high quality 2 bar move. It turns Mewtwo into the #1 ice attacker! At least until Mamoswine comes out. This is mostly due to the rather poor stats of other ice attackers.

Focus Blast is the strongest move on defense due to it covering Mewtwo’s biggest weakness: Tyranitar. It is a Full bar, 140 power fighting move and will hit like a truck on both offense and defense. Fighting moves are very strong in the current meta as seen with Machamp’s dominance of tier 4 raids and Focus Blast is an awesome fighting move. This is also the best gym clearing move due to the prevalence of Blissey, Chansey and other strong normal types

Thunderbolt is a high quality 2 bar move. It turns Mewtwo into a poor man’s Raikou, which isn’t too shabby actually.

Flamethrower is another high quality 2 bar move. This turns Mewtwo into a poor man’s Entei which is not quite as useful as Moltres is around.

Psychic is the last of the specials. It is not a particularly awe-inspiring special move as a bad single bar 100 power move. This move is particularly bad on defense as Tyranitar will shrug it off due to his small brain size. It does, however, make Mewtwo the strongest Psychic attacker in the game but this is only relevant vs. Machamp and other fighting mons.

Shadow Ball (Legacy) was the best move for Mewtwo previously but is no longer available. It is great against, well, Mewtwo and other Psychic legendaries which gen 4 will have a few of.

Hyper Beam (Legacy) was a mediocre move, useable in partly cloudy weather for gym clearing while taking very little damage.

When you catch your Mewtwo, you are generally looking for the following move sets, make sure to use your TMs!

Psycho Cut + Ice Beam: This combination turns Mewtwo into the best ice attacker in the game. You can see the power of this combination versus a Rayquaza raid boss Confusion + Focus Blast: Great for attacking gyms. Focus Blast is great for taking out the majority of the top gym defenders including the big 3 Blissey, Chansey and Snorlax Psycho Cut + Focus Blast: Also great for attacking gyms. The faster psycho cut does slightly less damage but is much easier to dodge with Psycho Cut + Flamethrower: A good filler fire attacker.

Not very useful now but..

Confusion + Psychic: A good attack for fighting and poison Pokemon which means Machamp. Unfortunately Psychic is a terrible 1 bar move currently. If the move gets changed back to a decent multi-bar move or a huge heavy hitting 1 bar move this will be the move set to look for!

General Mewtwo Counters

Best Counters

First a quick note. You can sometimes tell what special move Mewtwo is using based on what is auto-suggested in game. The quick and dirty version is, if your Tyranitar isn’t chosen, its Focus Blast…

Mewtwo

Remember how I said Shadow Ball is the best move in the game? And its great against psychic? Guess what Mewtwo is? A psychic Pokemon! So use your psychic Pokemon against a psychic Pokemon and you will do great!

Tyranitar

Tyranitar is the second best counter against Mewtwo, assuming he does NOT have Focus Blast, where he becomes the sixth best. He shrugs off Psychic attacks and has extremely strong Dark attacks at his disposal. If your Tyranitar has Stone Edge, don’t worry, the only thing better than a Bite/Stone Edge Tyranitar is a Bite/Crunch Tyranitar so you are in good hands. If for some reason you have any other move set for Tyranitar, that’s okay too! Even the worst Iron Tail/Fire Blast Tyranitar is as good as the 6th counter on the list. That said, you should TM away that Iron Tail as fast as you can because it’s terrible, and Fireblast is just as bad. Leave your fire moves to Moltres, Flareon and Arcanine where they belong.

Gengar

Gengar, the second best shadow ball user, is a very special case glass cannon who you only want to use if you are in a hurry (or very short on people). It is possible to trio a Psycho Cut/Focus Blast Mewtwo with Gengar with a bit of luck if you each have 12 of them. It’s going to be quite difficult though. There is one other funny thing about Gengar in this situation. If Gengar can survive exactly 3 Confusions, Gengar will do a large amount of damage. If 3 Confusions kills Gengar, Gengar will be absolutely terrible. This means you need to have a high enough level, defense and stamina combination to survive 3 confusions. In short, this means you need to be level 32, with 15 defense and 15 stamina or level 37 with 10 defense and 10 stamina to survive long enough. The exact breakpoint will depend upon your exact situation. Check out the new raid advice tool of Pokebattler to find exactly how far to power up Gengar.

Pinsir

Pinsir is the big winner with the increase in HP for Mewtwo. The longer fight makes it so almost everyone has to rejoin which puts glass cannon Pinsir on a more even footing with the rest of the crowd. Considering you can catch a level 35 Pinsir and use them to easily 5 man Mewtwo with, that’s pretty good.

Houndoom

Baby Tyranitar puts in quite a showing against Mewtwo, reliably showing near the top of the counters list. Dark moves are what you are looking for although a fire quick move isn’t the end of the world. If you are swimming in fast TMS like I am, swap that to dark/dark as there are better fire Pokemon out there but Houndoom is the #2 dark Pokemon.

Scizor

Scizor is the second best bug attacker and does okay against all forms of Mewtwo.

Good Generic Counters

Don’t worry about powering up these Pokemon. Try and find them weather boosted if you can. Note you’ll want to use your recently caught Moltres with his legacy Sky Attack Flying move.

Rayquaza Absol Banette Alolan Muk Sharpedo Moltres

Additional Good Weather Counters

Weather has caused quite a shift in raid battles, causing rankings to shift dramatically across the board.

Fog

Absol

Absol is a bit squishy and low level so don’t waste stardust on him but he gets a nice boost in this weather.

Rainy

Pinsir

Pinsir becomes THE NUMBER ONE generic counter in rainy weather. Wiggity what? I doubt he’s ever been this useful in raids before.

Sunny

Entei Moltres

These 2 fire Pokemon also happen to do quite well in clear weather. Also worth powering one of each up if you have enough rare candy.

Windy

In Windy weather, those Confusions are going to hit very hard and Gengar, in particular, is going to get slaughtered. So you’ll want to bust out those dragons. We’re guessing you’ve got at least a Dragonite or Rayquaza already powered up. Windy is not a very common weather type but if you’ve got it during your raid, you will be rewarded with a level 25 instead of a level 20 Pokemon saving a chunk of rare candy!

Rayquaza

He goes from good to great with a windy boost as a counter for Mewtwo.

Dragonite Latios Salamence

These dragons all get a 20% boost to its attacks and is a good attacker in windy weather.

Conclusion

We’ve done our best to simplify things down, but we highly recommend using our custom raid guides. Entering in the exact Pokemon you have is always the best to pick your counters.

Happy Hunting and thanks for reading!