Dynamax Articuno has arrived in Pokémon Go, bringing a thrilling new challenge to Max Battles with its icy wings and formidable defenses. As the first Legendary Pokémon featured in these battles, mastering its counters and exploiting its weaknesses is key to victory. Whether you’re facing its chilling Ice- and Flying-type moves or preparing your team for a coordinated strike, this guide reveals the best strategies, top counters like Gigantamax Charizard and Dynamax Metagross, and essential battle tips to help you conquer this majestic foe before Dynamax Zapdos takes flight.
Below, we list out some general Max Battle tips and counters for Dynamax Articuno in Pokémon Go.
Update (Jan. 21): We’ve added more context about party sizes for Dynamax Articuno.
Dynamax Articuno weakness
Dynamax Articuno, an Ice and Flying-type Pokémon, has notable weaknesses that trainers can exploit in battle. It is particularly vulnerable to Rock-type moves, which deal double damage, as well as Electric, Fire, and Steel-type attacks, each inflicting 1.6 times damage. These weaknesses make Pokémon with strong Rock or Fire moves, such as Gigantamax Charizard, Dynamax Metagross, and Gigantamax Toxtricity, highly effective counters in Max Battles. Utilizing these types of moves is crucial for quickly overcoming Dynamax Articuno’s strong defenses and Special Defense stats.
Articuno is ice- and flying-type, so it has a plethora of weaknesses to take advantage of. It’s weak against rock-, steel-, fire-, and electric-type moves. Under normal circumstances, the best move type to use would be rock-type, since it’ll do even more damage since it’s strong against both ice- and flying-type, but there’s not any Dynamax Pokémon that have rock-type Dynamax moves (as of writing this).
On the other hand, Articuno will resist bug- and grass-type moves, so stay away from those.
Dynamax Articuno best counters
The best counters for Dynamax Articuno in Pokémon Go focus on exploiting its weaknesses to Rock, Fire, Steel, and Electric-type moves. Top recommended Pokémon include Gigantamax Charizard with Fire Spin or Dragon Breath, Gigantamax Toxtricity using Spark, and Dynamax Metagross with Bullet Punch. Other effective counters are Dynamax Cinderace, Dynamax Excadrill, and Shadow Rampardos. Since Rock-type attacks deal double damage but no Rock-type Pokémon can Dynamax currently, using Pokémon with strong Rock-type moves remains crucial. Teams typically benefit from a mix of attackers, tanks, and healers to manage Dynamax Articuno’s powerful moves like Ancient Power.
With the above in mind, there’s a few counters to bring to Articuno. We recommend the following to focus on offensive moves:
- Gigantamax Charizard with Dragon Breath
- Dynamax Charizard with Fire Spin
- Gigantamax/Dynamax Toxtricity with Spark
- Dynamax Cinderace with Fire Spin
Note that Dynamax Articuno can have Ancient Power, which will dish out some serious damage against Charizard. Keep your Charizard in your wings and consider only bringing it out to Dynamax, while other tankier Pokémon absorb the damage.
As for defense, you should bring the following with Max Guard:
- Gigantamax/Dynamax Blastoise with Water Gun
- Gigantamax Lapras with Water Gun
- Dynamax Metagross with Bullet Punch
There still aren’t too many ideal Pokémon to use as healers, since Max Spirit wants you to use high-HP Pokémon. If you have a Blastoise or Lapras built out, you can teach them healing moves in the meantime to help out.
Even if you don’t have these powered up, consider just bringing the strongest Dynamax Pokémon you have. If you have a maxed out Dynamax Gengar and your Dynamax Charizard isn’t leveled (and you don’t have the means to power it up), just bring your Gengar.
General Max Battle tips
When battling Dynamax Articuno in Pokémon GO, focus on maximizing your energy management and strategic switching. Use Pokémon with moves that exploit Articuno’s weaknesses-primarily Rock, Fire, Steel, and Electric types-to deal significant damage. Timing your charged moves and swaps to waste your opponent’s energy while preserving yours is key. Incorporate versatile Pokémon with a second charged attack to adapt to different situations, and plan your team composition to cover multiple types effectively. Coordinated play with 3-4 trainers using strong counters like Gigantamax Charizard, Dynamax Metagross, and Dynamax Cinderace will increase your chances of victory.
If you’ve been struggling in Max Battles, here’s some general tips to survive – and make sure you’re an asset to your team. While Gigantamax Battles are tough, a Legendary Max Battle shouldn’t be as tough as that. You can slack a little, but you should still heed our advice:
- Make sure you have enough players. High-efficiency players with maxed out investments can solo Dynamax Articuno, but this isn’t going to be realistic for most players. Try to go at it with three other players for the highest chance of winning. Note that unlike Gigantamax Pokémon, the Dynamax Legendary Pokémon have a max party size of four (rather than 40).
- Don’t sleep on Max Spirit and Max Guard. Teams work best when there’s a variety of moves, not just maxed-out attacks. Each player should bring Pokémon with the defensive and healing moves unlocked as well. Max Guard will focus single-target damage towards you and reduce the damage taken and Max Spirit will heal the whole party, so these moves are really important to make sure your damage-dealers can keep dishing.
- Remember to swap to super effective moves when it’s time to Dynamax. For Dynamax Pokémon, their max moves will be whatever type their fast move is. This means if you have a Metagross with Bullet Punch, it will know Max Steelspike. A Gengar with Shadow Claw will know Max Phantasm. Take advantage of this and make sure to swap to a Pokémon that will deal super effective damage to your target before Dynamaxing, if you can.
- Focus on your fast moves. You want to spam your fast moves to build up that Dynamax meter and often times, using your charge move is actually a DPS loss when compared to the damage you could be doing with your max move will be. Spam those attacks!
- Level up a few ’mons, but you don’t have to go too hard. Depending on your group size, you absolutely do not need to max out all your Dynamax Pokémon to level 40-50. While this will make it easier on the rest of your group, if this isn’t an investment you can make, you don’t have to stress about it. Power things up as high as you can afford to, but don’t fret if you don’t have a maxed out Pokémon.
- That all being said, make sure to come as prepared as you can be. This is a team effort and there’s a reason why groups of 30-40 people can still fail. Do not just bring your unleveled Dynamax Wooloo expecting a free ride to a powerful Pokémon. (After all, if everyone does that, then you certainly won’t clear the battle.) Again, you don’t have to completely max out your Pokémon, but it will be better for everyone involved if you bring something helpful to the table.
- Keep your eye out for a shiny Articuno! If you clear the raid, there is a chance that the Articuno you catch will be shiny – which also means it’ll be a guaranteed catch. Use a Pinap Berry to score extra candy if you get lucky enough to find a sparkly Articuno.
How can I exploit Articuno’s weaknesses to win faster in battles
To win faster against Articuno in battles, you should exploit its key weaknesses by using Pokémon and moves of Rock, Fire, Electric, and Steel types-Rock-type moves are especially effective, dealing double damage due to Articuno’s double weakness to Rock. Choose Pokémon with high CP and movesets that maximize damage output, such as Gigantamax Charizard with G-Max Wildfire (Fire), Dynamax Metagross with Max Steelspike (Steel), or Rampardos with Rock-type moves like Smack Down and Rock Slide. Utilizing moves that benefit from STAB (Same Type Attack Bonus) will further increase damage. Additionally, be mindful that Articuno has strong special defense, so physical attackers with Rock moves can have an advantage. Weather conditions like partly cloudy (boosting Rock moves) and sunny (boosting Fire moves) can also be leveraged to speed up the battle. Combining these strategies will help you take down Articuno more efficiently.
Which moves deal double damage to Articuno’s double weakness
Articuno’s double weakness is to Rock-type moves, which deal over double damage to it. In addition, Fire, Electric, and Steel-type moves also exploit its weaknesses, dealing significant super effective damage (about 1.25x), but Rock moves stand out by dealing approximately 1.56x damage due to the double weakness. Key moves that deal double or notably increased damage to Articuno include Rock Throw and Stone Edge (Rock), G-Max Wildfire and Fire Spin (Fire), Discharge and Thunder (Electric), and Max Steelspike and Metal Claw (Steel). Using these moves, especially Rock-type attacks, will maximize damage output against Articuno in battles.
