It’s up to you to hunt down Arlo, Cliff and Sierra by collecting Mysterious Components and a Rocket Radar in Pokémon Go, which will also help as part of the Ultra Beast Protection Efforts quest. Defeating them gives you a unique Shadow encounter, and might even give you the chance to catch a shiny Shadow Pokémon! With new shinies and Shadow variations debuting as part of the Team GO Rocket takeover event, you’ll want to know the best counters for their new lineups. Facing all three is also the route to a battle against the formidable Giovanni himself. On this page: This requires you collect Mysterious Components from Grunts, forming a Rocket Radar, then using it to locate a Rocket Leader. The choice given to you is random, so if you are after a specific Leader, keep checking until the one you need appears. These will be tough battles, and so a brute force strategy will not always work. Instead, consider the following strategies:
Since you need to lean on countering with types, it’s best to go in with a prepared team with strong counters. A Leader’s line-up will be somewhat unique for that encounter - it’s made of a small selection of creatures - so you can’t exactly be sure which Pokémon you’ll be facing. You might have to face them once to learn their line-up, then change yours to react to it. Leaders will use their two shields for your first two Charge moves, every time. Ideally, this means your lead Pokémon must be strong enough to survive long enough to deliver two Charged moves, and do so as fast as possible, so you can then dealing out damage properly. For example, Melmetal is a good candidate for this. The good news is you can face a Leader as many times as you like, so feel free to experiment!
Ultimately, Victory depends on your ability to create a team that takes advantage of as many of the Team Rocket Go Leader’s team’s weaknesses as possible, so having a wide roster of Pokémon available will help you form flexible teams.
Below you’ll find the current possible lineups for each Team Go Rocket Leader during the Team GO Rocket takeover event (thanks to Comtesse135
on the Silph Road subreddit for revealing these) along with some ideas about which Pokémon would work best as counters.
Remember - the first Pokémon is one that, if you defeat them, you’ll be given the chance to catch, while the others are randomly selected from a pool of three:
Arlo has the trickiest line-up of all the three leaders, as there isn’t a common weakness you can exploit between the most of them, but you could bring Fire-Steel types like Reshiram or Heatran to counter Mawile then either Scizor or Granbull if they appear as Arlo’s last Pokémon. Machamp could also work as brute force against the three options at the end, so is also worth considering.
Tyranitar or Rhyperior with strong Rock moves can work against all three choices for Arlo’s second Pokémon, as they are all Flying types, so share a common weakness to Rock. You can substitute with other Rock Pokémon, but should use Tyranitar and Rhyperior if you have them.
Generally speaking, you’ll want at least one strong Fighting-type, Rock-type, and either Steel or Fire-Type (ideally both, like Heatran), when fighting Arlo.
Remember - the first Pokémon is one that, if you defeat them, you’ll be given the chance to catch, while the others are randomly selected from a pool of three:
There’s a nice few shared weaknesses for every stage of Cliff’s line-up, but you’ll still need to plan carefully. Against Machop in the first encounter, we’d counter with a good Flying or Psychic-type. Moltres or Charizard with a Flying move is a good choice, as they can also be used as the Fire-type needed against Cliff’s second stage if Pinsir or Amoongus are picked. You might also want to take an Electric-type like Zapdos do cover if Crobat shows up during the second stage.
The third stage of Cliff’s line-up all share Water as their common weakness, so we recommend using Kyogre. If not Kyogre - Gyrados, Sharpedo or Kingler will also do great.
In summary - start with either your Psychic or Flying-type of choice, switch to Fire (or Electric for Crobat) for the second encounter, then water for the third.
Remember - the first Pokémon is one that, if you defeat them, you’ll be given the chance to catch, while the others are randomly selected from a pool of three:
Sierra is the easiest GO Leader to prepare for, as most of her potential line-up has Dark-types, which have a weakness to Fairy-types. So use one or two good Fairy-types with Charm, like Togekiss, Gardevoir, or Granbull, and you’ll have a far easier time battling her.
For the third option, pick a good Fighting-type like Machamp or Lucario with Counter to go against whoever appears.
In summary, all you need to do is use a Fairy-type with Charm for the first two stages of Sierra, then a Fighting-type with Counter for the last stage, and you should handle Sierra with relative ease.
The Season of Mythical Wishes continues with the Winter Holiday event, which has brought Mega Glalie to Pokémon Go. Don’t forget to partake in the new Go Battle League season.
Elsewhere, be sure to use Daily Adventure Incense for the chance of encountering Galarian Articuno, Galarian Zapdos and Galarian Moltres.
For every Team Go Rocket Leader, you’ll receive 1,000 Stardust, and two of the following items:
Red ‘strange’ 12km egg (only if you have an open space in your Egg inventory) Max Revive Revive Max Potion Unova Stone Sinnoh Stone
Thank you to skewtr from reddit with the help with this information. You will also have the opportunity to catch one of the Team Go Rocket Leader’s Shadow Pokémon. For Arlo this will be his Shadow Mawile, for Cliff a Shadow Machop and Sierra’s Shadow Sableye. Best of all, there’s a chance that these Shadow Pokémon could be shiny! To catch these Shadow Pokémon, you’ll receive a base number of 5 Premier Balls. Bonus Poké Balls will be rewarded depending on a number of factors:
How many of your Pokémon survive the Trainer Battle Your Purify Pokémon (Purifier) medal rank Your Defeat Team Rocket (Hero) medal rank
Good luck hunting down those evil Team Go Rocket leaders!
