Thanks to the recent Staryu Spotlight Hour in Pokemon GO, many trainers are now the proud owners of a newly-evolved Starmie.
While it doesn't have the best overall stats, Starmie's solid attack stat can make it an asset in PvE raids.
If Pokemon GO trainers do decide to use Starmie in battle, they'll want to optimize its moveset for quality DPS. Without a solid moveset, Starmie won't serve much use in battle in any capacity.
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Fortunately, Starmie's moveset shouldn't be too expensive to obtain and gets pretty good returns on damage and energy economy. Below, trainers can find a guide to outfitting Starmie to maximize its potential.
Pokemon GO trainers should play it safe when outfitting Starmie's moveset in PvE
Starmie has an impressive total of 10 learnable moves in Pokemon GO. Granted, some of its best moves are Legacy Moves, which aren't easy to obtain. However, if trainers put in the time and dedication, they can have a Starmie that performs well enough to use in raids.
This Pokemon doesn't have ideal stats for PvP, but some trainers may experiment with it regardless. Its collection of moves may give it some fairly interesting type coverage options if nothing else.
For the top PvE moveset in Pokemon GO, trainers will want to outfit Starmie with Water Gun as a Fast Move and Psychic/Ice Beam as Charged Moves.
Trainers can pick one of these Charged Moves to begin and branch out to a second one if they aren't getting the returns that they might want.
Water Gun is the most reliable Fast Move for Starmie in terms of damage and energy production. It also receives the Same Type Attack Bonus (STAB) when used by a Water-type, which is beneficial.
Psychic is Starmie's go-to Charged Move in Pokemon GO due to its low energy cost and ability to receive STAB. Ice Beam is also exceptional, as it counters Grass-type Pokemon that can potentially cause problems for Starmie.
Thunder is also not a bad move to utilize, though it suffers from a considerable energy cost. The same can be said of Hydro Pump. While it receives a considerable amount of damage output, especially with STAB, the move is simply too expensive in energy costs to be dependable in raids.
If trainers like, it's also possible to diversify Starmie's Fast Move by using Hidden Power over Water Gun. However, since Hidden Power can change types, it can be somewhat unreliable when countering a specific raid boss. Furthermore, Hidden Power has comparatively low energy production, making Water Gun the safer option at the end of the day.
Considering Starmie can't really afford to falter in energy generation and output for its Charged Moves, trainers may want to err on the side of caution when outfitting its moveset. This Pokemon will want to output as much damage as possible before it faints in a raid after all.
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