What is the best moveset for Shadow Mewtwo in Pokemon GO?

Thanks to Pokemon GO's Rising Shadows event, trainers are defeating and capturing Shadow Mewtwo in the mobile title's new Shadow Raids. Some trainers have even been lucky enough to catch Shadow Mewtwo's shiny variant. Regardless, this corrupted Legendary Pokemon is one of the strongest creatures that a player can have on just about any team they use in battle.

With a sky-high maximum attack stat further boosted by the Shadow Form buff in Pokemon GO, Shadow Mewtwo can output a massive amount of damage in a short period of time. The malicious clone of Mew also benefits from a diverse collection of learnable moves to utilize in its movesets.

But which movesets serve Shadow Mewtwo the best in Pokemon GO? It can depend on the arena that the creature is being used in.

Note: Some aspects of this article are subjective and reflect the opinions of the writer

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Recommended PvE and PvP movesets for Shadow Mewtwo in Pokemon GO

Depending on whether Pokemon GO players use Shadow Mewtwo in PvE battles like raids or PvP battles like the GO Battle League, trainers will want to use a different moveset to play to the creature's strengths.

For example, in PvE raids and Team GO Rocket battles, trainers tend to know what opponent they're up against and can counter with Shadow Mewtwo's moveset accordingly. Specifically, Shadow Mewtwo can lean on both a pure Psychic-type or a mixed-type moveset, depending on its opponent.

Meanwhile, opponents in Pokemon GO's PvP arenas are much more varied and more difficult to predict. As a result, trainers will want to diversify Shadow Mewtwo's moveset as much as they can to give it a fighting chance against multiple enemies and their assorted elemental types.

Fortunately, Shadow Mewtwo's high attack stats mean that even if it uses moves that don't trigger the in-game Same Type Attack Bonus (STAB), it's guaranteed to still deal great damage overall.

Here are the recommended movesets for Shadow Mewtwo:

• PvE - Confusion and Psystrike or Psycho Cut and Shadow Ball
• PvP - Psycho Cut, Psystrike, and Focus Blast or Shadow Ball

With the movesets listed above, Shadow Mewtwo can bolster its offensive potential with pure Psychic-type attacks in Pokemon GO or branch out with some extra Charged Moves to give it improved type coverage. Adding attacks like Shadow Ball gives Shadow Mewtwo a capable and reliable move that can deal with other Psychic-type foes as well as Ghost-type picks that can counter it.

Alternatively, Focus Blast can be used as a nuke-style move that can make short work of Dark, Ice, Normal, Rock, and Steel-type opponents. The high attack output of Shadow Mewtwo should give the attack the ability to one-shot plenty of opponents (if the move deals super effective damage). However, players will need to be careful, as Focus Blast requires a fairly steep energy cost that will take some time to recoup.

Whatever the case may be, Pokemon GO trainers should also be aware that if certain movesets aren't fitting their playstyle, they shouldn't hesitate to change them. Shadow Mewtwo has access to plenty of different attacks to utilize, so if players are encountering varied enemy types in the meta, they should react accordingly with the right counter move for the job.