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Pokémon Go Psychic Cup – Great League Edition: Best Pokémon

Live in your opponent’s head rent-free with these Pokémon

Marco Wutz

Niantic

Ready to trick your opponent with some mind games? Becoming available in GO Battle League from September 17 to 24, 2024, Psychic Cup – Great League Edition is another tournament format with a limited ruleset forcing you to adapt your battle teams to new conditions.

Table of Contents

  1. Pokémon Go Psychic Cup: Best Leads
  2. Pokémon Go Psychic Cup: Best Safe Switches
  3. Pokémon Go Psychic Cup: Best Closers
  4. Pokémon Go Psychic Cup: Best Attackers

Make sure to give it your all this time around, as all wins receive quadruple Stardust rewards as long as this competition is running.

Psychic Cup has a maximum competition points (CP) limit of 1,500 CP in its Great League Edition. Additionally, as the name implies, you may only field Psychic-type Pokémon with the exception of Mew, which is completely banned from this competition.

We’ve summarized the best Pokémon for Psychic Cup – Great League Edition in Pokémon Go in this guide, which hopefully saves you some time researching. The ranking is based on all the lovely statistics and simulations provided by PvPoke.com.

Pokémon Go Psychic Cup: Best Leads

These Pokémon aggressively apply pressure on your opponent right from the start of a duel and can survive even tough battles for a long time – they are perfect to open a match up, enabling you to score an early knockout or set up a strong counter play.

  1. Galarian Rapidash (Fairy Wind, Megahorn, Body Slam)
  2. Galarian Slowbro (Poison Jab, Sludge Bomb, Brutal Swing)
  3. Hoopa (Bound Forme) (Astonish. Shadow Ball, Psychic)
  4. Bruxish (Bite, Aqua Tail, Psychic Fangs)
  5. Malamar (Psywave, Foul Play, Hyper Beam)
  6. Claydol (Mud Slap, Shadow Ball, Earth Power)
  7. Shadow Gardevoir (Charm, Shadow Ball, Triple Axel)
  8. Victini (Quick Attack, V-Create, Overheat)
  9. Beheeyem (Astonish, Dark Pulse, Rock Slide)
  10. Elgyem [XL] (Astonish, Dark Pulse, Psychic)

Pokémon marked with [XL] require Candy XL power-ups to reach their full potential.

Pokémon Go Psychic Cup: Best Safe Switches

These Pokémon serve as switch options for your lead – should the opening pairing be to your disadvantage, switch in one of these monsters instead to preserve your lead Pokémon for later. According to this purpose, these are primarily Pokémon that counter some of the most popular leads or are strong leads themselves.

  1. Galarian Slowbro (Poison Jab, Sludge Bomb, Brutal Swing)
  2. Victini (Quick Attack, V-Create, Overheat)
  3. Lunatone (Psywave, Rock Slide, Moonblast)
  4. Malamar (Psywave, Foul Play, Hyper Beam)
  5. Alolan Raichu (Volt Switch, Wild Charge, Trailblaze)
  6. Galarian Rapidash (Fairy Wind, Megahorn, Body Slam)
  7. Bronzong (Feint Attack, Payback, Heavy Slam)
  8. Shadow Girafarig (Tackle, Psychic Fangs, Trailblaze)
  9. Bruxish (Bite, Aqua Tail, Psychic Fangs)
  10. Claydol (Mud Slap, Shadow Ball, Earth Power)

Pokémon Go Psychic Cup: Best Closers

These Pokémon are especially strong when there are no shields left in play on either side – they are incredibly tough themselves or end battles with a single hit of their powerful charge attacks.

  1. Claydol (Mud Slap, Shadow Ball, Earth Power)
  2. Victini (Quick Attack, V-Create, Overheat)
  3. Malamar (Psywave, Foul Play, Hyper Beam)
  4. Alolan Raichu (Volt Switch, Wild Charge, Trailblaze)
  5. Galarian Rapidash (Fairy Wind, Megahorn, Body Slam)
  6. Galarian Slowking (Hex, Surf, Shadow Ball)
  7. Bronzong (Feint Attack, Payback, Heavy Slam)
  8. Hypno (Confusion, Shadow Ball, Thunder Punch)
  9. Chimecho (Astonish, Shadow Ball, Energy Ball)
  10. Meowstic (Male) (Sucker Punch, Energy Ball, Thunderbolt)

Pokémon Go Psychic Cup: Best Attackers

These Pokémon perform best when fighting a trainer who still has shields, while you no longer have shields yourself – they have the ideal combination of resistances and strong fast attacks to compensate for this disadvantage. For this reason, you rarely see Shadow forms in this category – they take more damage than their regular counterparts, which is very risky at this stage of a match.

  1. Shadow Gardevoir (Charm, Shadow Ball, Triple Axel)
  2. Bruxish (Bite, Aqua Tail, Psychic Fangs)
  3. Gardevoir (Charm, Shadow Ball, Triple Axel)
  4. Hoopa (Bound Forme) (Astonish. Shadow Ball, Psychic)
  5. Claydol (Mud Slap, Shadow Ball, Earth Power)
  6. Chimecho (Astonish, Shadow Ball, Energy Ball)
  7. Meowstic (Male) (Sucker Punch, Energy Ball, Thunderbolt)
  8. Bronzong (Feint Attack, Payback, Heavy Slam)
  9. Elgyem [XL] (Astonish, Dark Pulse, Psychic)
  10. Beheeyem (Astonish, Dark Pulse, Rock Slide)

Psychic Cup didn’t change all too much compared to last time it was around – some of the top performers merely changed a few of their moves to ones that are a little more advantageous in the current meta.

Apart from GO Battle League, you should check out this month’s Raids and Spotlight Hours to not miss anything going on in the mobile game.

Published
Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg

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