It’s been a busy week for Niantic and its wildly popular mobile game,Pokemon GO. Earlier this week, the developerintroduced the Sinnoh region update, which introduced 14 new Generation 4 Pokemon into the game including a few evolved forms like Tangrowth, Lickilicky, and Yanmega as long as the player has first acquired a newly added Sinnoh Stone. In addition to the new Pokemon, Niantic has outlined a number of changes made to the Raids and player versus player modes as well.
In a separate news post regarding the latestPokemon GOupdate, Niantic confirmed that featured Pokemon in Tier 3, Tier 4, and Tier 5 Raid Battles will see an HP increase to offset some of the attack damage increases made to other Pokemon over the past year. Niantic is hoping the change provides an added challenge while also encouraging players to group up rather than attempt to solo these battles. Completing a Raid Battle also rewards players with Stardust.
The other big balancing change comes to the PvP side of the game known as Trainer Battle. A number of fast and charge attacks are getting their damage tweaked including the following:
Niantic also confirmed that Ice Beam will serve as the baseline for Thunderbolt and Flamethrower, while damage from Ice Punch, Fire Punch, and Thunder Punch will all be set to the same level.
The post ends with information regarding Move set additions and changes for a bunch of Pokemon currently in the game. These are ones that may not be as popular due to their current movesets or ones that have troublecountering their type weaknesses. In an effort to make them slightly more appealing, Niantic has outlined the following changes to hopefully increase their usage among active players:
Pokemon GOis out now for iOS and Android mobile devices.
