Dynamax Articuno counters, weakness, and battle tips in Pokémon Go

Dynamax Articuno is the first Legendary we’re seeing in Max Battles for Pokémon Go. It’s making its debut during Max Monday on Jan. 20 from 6-7 p.m. and will be available afterwards until Jan. 27 when Dynamax Zapdos will debut.

While it’s likely that Dynamax Articuno won’t be as difficult as Gigantamax Battles, it still will likely put up a fight, so we’re here to help you out.

Below, we list out some general Max Battle tips and counters for Dynamax Articuno in Pokémon Go.

Dynamax Articuno weakness

Articuno is ice- and flying-type, so it has a plethora of weaknesses to take advantage of. It’s weak against rock-, steel-, fire-, and electric-type moves. Under normal circumstances, the best move type to use would be rock-type, since it’ll do even more damage since it’s strong against both ice- and flying-type, but there’s not any Dynamax Pokémon that have rock-type Dynamax moves (as of writing this).

On the other hand, Articuno will resist bug- and grass-type moves, so stay away from those.

Dynamax Articuno best counters

With the above in mind, there’s a few counters to bring to Articuno. We recommend the following to focus on offensive moves:

Note that Dynamax Articuno can have Ancient Power, which will dish out some serious damage against Charizard. Keep your Charizard in your wings and consider only bringing it out to Dynamax, while other tankier Pokémon absorb the damage.

As for defense, you should bring the following with Max Guard:

There still aren’t too many ideal Pokémon to use as healers, since Max Spirit wants you to use high-HP Pokémon. If you have a Blastoise or Lapras built out, you can teach them healing moves in the meantime to help out.

Even if you don’t have these powered up, consider just bringing the strongest Dynamax Pokémon you have. If you have a maxed out Dynamax Gengar and your Dynamax Charizard isn’t leveled (and you don’t have the means to power it up), just bring your Gengar.

If you’ve been struggling in Max Battles, here’s some general tips to survive — and make sure you’re an asset to your team. While Gigantamax Battles are tough, a Legendary Max Battle shouldn’t be as tough as that. You can slack a little, but you should still heed our advice: