Pokemon Go's New Legendary Pokemon Is Basically Useless

Pokemon Go players are thoroughly underwhelmed by the game's newest Legendary Pokemon.

Earlier this week, Pokemon Go announced it was adding a new Pokemon into the game - Ho-Oh, the mascot Legendary Pokemon from Pokemon Gold. With gaudy stats and the second highest CP in the game, Pokemon Go players were expecting Ho-Oh to be a potential gamechanger. Instead, they've discovered that Ho-Oh's moveset is terrible, drastically limiting its usefulness.

The main problem is Ho-Oh's terrible moveset. Ho-Oh's fast moves are the Psychic-Type move Extrasensory and the Steel-Type move Steel Wing, neither of which match Ho-Oh's Fire/Flying dual-type. Because of this, Ho-Oh doesn't benefit from a STAB (Same Type Attack Bonus), which hinders its ability in raid battles.

Ho-Oh's charge moves are slightly better, since it gets a STAB bonus from both Brave Bird and Fire Blast. But while Brave Bird has the highest Damage Per Second (DPS) stat in the game, it's only truly useful against Pokemon that are weak to Flying-Type attacks...which isn't very many. Ho-Oh doesn't even benefit from having Overheat, the best Fire-Type move in the game, as a potential charge move.

Because it has a weaker Attack stat than Moltres and doesn't have access to Overheat like Entei, some players are claiming that Ho-Oh is the third strongest Fire-Type Legendary Pokemon in Pokemon Go and that it's not even worth leveling up. Some have even compared Ho-Oh to Snorlax, a Pokemon that's solely useful for its ability to soak up damage. Since Ho-Oh is a Legendary Pokemon, it can't be used in gyms as a defender, so even Snorlax is arguably more useful than Ho-Oh.

Ho-Oh (like a few other Legendary Pokemon) could really use a change in movesets to have some relvancy in the game. Let's hope Pokemon Go makes a change the next time Ho-Oh decides to appear.