'Pokemon Go' Makes Type Effectiveness Even More Important in Battles and Raids

Pokemon Go has increased the importance of type effectiveness in its battle system by increasing the amount of damage super effective moves does against a Pokemon, and decreasing the amount of damage that not very effective moves do.

One of the foundations of the Pokemon franchise is "type effectiveness," the rock-paper-scissors type system that determines which Pokemon types have advantage over others in battle. It's why Grass-types are strong against Water-type Pokemon and weak against Fire-type and form the basis for most of the strategy in Pokemon battles.

Pokemon Go has always had a simplified version of type effectiveness. While Pokemon are still strong against certain moves and weak against others, their effectiveness was nerfed a bit due to the simplicity of Pokemon Go's battle system.

However, with the release of Pokemon Go's new Trainer Battle system, game developers have also increased the potency of super effective attacks and decreased the power of not very effective attacks.

Super effective moves now do 1.6 times as much damage as they would normally, an increase from the previous 1.4 times buff. That means that super effective moves will now do about 14.3% more damage than they did before the game's most recent update.

Likewise, not very effective moves now do 0.625 times as much damage, a decrease from the original .714 times nerf. That's a nerf of about 12.5%, which means that you'll do even less damage when hitting Pokemon with an ineffective attacks.

Damage to Pokemon with immunities to certain types of attacks have similarly been nerfed. Pokemon Go has decreased the attack multiplier for immune attacks from 0.51 to 0.39, or a 23.5% decrease. While it's not quite the same as a full immunity like in main series Pokemon games, it's still a big change.

This is a huge change, as it means that strategy is that much more important in Pokemon Go. Not only are some Pokemon much more or less viable in Raids, it also prioritizes the importance of switching out Pokemon in certain battles. If faced with a type disadvantage, Pokemon Go players won't be able to power through as effectively as they did before.

What do you think of the new nerfs and buffs? Let us know in the comment section!