Pokemon Go: Niantic Announces Changes to Moves For Trainer Battles

With April now upon us, everyone is seeing a lot more green, and more sun. As such, Pokemon Go developer Niantic is celebrating with a focus on Grass-type Pokemon. Today, the developer announced a number of changes to the effectiveness of moves Pokemon can use during trainer battles in the mobile title. A trio of Grass-type moves have seen an increase in their effectiveness, while three other moves will now be less powerful than they once were. In addition, a handful of Pokemon in the mobile game will now be able to learn moves that were previously unavailable to them. The following moves have been changed:

• Bullet Seed - This Grass-type Fast Attack now generates energy more quickly.
• Energy Ball - This Grass-type Charged Attack now reaches full charge more quickly and has a chance of lowering the opponent's Defense by one stage.
• Leaf Tornado - This Grass-type Charged Attack now has a chance of decreasing your opponent's Attack by two stages.
• Ancient Power - The damage that this Rock-type Charged Attack deals has been decreased in Trainer Battles.
• Silver Wind - The damage that this Bug-type Charged Attack deals has been decreased in Trainer Battles.
• Ominous Wind - The damage that this Ghost-type Charged Attack deals has been decreased in Trainer Battles. It also reaches full charge less quickly.

In addition, these Pokemon will now be able to learn the following moves:

• Bellossom: Bullet Seed
• Cradily: Bullet Seed
• Jumpluff: Aerial Ace
• Ludicolo: Energy Ball
• Sunshine Form Cherrim: Fire-type Weather Ball

It will be interesting to see how the changes impact gameplay. The changes to which moves Pokemon can learn, in particular, should have a fairly large impact on pvp battles, as players might be more inclined to change things up, based on the available moves. Considering the large number of moves that Pokemon can learn in the main series games, it's nice to see more options become available.

Niantic has been making a lot of changes to Pokemon Go over the last few weeks, but the majority of these changes have related to how the game is played from home during the coronavirus pandemic. Players still aren't happy with how much of the game remains difficult to access during social distancing, but it is nice to see the developer also placing some focus on making other changes to the game.

Are you a fan of Pokemon Go? Are you happy with Niantic's changes to the game, thus far? Let us know in the comments or share directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!