Team GO Rocket is taking over Pokemon Go, but one player was outclassed when a Grunt sent out a Blaziken that had an impossible moveset.
Every species of Pokemon has a unique learnset, which is a list of moves that the creature can learn and use in battle. But a single Pokemon isn’t able to learn every all 915 moves the franchise has to offer.
Take Charizard, for example. The Gen 1 dragon can learn 15 moves via leveling up or evolving and 52 moves via TMs. Yet, Charizard can’t learn a single Water or Grass-type move, given its Fire typing.
Typings don’t always dictate the type of moves Pokemon can learn. For instance, Gyarados is a Water/Flying-type that can learn Flamethrower. But a Pokemon can never learn a move that isn’t in its learnset unless a player uses cheats.
Team Go Rocket Grunt uses “hacked” Blaziken
These rules also apply to NPCs, which allows players to plan for their next encounter. If they’re facing a trainer that uses Electric-type Pokemon, they can plan to bring Ground types that aren’t weak to any of the opposing Pokemon’s moves.
But that wasn’t the case for Reddit user PeterOhhDee who was primed to take on a Team GO Rocket Grunt in Pokemon Go. With the trainer and the grunt having one Pokemon remaining, Peter sent out his Dark/Ground-type Tyranitar to finish off the very weakened Blaziken.
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To Peter’s surprise, the Blaziken started to use Razor Leaf, which is super effective against Ground-type Pokemon. Instead of crushing the Blaziken, the Tyranitar’s health bar melted, leaving the firebird standing with a frustrating sliver of health.
As mentioned prior, every Pokemon has a learnset, and Razor Leaf is not in Blaziken’s. In fact, Blaziken can learn a single Grass-type move – Solar Beam – despite its Fire typing.
While the unfair encounter is frustrating, players in the comments seemingly weren’t surprised. “They are Team Rocket. Of course they would cheat!” stated one user. Another wrote, “Damn, Rockets be using GameSharks.”
This is obviously an error with the game’s programming, as it shouldn’t be possible for Blaziken to have access to this move. We will just want to wait and see if Razor Leaf Blaziken starts causing more trouble in Pokemon Go before Niantic can push out a fix.
