Trainers, after Niantic shared that Mewtwo’s Shadow Ball and Hyper Beam are to become legacy EX raid moves, a lot of speculation took place in the community in regards to which move will Mewtwo have in T5 raids. Without SB and HB, Mewtwo has access to only two moves (Psychic Psychic and Focus Blast Fighting) and it makes sense to speculate that Niantic will give it a new Charged move.
If this happens, our money is on Psystrike, a Psychic-type move that is already implemented in the game, but is not a part of any Pokemon’s move pool. Why Psystrike? Well, according to Bulbapedia, Psystrike is Mewtwo’s signature move, and only Mewtwo can learn it in the core game series. In other words, if you have to fill up Mewtwo’s move pool, this seems like a rather straightforward pick.
Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, Psystrike is a terrible move, at least with the data that is currently available in the Game Master file. We want to make sure that everyone understands this: Niantic can change Psystrike’s stats at any point, but this analysis is created with the data available on publication date (17/09/2018).
Let’s compare them.
Mewtwo Psystrike vs Psychic
Psystrike is a two bar charged move which deals 100 damage per bar. Psychic is a one bar move that deals 100 damage per bar. On paper, Psystrike should rip through Psychic easily, outperforming it by 30-40%, right?
Unfortunately, no. Psystrike animation lasts for whooping 4.4 seconds, while Psychic only takes 2.8 seconds to animate. This difference is immense when it comes to weave (cycle) DPS and raid performance, as it hampers Mewtwo’s damage output potential by forcing it to stand still while the animation lasts.
The weave DPS difference is bigger than you think and it’s almost silly considering this is a signature move after all:
As you can see, with currently available stats, Psystrike performs like tossing a hot towel on an opponent. Imagine waiting for almost 5 seconds while your charge move animates, that’s completely crazy!
Well, we also think it’s crazy, and we’re secretly hoping that Niantic will change this by lowering Psystrike’s animation duration. In order to see how it would perform then, we decided to take Psybeam’s animation duration, damage window start and damage window end numbers and to apply it to Psystrike’s current damage.
| Stat | Current | With Psybeam stats |
|---|---|---|
| Cooldown | 4.4s | 3.2s |
| Damage window | 3.0 – 4.2s | 1.3 – 2.7s |
| Weave DPS (with Confusion) | 20.55 | 23.44 |
The result is amazing, and it tops the move set DPS charts easily, making Confusion + Psystrike Mewtwo an absolute beast:
But let’s be realistic, Niantic will not simply give away such a great move in Tier 5 raids, especially with all the effort people went through to figure out how EX raids work and how to trigger them.
Conclusions
- With current stats, Psystrike Mewtwo performs worse than any other Mewtwo move set. It’s too slow and animation lasts too long.
- Psystrike is a signature Mewtwo move, and it’s implemented in the game already. We think Tier 5 Mewtwo will get Psystrike
- If Psystrike gets better stats, it can become relevant. In our extreme example, Psystrike with Psybeam’s animation numbers is a godly move, worthy of a Mewtwo.
- Niantic will likely buff the move slightly, but not as much as we’ve done in our example. If that happens, Psychic will potentially be outclassed and become the least favorable moveset to have on a Mewtwo.
