Hold onto your seat Trainers, it’s actually happening – special stat boosting moves are coming to Pokemon GO, at last! Rolling out in a limited fashion, starting with Swinub Community Day, three moves will have a chance to provide passive stat buffs for the user:
- Ancient Power Rock: Chance to raise the user’s Attack and Defense
- Ominous Wind Ghost: Chance to raise the user’s Attack and Defense
- Silver Wind Bug: Chance to raise the user’s Attack and Defense
These effects last on the affected Pokémon until they either faint or are switched out of battle. Again, remember that there’s a random chance that the effect will be triggered once you use the move.
According to Niantic’s official blog post, the moves will activate the stat boosting effect only in Trainer Battles. There’s no word on when or if this effect will trickle down into Raid and Gym Battles, but if this is something you’re passionate about, let us know. We’ll try our best to forward your feedback to Niantic.
With that being said, let’s see how these moves look like in PvP (spoiler: they are really similar):
| Move | Energy | Damage |
|---|---|---|
| Ancient Power | 45 | 70 |
| Ominous Wind | 45 | 70 |
| Silver Wind | 45 | 70 |
We’re really glad that Niantic went with the moves that canonically provide passive stat buffs in the main series games. The inclusion of stat buffs is a very exciting beginning on a journey that could potentially lead to status effects and more complex battle mechanics in GO. After all, the official post states the following: “The first moves this update will impact are below […] This is just the first of many updates to come, so stay tuned for more communications about Trainer Battles.”
We’ve prepared a handy infographic that depicts which Pokemon have access to these moves:
