Assessment of mewtwo moves
Not what we expected. How useful are Mewtwos new moves?
Flamethrower and Thunderbolt don't put mewtwo top of any DPS charts but would still be a capable generalist while giving it some super Effective targets.
Ice beam has great potential as a dragon slayer, with psycho cut charging it up. Apart from gen 4's mamoswine ice beam mewtwo will have little competition. Ice beam takes mewtwo top of the ice charts and there'll be plenty of dragons to slay In raids. On the downside it's a somewhat average move and in many countries there's hardly any snow.
It seems niantic decided to give us the option of making mewtwo a more specialized attacker. Shadow ball clearly remains the move of choice if you prefer mewtwo as a generalist.
Which do you prefer? Psystrike would have been boring tbh.
Answers
A very interesting curveball that saddens my plans at maxing the hundo Articuno I caught last weekend. I'd like a Mewtwo with each of these moves for novelty but I don't know about powering any of them up beyond an Ice Beam one.
May not be the meta change we were looking for but I think it's fun how they handled it.
IB Mewtwo does seem interesting, but Mamoswine will outclass it by a great deal given a double ice moveset, Weavile will out-DPS it by a lot given a double ice moveset, and Glaceon as an Eeveelution will have great availability and will likely be only a hair below IB Mewtwo in DPS. With the current movepools, Glaceon is guaranteed a good moveset.
Flamethrower has no potential but Thunderbolt isn't bad, makes Mewtwo #3 electric DPS behind Raikou and Zapdos.
If I get a new Mewtwo with good IVs, it'll definitely get Psychic or IB.
Psystrike boring? Well, not as boring as flamethrower. Looks like they stuck with the two bar moves from the types of the birds (that just flew away).
Just took down one with Psychic here on campus. 20 of us, went pretty fast, just used 1/3 of the clock. So I'd say that for a group of level 25-32 trainers with average counters, 7 trainers could just take it down. Might be tougher for Focus Blast or the other movesets. Aside from Ttar resisting fire, none of the normal counters (Ttar, Gengar, SB Mewtwo) are weak to or resist fire, electric or ice.
I also think that there's a possibility that they will change the moves up halfway through the month. I suspect that, even with 5 to collect, I'll get bored of Mewtwo raids if they last a month. Heck, I was bored with Regirock during my first raid.
I have a feeling thunderbolt's going to be good, given togekiss is going to be in gyms gen IV for its higher bulk than gardevoir, and how water or flying types are frequent gym sights along side the normal tanks
Flame thrower, dont see much from that or ice beam given available pokemon with STAB and better sets
Ice Beam Mewtwo is currently the best ice type attacker in the game. Against DT/OR Rayquaza it has Jynx-tier DPS and Articuno-tier TDO. I'll give you the point about Flamethrower though. In a neutral vacuum it comes out above actual fire types but the minute it's clear or you match it up against specific Pokemon it takes a back seat to the usual fire type go-to's.
Careful with Ice Beam: with it, Mewtwo is an excellent *flying* dragon slayer. Dialga and Palkia both take neutral damage from ice, so don't consider Mewtwo for them. When Rayquaza returns though, IB Mewtwo will be awesome.
Thunderbolt is nice as well: against Kyogre, TB Mewtwo has almost the same performance as Zapdos and has better TDO against Blizzard, making it the 2nd or 3rd best counter. Even on hypothetical future targets doubly weak to electric (Gyarados?), Mewtwo is behind Raikou and Zapdos but ahead of Jolteon.
We'll have to see how gen 4 performs though.
