When Ho-Oh appears in Pokémon Go, it’s time to bring the best Pokémon with you to these battles and make sure you’re ready to take it down. It’s one of the more highly desirable legendary Pokémon to add to your collection, but that also means it will be a tough fight in the five-star raids. You’ll want to make sure you’re taking advantage of any weakness and using the best Pokémon against it. Here’s what you need to know about how to beat Ho-Oh in Pokémon.

All Ho-oh weaknesses in Pokémon Go

Ho-oh is a Fire and Flying-type Pokémon. It will be weak against Electric, Rock, and Water-type moves but takes the most damage from Rock-type attacks. You’ll want to lean on this during the battle to make sure you’re doing the most damage against it. Ho-Oh is resistant to Bug, Grass, Fairy, Fighting, Fire, Ground, and Steel-type moves. Avoiding these attacks will be critical to taking down this fearsome legendary Pokémon.

Related: Best moveset for Ho-Oh in Pokémon Go

The best Pokémon counters to Ho-oh

The best options to take on Ho-Oh would be to use Rhyperior, Rampardos, and Primal Kyogre.

Rhyperior is a great Ground and Rock-type Pokémon. While it has several weaknesses, Ho-oh has none of them to use against it. You shouldn’t find it too tricky for Rhyperior to overpower Ho-Oh during the encounter, doing a good amount of damage with its Rock and Water-type moves. When picking a Rhyperior to take with you, you want to make sure it can use the fast move Smack Down and then Rock Wrecker and Surf for its charge moves.

Another Pokémon we’re going to recommend you use against Ho-Oh is Ramparados, a Rock-type Pokémon. Although Rampardos does not have a high defense, it’s primarily going to be attacking in this encounter, so you’ll want to make sure you have bulkier Pokémon in your roster to offset this option. The best moves Rampardos can learn for this encounter is the fast move Smack Down and the charged moves Rock Slide and Flamethrower. We do not recommend using Flamethrower against Ho-Oh, though.

The last Pokémon we will recommend against Ho-Oh is Primal Kyogre, a powerful Water-type Pokémon. Primal Kyogre is a powered-up version of Kyogre, and you’ll need Primal Energy to unleash this form. It’s going to be like using a Mega Pokémon against Ho-Oh, but Kyogre is going to overpower many other choices. The best moveset to teach Primal Kyogre to use against Ho-Oh is the fast move Waterfall and the charged moves Origin Pulse and Surf.

You’ll need to bring a full team of six Pokémon to take on Ho-Oh. These are some of the other options you might consider to help fill out your team for this five-star raid.

• Aerodactyl
• Aurorus
• Gigalith
• Landorus
• Lycanroc
• Nihilego
• Omastar
• Terrakion
• Tyranitar
• Tyrantrum

After you defeat Ho-Oh, all players who participated have a chance to catch this legendary Pokémon. There’s also a chance that Ho-Oh might appear as a shiny version in these raids.

About the author

Zack Palm

Zack Palm is the Senior Writer of Gamepur and has spent over five years covering video games, and earned a Bachelor's degree in Economics from Oregon State University. He spends his free time biking, running tabletop campaigns, and listening to heavy metal. His primary game beats are Pokémon Go, Destiny 2, Final Fantasy XIV, and any newly released title, and he finds it difficult to pull away from any Star Wars game.

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