How To Beat Cliff In Pokémon GO (January 2025)

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Cliff is one of three Team Rocket leaders you can challenge in , offering great rewards in January 2025 for anyone who can beat him. Although Cliff's team may be familiar going into the new year, there are even better ways to counter his Pokémon than before. By analyzing his lineup of strong pocket monsters, you can easily find a way to defeat this Team Rocket captain every time.

Along with Sierra and Arlo in , Cliff can only be found when you build the Rocket Radar item by defeating Team Rocket Grunts. Six Mysterious Components collected from Grunts make up the Radar, which leads you to a Leader once it's built. Unfortunately, the leader you encounter is determined randomly, so you only have a 33% chance of running into Cliff.

Like other Team Rocket battles, the fight against Cliff is divided into three phases, or that you must get through. The first wave always has you facing the same Pokémon on Cliff's team, but the second and third waves could feature any of three different Pokémon. This makes it hard to predict what counters you need to face Cliff since he may not use the Pokémon you'd expect.

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Cliff does tend to favor Dark-type Pokémon, but don't let that preference fool you. The Team Rocket leader has plenty of other options, including Pokémon who will directly counter your attempts to battle against Dark-types alone. Unlike Rocket Grunts like Team Ke Ke Ke Ke in , Cliff is a far more cunning opponent.

Every Pokémon Cliff uses is also a Shadow variant, giving each of his team members more health and deadlier attacks for you to combat.

Below is a table outlining all the possible Pokémon Cliff could use throughout his battle, and which counters work best against him:

Wave

Pokémon

Type(s)

Weaknesses

Best Counters

1

(Shadow) Galarian Zigzagoon

Dark/Normal

Fighting, Bug, Fairy

2

(Shadow) Venusaur

Grass/Poison

Fire, Flying,