Pokemon Go: How to defeat Aerodactyl, weakness & counters

Aerodactyl is one of the most common picks by Team Rocket leader Cliff, so knowing how to target a weakness in Pokemon Go can be very useful.

This guide is primarily here to give you a basic overview of what Types are good choices for fighting Aerodactyl by targeting its Type-weakness, and then using that information to decide on the best possible counter Pokemon choices to bring down the Flying Fossil Pokemon.

What is the biggest weakness of Aerodactyl in Pokemon Go?

The best options here are either Water-Types or Steel-Types. Steel-Types offer more advantages but come at the cost of a weakness to Ground-Type moves leaving you vulnerable to Earth Power.

Water-Type Pokemon meanwhile resist less attacks but have no weakness that Aerodactyl can target, making them an excellent safe bet.

Other Super-Effective damage types run into issues where Aerodactyl is quite capable of hitting them back with lethal damage, and thus are risky for no additional gain compared to Steel or Water-Types.

How did we find the most reliable counter?

As is typical in any Pokemon title, including Go, precisely how strong a Pokemon is and what moves it uses may vary depending on the individual, but there are a few things that remain consistent across all of any given species of Pokemon.

The easiest of these to exploit is often the Pokemon’s Type.

Aerodactyl is a rather unusual Typing, being a Rock/Flying dual-Type. This grants Aerodactyl a number of resistances, alongside a fair few possible exploitable weakness targets for us Pokemon Go players. Let’s go delve into the reasoning for our answer above, shall we?

Aerodactyl Type Interactions in Pokemon Go

Resistances

• Bug
• Fire
• Flying
• Ground
• Normal
• Poison

Surprisingly, not a single double resistance in here. These are all reduced once, resulting in 62.5% damage dealt per attack from these Types.

Weaknesses

• Electric
• Ice
• Rock
• Steel
• Water

Like with resistances, the weaknesses are all the basic version and no double weakness is present. As a result, all of these types deal 160% damage compared to usual.

So, given these are all otherwise equal, let’s go look into what Aerodactyl can hit us back with to make a more informed decision about the best choice here.

READ MORE: Pokemon: Is Voltorb a good Pokemon design or was it a mistake?

What moves does Aerodactyl use in battle?

Fast Attacks

• Bite (Dark)
• Rock throw (Rock)
• Steel Wing (Steel)

Charged Attacks

• Ancient Power (Rock)
• Earth Power (Ground)
• Hyper Beam (Normal)
• Iron Head (Steel)
• Rock Slide (Rock)

Ice-Types are almost immediately dealt with, as while they do get their damage bonus, Aerodactyl has both Rock and Steel-Type moves to hit them back with, making this a sub-optimal matchup on that front. Electric-Types do fare a bit better here, resisting the two Steel-Type attacks on top of dealing Super-Effective damage, but unfortunately suffer from a big risk via increased damage from Ground-Types, and thus Earth Power.

Rock-Types are a similar story to Ice, suffering from bad move matchups into both Steel and Ground-type attacks.

Steel-Type is a great option here, due to having resistance to 6 of the 8 possible attacks back from Aerodactyl, while only having a weakness against that one Ground-Type move. Meanwhile, Water-Types resist a smaller portion of Aerodactyls counter-attacks in Pokemon Go than Steel but do offer no weakness that Aerodactyl can attack back – making them a good safe choice.

READ MORE: Pokemon Go: Golurk Weakness, counters

Aerodactyl weakness and counters Summary

The best options here are either Water-Types or Steel-Types. Steel-Types offer more advantages but come at the cost of a weakness to Ground-Type moves leaving you vulnerable to Earth Power. Water-Type Pokemon meanwhile resist less attacks but have no weakness that Aerodactyl can target, making them an excellent safe bet.

The other Types fare less well, getting bogged down by possible counter-attacks with few if any redeeming factors when compared to Steel or Water-Types.

That should be about everything you need to know to find a victory against Aerodactyl Trainer, good luck out there!

If you’d like more stories, articles and guides for Pokemon Go, you can find them right here on The Click, and if you’d instead like to see more by me specifically, a list of my articles is available here.