Pokemon Go: How to defeat Pinsir, weakness and counters

Last Updated on: 9th October 2021, 04:18 pm

Pinsir, the Stag Beetle Pokemon, is a powerful Gen-I Bug-type, so do you know its weakness and what it takes to counter it in Pokemon Go?

Being one of the first Bug-type Pokemon in the series, Pinsir is quite well known among the fanbase, but it’s not actually seen that often, so while you may remember its weakness as its a fairly iconic Bug Pokemon, it can be hard to remember what possible match-ups are the best counters against it. Fortunately, that’s what I’ll be covering here.

What counters Pinsir in Pokemon Go?

If you’re familiar with the Pokemon series, you’ll know by now that certain types have either (or both) of a damage advantage or incoming damage reduction in certain matchups, known as super effective and not very effective respectively. Pinsir is a pure Bug-type Pokemon, which means its strengths and weaknesses line up with what you’d expect for the type as a whole.

This means that Pinsir has counter matchups that favour it against Fighting, Grass and Ground-type Pokemon, but is quite weak against Fire, Rock and Flying-types.

READ MORE: Pokemon Go: How to defeat Heracross, weakness and counters

With the Types we can use as counters now established, which works best against Pinsir in Pokemon Go? All three do the same enhanced amount of damage, so which comes out on top? Well, the best way to determine that is usually to check through what the Pokemon we’re up against can do, so let’s take a look at Pinsir and its possible moves.

Pinsir has access to a surprising 8 total moves, which leaves us with quite a bit to account for – though fortunately it only uses three different types of moves, which makes it easier to plan against. Pinsir primarily uses Fighting-type attacks, which make up half of its total options, followed closer by 3 Bug-type moves, and then a single Normal-type attack.

Its fast attacks are mostly Bug-type, while charged attacks are dominated by Fighting-type moves, so we’ll have to plan for encountering both of those.

Pinsir Type Weakness in Pokemon Go

So, what is Pinsir most weak to? Well we know that our best choices for damage as Rock, Fire and Flying-type Pokemon, but when you consider what Pinsir can attack with, Rock isn’t such a good matchup anymore. Your best bet will be Flying-Type Pokemon, as they’ll resist almost every attack Pinsir has and deal super effective damage.

Fire-types do claim second place for themselves by resisting Bug-type attacks, but they still take full damage from Fighting-type attacks, which Pinsir has plenty of – which means they compare unfavourably against Flying-types for this fight.

Anything else to cover?

That’s really it for the weakness and counters of Pinsir in Pokemon Go. You can’t go wrong with Flying-type Pokemon here, but failing that Fire-types make for a good backup choice. Avoid anything weak to Fighting-type attacks, as Pinsir has plenty of those.

With that question now answered, that’s about everything for this short Pinsir counters guide for Pokemon Go, hopefully you’ve found all the information you need to know about its weakness and matchups that might help you in battles, raids or even PvP – and as always, if you’d like more guides or articles about Pokemon Go, you can find them right here on The Click, while if you’d instead like to see more by me specifically, a list of my articles is available here.