Gigantamax Lapras counters, weakness, and battle tips in Pokémon Go

Gigantamax Lapras is the sixth Gigantamax Pokémon introduced to Pokémon Go, and is available in Max Battles as part of the Gigantamax Lapras Max Battle Day on Dec. 8 from 2-5 p.m. in your local time.

Like all the other Gigantamax Battles, Lapras will be challenging, so players who aren’t ready for the spike in difficulty are going to have a tough time.

Below, we list out some general Gigantamax Max Battle tips and counters for Gigantamax Lapras in Pokémon Go.

General Gigantamax Lapras tips

If you’ve been struggling in Max Battles, here’s some general tips to survive — and make sure you’re an asset to your team. Gigantamax battles involve way more strategy than the usual rampant tapping that you do in raids, so make sure to know what you’re doing before jumping in.

• Make sure you have enough players. High-efficiency groups with maxed out investments can take down the Lapras with fewer people, but practically, if you don’t have hundreds of spare candy and even more Stardust laying around, this isn’t going to be an option for you. Make sure you have as many people as possible to ensure that you get your musically inclined cruise ship-shell creature.
• Don’t sleep on Max Spirit and Max Guard. Teams work best when there’s a variety of moves, not just maxed-out attacks. Each player should bring Pokémon with the defensive and healing moves unlocked as well. Max Guard will focus single-target damage towards you and reduce the damage taken and Max Spirit will heal the whole party, so these moves are really important to make sure your damage-dealers can keep dishing.
• Remember to swap to super effective moves when it’s time to Dynamax. For Dynamax Pokémon, their max moves will be whatever type their fast move is. This means if you have a Rillaboom with Razor Leaf, it will know Max Overgrowth. A Gengar with Shadow Claw will know Max Phantasm. Take advantage of this and make sure to swap to a Pokémon that will deal super effective damage to your target before Dynamaxing, if you can.
• Level up a few ‘mons, but you don’t have to go too hard. Depending on your group size, you absolutely do not need to max out all your Dynamax Pokémon to level 40-50. While this will make it easier on the rest of your group, if this isn’t an investment you can make, you don’t have to stress about it. Power things up as high as you can afford to, but don’t fret if you don’t have a maxed out Pokémon.
• That all being said, make sure to come as prepared as you can be. This is a team effort and there’s a reason why groups of 30-40 people can still fail. Do not just bring your unleveled Dynamax Wooloo expecting a free ride to a powerful Pokémon. (After all, if everyone does that, then you certainly won’t clear the battle.) Again, you don’t have to completely max out your Pokémon, but it will be better for everyone involved if you bring something helpful to the table.
• Keep your eye out for a shiny Lapras! If you clear the raid, there is a chance that the Lapras you catch will be shiny — which also means it’ll be a guaranteed catch. Use a Pinap Berry to score extra candy if you get lucky enough to find a sparkly Lapras.

Gigantamax Lapras weakness

We’ll want to utilize Gigantamax Lapras’ weaknesses: fighting-, rock-, grass-, and electric-type moves. There aren’t too many Pokémon that can utilize these move types, though.

Gigantamax Lapras best counters

With the above in mind, there’s a few counters to bring to Lapras. We recommend the following to focus on offensive moves:

• Venusaur with Vine Whip and Petal Blizzard
• Toxtricity with Spark and Wild Charge
• Machamp with Counter and Payback

Note that if the Lapras you’re facing off against has Blizzard or Ice Beam as one its moves, your Venusaur will faint pretty quickly.

If you want to be an ally to your team, you can bring the following Pokémon with Max Guard to help our defensively:

• Metagross with Zen Headbutt
• Blastoise with Bite

These moves will allow you to build up shields quickly, and they resist most of Lapras’ possible moves.

There still aren’t too many ideal Pokémon to use as healers, since Max Spirit wants you to use high-HP Pokémon. You can use Greedent in the meantime, which has a ton of HP.

Even if you don’t have these powered up, consider just bringing the strongest Dynamax Pokémon you have. If you have a maxed out Dynamax Gengar and your Dynamax Venusaur isn’t leveled (and you don’t have the means to power it up), just bring your Gengar. We’re still working with scraps here, people.