Pokemon Go: How to defeat Butterfree, weakness and counters

Butterfree in the Pokemon Anime

Butterfree is known as one of the Iconic Bug-types of the series, but do you know the weakness and counters of Butterfree in Pokemon Go?

It’s one of the Pokemon species that helped define its type, and most trainers thinking about Bug Pokemon will likely have Butterfree come to mind quite quickly, but how does the butterfly Pokemon fare in battles, such as raids, or PVP? What is it weak to, what type of move does it use, and what counters does it have? I’ll be going through all of this shortly, so let’s get right into it.

What counters Butterfree 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. Butterfree is a Bug/Flying-type Pokemon, which is a fairly common typing now, though back in Gen-I it was shared only with Scyther.

This actually gives Butterfree some very favourable matchups, taking a massively reduced 24% of damage from Ground-type attacks, for example. Unfortunately, it does come with some downsides as well, as Butterfree in Pokemon Go has 5 separate counters types due to type weakness, and Rock-types, in particular, will deal huge damage against the Butterfly Pokemon.

Butterfree in the Pokemon Anime
Credit: Bulbapedia, the Pokemon Company

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

With that said, let’s take a look through the moves Butterfree has access to and see if that changes anything, though it’s quite unlikely that Rock-types don’t come out on top due to the massive damage advantage they have due to type weakness in Pokemon Go.

Butterfree has access to a maximum of 6 different moves in total, 4 of which are Bug-type, and the remaining two are Psychic. Curiously, despite its typing, no flying-type attacks are available.

Unfortunately for Butterfree, those two types of attacks do absolutely nothing to cover up its weakness against any of the types that typically beat it – meaning that all of Flying, Ice, Fire, Electric and Rock-types have a favourable matchup against it, and Butterfree simply has no real answers to them in Pokemon Go. All in all, if you’re considering Butterfree as a possible PvP pick, unless you’re looking for a straight-up Bug-type focused pick, this probably isn’t the choice you want.

What is Butterfree weak to?

In a word, Rock-types. Other types such as Ice or Fire do well against Butterfree as well, but Rock-types deal by far the most damage against it. You’ll want to be sure you’re using Rock-types though, as the fairly similar Ground-type will get absolutely annihilated in this matchup.

Pink Butterfree in the Pokemon anime
Credit: Bulbapedia, the Pokemon Company

Anything else to mention?

That’s really it for the weakness and counters of Butterfree in Pokemon Go. Stick to Rock-types and you can’t go wrong, though make sure you’re not using a Rock/Ground dual-type like Rhyperior, because those ground-type moves will really slow you down.

With our answer found, that’s everything for this quick Butterfree counters guide for Pokemon Go, hopefully you found this useful whether you use it for battles, raids or even PvP – If you’d like more guides or articles about 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.

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