Best team for the Catch Cup: Rising Heroes Edition in Pokemon Go
NianticThe Catch Cup: Rising Heroes Edition has arrived in the Pokemon Go Battle League, so we’ve rounded up some of the best team options to help you rise to the top.
Pokemon Go’s Season of Rising Heroes is almost over, but before that happens, it’s time for one final Go Battle League challenge. Yes, the love-it-or-hate-it Catch Cup is returning to test your ability to put a solid team together without access to your old favorites.
Niantic originally stated that only Pokemon caught during the Catch Cup would be eligible to enter, but they’ve now updated the wording of their official blog post to confirm that any Pokemon caught during the entire Season of Rising Heroes will be eligible.
In all honesty, this is going to be a very unpredictable cup, but to try and help you get started, we’re looking at some of the best Pokemon you can potentially encounter during the Catch Cup to help you form a winning team.
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NianticBest team for the Catch Cup: Rising Heroes Edition
One of the best teams you could use for the Catch Cup: Rising Heroes Edition in Pokemon Go is Scrafty, Altaria, and Azumarill. An alternative team could be Machamp (Shadow), Meganium, and Snorlax.
Forming a team for this Catch Cup is going to be quite tricky. The official Go Battle League schedule originally stated you could only use Pokemon caught during this Catch Cup, but it’s since been changed to state that you can use any Pokemon caught during the entire Season of Rising Heroes.
This has caused some confusion for players who wanted to get a head start on the Catch Cup, and our recommendations were written before this change was made – which means they are all based on those original rules of needing to be caught during the Catch Cup.
Despite this last-minute change to the rules, the Pokemon you’ll find listed below should all still be solid contenders for this version of the Catch Cup. Even better, you’ll be able to encounter them all in the game right now, which is great news if you’ve not caught many Pokemon this season.
Best Pokemon for the Catch Cup: Rising Heroes Edition
Here are some of the top Pokemon that will be eligible for the current run of the Catch Cup:
| Pokemon | Fast Move | Charged Moves | How to get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scrafty | Counter | Foul Play & Power-Up Punch | Catch a Scraggy in the wild and evolve it |
| Altaria | Dragon Breath | Sky Attack & Moonblast | Defeat a Mega Altaria in a Raid Battle |
| Machamp | Counter | Cross Chop & Rock Slide | Defeat a Shadow Machop in a Raid Battle and evolve it |
| Azumarill | Bubble | Ice Beam & Play Rough | Defeat a Marill in a Raid Battle and evolve it |
| Meganium | Vine Whip | Frenzy Plant & Earthquake | Defeat a Shadow Bayleef in a Raid Battle and evolve it |
| Drapion | Poison Sting | Crunch & Aqua Tail | Catch a Skorupi in the wild and evolve it |
| Snorlax | Lick | Body Slam & Superpower | Get a Snorlax as a Research Breakthrough reward |
| Galarian Stunfisk | Mud Shot | Rock Slide & Earthquake | Hatch a Galarian Stunfisk from a 7km Egg |
| Golbat | Wing Attack | Poison Fang & Shadow Ball | Catch a Golbat in the wild |
| Lurantis | Fury Cutter | Leaf Blade & Superpower | Hatch a Fomantis from a 1km Egg and evolve it |
These Pokemon are all available to catch or evolve during this Catch Cup, and they all place very highly in the current Great League rankings (thanks PvPoke!) so they should be able to put in a decent performance here as well.
Keep in mind, though, that the Catch Cup: Rising Heroes Edition is pretty much a brand new format, so we don’t 100% know which of these Pokemon will end up being the true top contenders and which ones you’ll be coming across regularly for the duration of the cup.
It’s also entirely possible that some Pokemon Go players will have unclaimed rewards from old Special Research tasks that will let them catch a strong Pokemon that would otherwise be unavailable, so there’s definitely a big element of unpredictability here.
For this reason, we would actually recommend that you try to just enjoy the Catch Cup for what it is rather than spending all of your time and resources trying to put together a perfect team that might not even be worth using when the cup is over.
Catch Cup: Rising Heroes Edition rules & restrictions
The main rule of the Catch Cup is that only Pokemon caught during the Season of Rising Heroes are eligible for a place on your team.
All of your Pokemon must also be at or below the 1,500 CP limit and Mythical Pokemon are banned.
It was previously stated by Niantic that all Pokemon must have been caught during the Catch Cup, but they’ve now changed that rule to include the entire Season of Rising Heroes.
Catch Cup: Rising Heroes Edition start & end date
The Catch Cup: Rising Heroes Edition begins on Wednesday, May 24, 2023, at 1PM PT / 4PM ET / 9PM BST and runs until Thursday, June 1, 2023, at 1PM PT.
It will run alongside the traditional Master League – and you can find out best Master League team guide here.