Cloyster's best moveset in Pokemon GO

Due to its stats, the Pokemon GO version of Cloyster might be even more defensive than its main game counterpart.

Cloyster is a veteran of the original 150 that evolved from Shellder. It’s mostly known for having a humongous 180 base Defense stat. In Pokemon GO, however, its Defense buffs up to 256. Water and Ice also offer excellent coverage, making Cloyster a fine candidate for a Gym defense team as well as regular PvP. Here are the moves trainers can throw on Cloyster to be successful with this Pokemon.

Note: This article is subjective and reflects the opinion of the writer.

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How can this Ice/Water type Pokemon inflict the most damage?

Cloyster has two very similar fast move options: Ice Shard and Frost Breath. They are both Ice-type moves that do around 10 damage. Ice Shard has more benefits for Cloyster, though. Frost Breath is a tad bit faster, but Ice Shard does 12 damage without taking STAB into account.

The other issue with Frost Breath is that it only charges 8.9 energy, which is a really awkward amount. Cloyster only needs to click Ice Shard (which charges 10 energy) five times to charge up an Avalanche, whereas it needs an extra Frost Breath to charge the same amount of energy.

With the exception of Hydro Pump, Cloyster has another choice of a multitude of Ice-type attacks for its charge moves. Avalanche would be the preferred attack, though. If used on a Gym defense team, Cloyster will want a charge move that doesn’t need too much Energy, so that it’s guaranteed to use at least one charge move in every match.

Avalanche only requires 50 energy and still does 90 damage, which will hurt when accounting for STAB. A more offensive Cloyster could run Blizzard instead, but Avalanche ends up doing more DPS anyways, so it probably isn’t worth it.

For the second charge move, Hydro Pump is recommended. Although it is a Water-type Pokemon, Cloyster is also Ice-type, which means it takes neutral damage from Fire attacks. This means that it will need a strong water move if it hopes to deal with Fire-types. In a meta where Mega Charizard and Shadow Moltres are roaming around the place, being weak to Fire is almost unacceptable.

Hydro Pump can also hit Rock-types that can use super effective attacks against Cloyster. In general, not too many Pokemon are going to want to take a 130 power STAB move, regardless of what Cloyster’s Attack stat is.