Giovanni's Persian

Just how do you take down Giovanni's Persian in Pokémon Go?

Persian is a normal type Pokémon, so, obviously, you want a fighting type Pokémon, and everyone knows the king of fighting types is Machamp, right?

Well that's what I thought until I spent Saturday afternoon trying to defeat him and his Persian with (one of) my prize Machamp. The other Pokémon weren't too difficult, but the Persian was wrecking me and Machamp wasn't pulling his (substantial) weight.

So, what's wrong with Machamp?

The problem is that Machamp goes down too quickly to get off a charged attack. My CP 2900 Counter + Dynamic Punch Champ was VERY close to getting off his first charged attack, but he was consistently fainting right before he got chance. That's a big problem, because it means you're bringing out your second Pokémon and Giovanni hasn't even used one of his shields yet, and he's about to make you use one of yours.

That's the important thing for the first Pokémon - you need to be breaking down the shields. Machamp has a reasonably fast charging charged move (Dynamic Punch), but he faints too quickly to use it.

So, what should we use instead?

I did it with a Tyranitar. Even though Tyranitar's dark or rock moves have only standard effectiveness against Persian, Tyranitar takes less damage because Persian is less effective against rock types. Tyranitar is a bulky boy on top of that so he stays alive much longer than Machamp and manages to get off charged attacks. So even though his attacks are less effective than Machamp's, he ends up doing a lot more damage.

However, even better is if you can field a Pokémon that has resistance versus Persian and simultaneously has super effective moves. An example is Lucario, which has steel type resistance versus normal, but has fighting moves, which are super-effective against normal. A high level Lucario with a three-bar charge move (Power Up Punch) should go straight through the Persian without breaking a sweat.