In Pokémon GO, Rasaff was removed from the ranked Trainer Battles. Trainers found an unfair advantage that made the attacker stronger.
What advantage did Rasaff have? On the evening of January 11th, players noticed that Rasaff can learn the move Weather Ball.
On reddit, a player asked: Should Rasaff be able to learn Weather Ball?
In the responses, players write:
- “I taught all my Rasaff Weather Ball immediately!”
- “LOL, did they [Niantic] mess it up?”
However, many noticed the thread on reddit a bit too late. Often you read messages like this:
- “I’ve thrown about 20 Charged TMs at it. It seems to have been patched. Congratulations to everyone who got one.”
This is how Niantic responded to the error
The developers intervened: It didn’t take long for players to notice a change. As seen in the thread on reddit, many trainers arrived “too late to the party”. Only 20 minutes after the thread was created, players reported that they could no longer exploit the error. Apparently, Niantic addressed this with high priority.
Because Rasaff actually shouldn’t have this move at all. And anyone who taught Rasaff Weather Ball gained a significant advantage in Trainer battles. They had an actually impossible combination of Pokémon and move.
Shortly after, Niantic Support posted a brief statement on Twitter regarding the situation. “A small number of trainers were able to use TMs to teach Rasaff moves that it actually can’t learn. This was possible due to a brief error on January 11th. The cause of this error has been fixed and Rasaff has been banned from the Great League while we continue our investigation.”
This error apparently occurred in connection with the update that changed the damage of 7 moves in Trainer battles. Rasaff’s new move should actually only be Ice Punch. Various variations of Weather Ball were supposed to be available for Vulpix, Ninetales, and Quagsire.
How long Rasaff will remain banned from the Great League and when you can use it again is still uncertain. Did you even want to use it for your team, or is the decision not important to you because you’re focusing on other attackers in the Trainer battles?
The start of the Great League is just one of the many major events in January 2021 for Pokémon GO.
