How to find and beat Cliff in Pokémon Go (March 2025)

Team Rocket leaders are difficult encounters that change rosters every few months in Pokémon Go. If you’re looking to fight against Cliff, you’ll need to use a different strategy occasionally, as he’ll use different Pokémon to challenge you.

The Pokémon you can expect to see from Cliff varies. You’ll want to prepare your team accordingly to make sure you know what Pokémon you’ll want to bring. We can help, especially if you want to then take down Giovanni in Pokémon Go. Cliff is a required battle before you can track down the Team Rocket overlord, and he’s not a pushover either. We can help you find and beat Cliff, bringing you one step closer to defeating Team Rocket.

How to find Cliff in Pokémon Go

You won’t be able to find Cliff immediately. You have to focus on tracking down and defeating the Team Rocket grunts that have taken over PokéStops or the ones that appear in Team Rocket Balloons. Each time you defeat them, they drop a Mysterious Component item. You’ll need to collect six of them in Pokémon Go, which immediately combine to become a Team Rocket Radar. You can use this to track down Cliff at a captured PokéStop, or you might encounter one of the two other Team Rocket leaders, Arlo or Sierra.

When you find Cliff, he’ll use three Pokémon against you. These Pokémon change every month, but there’s a pattern to them.

As of March 2025, Cliff still has the same line-up he was using for the Fashion Week: Taken Over event. None of his potential Pokémon choices have changed, meaning he starts out with a shadow Cubone at the beginning of the battle. We don’t expect him to change again until the next Taken Over event, which should happen some time during the Might and Mastery season. After beating Cliff, you have the opportunity to catch a shadow Cubone, which could appear in its Shiny form.

All Cliff Pokémon counters in Pokémon Go

How to beat Cliff’s first Pokémon

The first Pokémon Cliff will use against you is Cubone, which remains the same every time you encounter Cliff. Cubone is a Ground-type Pokémon that is weak against Grass, Ice, and Water-type attacks. You want to avoid using Poison, Rock, and Electric-type moves against it. You should be able to use nearly any Pokémon against it, as the first Pokémon a Team Rocket leader uses is typically the easiest. A Water-type like Blastoise, Gyarados, or Swampert would be a good option to make short work of it.

How to beat Cliff’s second Pokémon

For the second choice, Cliff will use one of three options against you. These are the three Pokémon Cliff might use.

Annihilape is the toughest Pokémon Cliff uses, but it closely resembles the same weaknesses as Machoke, another Fighting-type Pokémon. Because these two are closely related to each other, you might want to focus on using Fairy, Flying, or a Psychic-type Pokémon. Even though Marowak is not weak against it, it’ll still take standard damage from it in a battle. If you still have your Water-type Pokémon from the battle with Cubone, you can use it on Marowak and it should be fine.

Some of the best Pokémon for this portion of the battle are Mewtwo, Gardevoir, Gallade, Latios, Enarmous, Ho-Oh, Hoopa, Lugia, or Tapu Lele.

How to beat Cliff’s third Pokémon

Similar to the second Pokémon, there is one of three Pokémon Cliff can use for his third option. This will be the toughest Pokémon on his team. These are three Cliff might use against you.

Although the third Pokémon a Team Rocket leader uses is tough, these are some easier options. Machamp and Tyranitar are weak to Fighting, and Fairy-type moves. Crobat is not weak to these attacks, but you can use Electric, Ice, Psychic, or Rock-type moves against it. You can try to focus on the weaknesses of Machamp and Tyranitar as your main opponents, as you can likely use the Pokémon you used from the second encounter to counter Crobat.

When facing off against Cliff’s final choice, the best Pokémon to use are Gardevoir, Mewtwo, Latios, Gallade, Lugia, Alakazam, Tapu Lele, Lunala, Hoopa, Enamorus, and Yveltal.

You’ll have a chance to catch a Shadow Cubone after defeating Cliff in Pokémon Go. There’s also a chance it can appear as a Shiny version.