Players can finally capture and use the Mythical Pokémon Hoopa as part of Pokémon Go’s Season of Mischief content. This means that it can appear in PvP and other battles now. 

Hoopa will be a little harder to build around since it is still new to the game. However, its powerful offensive stats and STAB moves leave you with a powerful option to add to your roster. 

The main thing to work around with Hoopa’s Confined state is its awful defenses. You won’t have any survivability, so make sure to only bring it out when you know you have an advantage or can clean up a game without having it around in the later stages. 

Hoopa Confined has a max CP of 3,359 at level 40, with 261 Attack, 187 Defense, and 173 Stamina. As a Psychic/Ghost-type, Hoopa has access to the following moves, all of which are STAB and will deal large amounts of damage:

Fast Moves

• Confusion
• Astonish

Charge Moves

• Psybeam
• Shadow Ball
• Psychic

Your best combination in any scenario is Confusion and Shadow Ball, with both being incredible moves in their specific slots, playing well together off of Hoopa’s typings, and dealing up to 15.3 damage per second. Doubling up on a Psychic or Ghost-type option doesn’t really seem like the best play since it would limit Hoopa’s effectiveness. 

If you do need to double up, Confusion and Psychic is a better combo than Astonish and Shadowball, though both still deal between 92 and 96 percent of the Confusion and Shadow Ball combo’s damage. 

No matter which build you use, you will always need to be extremely wary of opposing Ghost and Dark-type Pokémon, along with any Pokémon that can deal a lot of damage very quickly. Hoopa won’t last long in bad situations, but if you play your cards right, you can cause some real mischief with the Mythical Pokémon.

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