Pokemon Go Team Rocket battles left unplayable by “annoying” shield bug

Niladri Sarkar
shield used in a pokemon go battle

A new Pokemon Go bug has surfaced, making Team Rocket battles impossible to complete and wasting precious items, leaving trainers frustrated.

Team Rocket battles are quite a challenge for Pokemon Go players and now, an irritating bug is making it impossible to beat them and catch their Shadow Pokemon.

This glitch causes the screen to freeze, either not registering the battle at all or leaving your teams defeated, requiring Potions to restore their HP. Reddit user ‘skewtr’ has been facing the same issue and they posted that it’s been happening in every other battle over the past few days.

Several trainers who were sick of the recurring glitch took to the comments section to share their angst, while also revealing some more details.

A couple of players commented: “Whenever it’s happened to me, it’s always been when the Grunt’s first Pokemon uses a charged attack, which often happens with the Ice Grunt,” and “I’ve only had this happen with the shadow Grunt and their shadow Drifloon, but it’s annoying when it happens.”

Another added: “It seems to have happened when the opponent uses a charged attack at the same time my own fast attack would have knocked them out.”

Some assumed that the glitch was only taking place with the Party Play feature active in Pokemon Go but others confirmed that it has even been happening without it.

While the Ice and Ghost-type Grunts were the smoking gun, the Psychic-type NPC was also on the list of battles tainted by this bug. If these weren’t enough already, one trainer even pointed out that the Arlo battle was no different.

For now, restarting Pokemon Go is the only way to resume playing the game after coming across this glitch. Trainers would hope they don’t face the problem in the battles against Team Rocket Boss Giovanni and other Leaders Sierra and Cliff.