GO Raid Battles/New Gyms Discussion

[Zexy]

I don't know how I feel about raid battles though, I've done 3 level 1s and 1 level 3. I find it hard to even catch levels 1s sometimes because you get gimped with one 11-13 premier balls. I wish you could stock up on them by not using them during the bonus stage

Level 1s don't have that much value, I only really did one Croconaw ever because I had no time for anything else that day. They're indeed very easy to defeat but the Johto starter middle stages are hard to catch because of high CP, and unlike the Rank 2+ Bosses it's not really worth it to spend Golden Razz Berries on them, and it's not that likely to receive enough Golden Razz Berries as reward for beating them either. Magikarp... idk if I didn't already have 4 Wonder Magikarp and 1 Gyarados it might've been interesting.

Rank 2 and above is quite nice, though. But for anything past 2 you need more people, and even 2 is hard to solo at times. It's still good though because Muk and Weezing are very hard to get otherwise, Electabuzz/Magmar/Exeggutor not so much but the former need 100 Candy each for Gen IV and the latter is good for Gyms. All the Rank 3 and 4 are also nice (except Arcanine in my case because I get lots of them), and 4 can even get you Snorlax and Tyranitar, how better can it get.

It is a shame you can't stock on Premier Balls... but then again from Rank 2+ I never really had trouble with them because I'd use Razz/Golden Razz alongside them.

TL;DR if you don't consider Raids satisfying because you've tried Ranks 1 and 3, I'd suggest you give 2 and 4 a chance.

 

[Hidden Mew]

I've only done a couple of Raid Battle and I've only won three of them thus far. They were against Muk, Magmar and Quilava. I do like the rewards. The Rare Candies alone should be extremely helpful with Pokemon that I can rarely find. The Gyms themselves are kind of neat. I haven't tried to defend any Gyms yet, but I like the motivation feature so that Gyms aren't stuck with just one team for ages because no one can defeat their Blissy or something. Actually seeing the trainers before you battle their Pokemon is also pretty cool.

 

[Zexy]

I've only done a couple of Raid Battle and I've only won three of them thus far. They were against Muk, Magmar and Quilava. I do like the rewards. The Rare Candies alone should be extremely helpful with Pokemon that I can rarely find. The Gyms themselves are kind of neat. I haven't tried to defend any Gyms yet, but I like the motivation feature so that Gyms aren't stuck with just one team for ages because no one can defeat their Blissy or something. Actually seeing the trainers before you battle their Pokemon is also pretty cool.

Rare Candies are pretty much free Buddy walking distance you can exchange for any species, that's just awesome.
Motivation is indeed nice; it helps a Gym not stagnate by dropping little by little, gives Nanab Berries a better use (even though I rarely tend to stay around a Gym to re-motivate my defender with Berries) and most importantly, makes subsequent battles against the same Pokemon easy until it's down, which is better than the Prestige system. If you can barely defeat that Blissey wall once, you shouldn't really have to struggle with its full CP several times until it is out.

 

[omahanime]

Level 1s don't have that much value, .

I see 2 reasons for them:
1) Gives new players a chance to get level 20 Pokémon
2) Gives some players a chance to fill holes. Even though I'm level 30 I've seen so few Totodile, I needed Croconaw.

 

[Zexy]

I see 2 reasons for them:
1) Gives new players a chance to get level 20 Pokémon
2) Gives some players a chance to fill holes. Even though I'm level 30 I've seen so few Totodile, I needed Croconaw.

There sure are reasons for them, if you do want to get Magikarp or the Johto starters at Level 20 of course they are useful. What I said is that they don't have that much value, compared to the higher ranks and for someone like me in the level 30s that can solo Rank 2s well enough too.
I could use some filling holes with Bayleef but I only ever see Quilava/Croconaw around For Totodile I'd suggest any area near water, they are actually more common than you'd expect from a starter.

 

[Hidden Mew]

Rare Candies are pretty much free Buddy walking distance you can exchange for any species, that's just awesome.
Motivation is indeed nice; it helps a Gym not stagnate by dropping little by little, gives Nanab Berries a better use (even though I rarely tend to stay around a Gym to re-motivate my defender with Berries) and most importantly, makes subsequent battles against the same Pokemon easy until it's down, which is better than the Prestige system. If you can barely defeat that Blissey wall once, you shouldn't really have to struggle with its full CP several times until it is out.

I do love that about Rare Candies. I only have six right now, but just using those for my Chansey would save me quite a bit of walking. I kind of hope that they'll be available through future bonus gifts at the shop or something, but keeping them exclusive for the Raid Battles makes sense for now. It took me awhile to see that I could give Pokemon other berries, so that gives the Nanab Berries more use.

As for Rank One Bosses, I've seen more Bayleef and Quilava around me for Raid Bosses than Croconaw. I could still use some more Totodile candies, although hopefully I'll have better luck with the five kilometer eggs and hatch one, but capturing a Croconaw would still be helpful.

 

[Jacensolo66]

Did my first 4 star in almost 2 weeks. Didn't catch the Charizard but got a fast Tm for beating it. Swapped my powered up Rhydons fast attack to Mud Slap with it since all 4 of my 90% Rhydon ended up with Rock Smash.

 

[Zexy]

Today I realized, with much surprise, that I've already got 5 Bronze Badges on some Gyms. I really thought I've never done enough in any specific Gym to get that enough points, last time I checked. I've missed it for all this time wow me

 

[Almonds]

I just wanted to experience what it was like to participate in a raid so I went and challenged a Bayleef up for raid.

I was the only participant.

Still, I took it down within 5 minutes using a Flareon and a Kingdra. The Bayleef's attack was so predictable. It takes 2 seconds to aim at my pokemon so I can just flip to the side for an easy dodge. I caught the Bayleef in the 4th Premier Ball.

I hope the other Johto starters are available this way. I still haven't seen anyone from the Cyndaquil family.

 

[Zexy]

I hope the other Johto starters are available this way. I still haven't seen anyone from the Cyndaquil family.

Quilava and Croconaw are available the same way.

Meanwhile I managed to get a Pokemon in a rural area's Gym. Here's the one thing rural areas are GREAT for; it takes a LONG while for someone to kick it out.
It stayed about 12 hours and I took 50 Coins off it, as well as the Bronze Badge off that Gym. That's my new record of coins per day ever and I can't ever get higher than that.

 

[Slife]

Last week I finished Snorlax and Charizard raids but failed to catch either. Used up most of my golden razz in the process. Even a curve ball + excellent throw wasn't enough. They really shouldn't make the level 4 raid bosses so hard to catch, because it's already hard enough just to beat the raid. I'd say unless you get some TMs out of the raid, it's an overall net loss if you can't catch the boss. Premier Balls should also be rewarded based on individual rather than team contribution in my opinion.

 

[Zexy]

I think that Premier Balls operate just like regular Poke Balls and the difficulty of catching the boss depends on the CP and species in the same way it would even if encountered normally. If the latter applies, the only way to make them easier is making Premier Balls equal to Great or Ultra Balls instead.

Agreed on individual vs team contribution but I believe that being in the team that has the Gym the Raid Boss spawned in should give you a bonus.

 

[Zexy]

By this point I should say I've started to enjoy the new Gym system, it might not be super easy to get 10 Coins every day, but it's much more easy to get more than 10 Coins per day if you hit the correct Gyms at correct times.

Raids are becoming more of a problem though; Legendaries take too many people to complete and have low catch rates, and the new Exclusive Raid Battles for Mewtwo (and soon more) are going to be even harder to get in and find people for, and Mewtwo's catch rate in particular will also be bad. At this point, honestly, I've decided I'm not going to worry too much about getting the legendaries, if it happens it's nice but so be it. I'm not even sure it's worth trying hard to get in a Level 5 you may not manage to do or whose bonus challenge you may fail and waste the day's Raid Pass instead of going for a low level that you can easily get items off daily at least.

 

[omahanime]

Raids are becoming more of a problem though; Legendaries take too many people to complete and have low catch rates, and the new Exclusive Raid Battles for Mewtwo (and soon more) are going to be even harder to get in and find people for, and Mewtwo's catch rate in particular will also be bad. At this point, honestly, I've decided I'm not going to worry too much about getting the legendaries, if it happens it's nice but so be it. I'm not even sure it's worth trying hard to get in a Level 5 you may not manage to do or whose bonus challenge you may fail and waste the day's Raid Pass instead of going for a low level that you can easily get items off daily at least.

Lugia is the hard one takes about 14 people. Did Moltres with a total of 6 people. I agree about the catch rate. I' m at 23%, but heard stories of 66%.

 

[Zexy]

Lugia is the hard one takes about 14 people. Did Moltres with a total of 6 people. I agree about the catch rate. I' m at 23%, but heard stories of 66%.

Articuno/Zapdos/Moltres can indeed happen with ~6 people, although 14 sounds a bit much for Lugia.
Not sure how you got the catch rate up there, but having the gold type catch bonus (the only one I don't have yet so I'd only get a +2.5 on Zapdos instead of +3) and going for curveball Great throw alongside Golden Razz should help enough. That said, I find it very hard to do curveballs, let alone with a Great throw

Stories of 66% probably apply when you take into account every Premier Ball available, which would require a good amount of Golden Razz Berries. 23% sounds more like something you can achieve in a single throw.

 

[Jacensolo66]

I am over 50% on catch rate for each of the legendaries with my highest being 80% on Zapdos.

 

[omahanime]

Articuno/Zapdos/Moltres can indeed happen with ~6 people, although 14 sounds a bit much for Lugia.
Not sure how you got the catch rate up there, but having the gold type catch bonus (the only one I don't have yet so I'd only get a +2.5 on Zapdos instead of +3) and going for curveball Great throw alongside Golden Razz should help enough. That said, I find it very hard to do curveballs, let alone with a Great throw

Stories of 66% probably apply when you take into account every Premier Ball available, which would require a good amount of Golden Razz Berries. 23% sounds more like something you can achieve in a single throw.

I was at a Lugia raid, 13 of us there, only 1 below level 30. Ran out of time. 14th player showed up. did it.

I have caught 6 legendaries out of 27 wins.

 

[Zexy]

I'd say that now that I'm back in an urban area I can tell for sure how nice the new system is compared to the old one. I actually have legitimate chances of taking over almost all the Gyms around my house by myself in just an hour. No more Level 10 Gyms that are either filled so I can't get in or impossible to take down with a reasonable amount of resources/time. I might not be getting 50 Coins every day, or have people who could get 100 Coins every day like with previous system, but you can get at least something, every day, with just about an hour of defeating just adjacent Gyms. Which you can also work on their Badge XP and eventually get more items off them too.

 

[Zexy]

OK so in the past two days I've managed to do a lot of Raids and got into the heart of the city's raiding as I joined the Discord that serves just that purpose.
I've done Gengar (so I got at least one Rank 3 now) and 4 Entei (so I've done at least one in all Ranks).

My thoughts on the system as it has become by now is that while it's quite cool and it does connect people in a unique way while making Legendaries available, I'm afraid that unlike the past month with the legendary birds, it's become a bit too monotonous now that there's only Rank 5 species available in each region. It's particularly notable when people outright ignore Snorlax/Tyranitar reports because everyone is just so hyped going after Entei. And it spawns EVERYWHERE, it seems like the chance of a Rank 5 to spawn has been left untouched, except when there were 4 options before there's only one now.

It's particularly notable if not slightly hypocritical when I hear people in the groups we gather in talk about "raid exhaustion" and how people have got bored of the same thing over and over which only gets worse now that it's Entei everywhere... but the very same people keep ignoring Snorlax/Tyranitar, even when they don't have them. And to be honest, I still feel like despite how cool Entei is, Snorlax and Tyranitar are objectively better in most battle situations. They can be used as defenders after all and are quite good at it, with the latter being quite useful as a Raid attacker too.

Guess I shouldn't complain much since I got my nice new Entei that way too but it is a bit too notable by now. Hopefully I'll get that chance at a Tyranitar soon. For now I've decided that I'm not going to use a single more Premium Raid Pass on Entei though, would rather save for Raikou/Suicune/Tyranitar and anything else that might come. Besides it's not that worth it to spend Passes on something you are most likely not going to catch.

Also looking forward to Mewtwo and the Exclusive Raid Battles feature, hopefully it will shake things up again a bit.

 

[kaufen]

Think I just threw away all my Nanab berries but still have like 180 Pinap berries to use.