Boss raids, new legendaries

August 31 or September 1, depending on where you live one out of three legendaries will be released.

This according to an official Niantic message.

Entei, Raikou and Suicune will be released one at at time for a month each. Note, however, that all three will be out from September, but depending on where you live you'll only have access to one of them at a time.

For trainers in Europe we'll see Entei first, so keep your golems and vaporeon in good shape. Omastar and Rhydon also work perfectly well.

Gym raiding, what use could a casual possibly be

So, you're playing the end game, and you're tearing down gyms. Now, if a player doing the middle game, ie levels 20 to 32, offers to help, is it even worth it?

The answer is yes. Most definitely yes.

I'm being helped by my wife, and she started playing in May. She's started helping out since she reached level 25, at which time I was closing in on 40.

Her contribution when clearing out gyms cuts time by 30 percent, and since we're burning down seven gyms late each evening that's a huge help.


Tactics

I burn down the first defender and after that she joins the battle. Since my line-up plays in a totally different league compared to hers she'll never catch up. However, I usually don't catch up to her until she's burning down the last defender.

By that time five defenders have been cleared out of the gym, and I never need to bother with the second round out of the three needed to wipe out a gym.

The thing here is to have the lower level player wait for the first defender to go down before entering combat. It saves the high level player time while at the same time conserving revives and potions for the lower level one.

As an added bonus you get a player well versed in gym raiding by the time that player leaves the middle game and starts playing high level Pokemon Go.

The downside is the insertion of questionable defensive material into the gym, but let's stay honest here. If you were alone the gym would get one defender assigned. A second defender in the 1500 to 2500 CP range still adds to the defence. Especially if it's a selected defender.

A last advice. Don't push it too far. A middle game player has access to maybe four potentially top class defenders which have been powered up as far as that player is able to. Going above ten gyms will totally deplete that players caapcity.

Mewtwo, why you shouldn't smoke camel dung when giving advice

I've been reading the same advice from two sources concerning mewtwo as a raid boss.

The main culprits are:

• Gamepress
• Rankedboost

In all likelyhood the idiocy has spread from there as well.

Moronic counters

Rankedboost is the worst by a very wide margin, so to make things abundantly clear -- stay the hell away from murcrow, butterfree and ledian when building your lineup against mewtwo.

Let's go through the basics of how dealing damage works in Pokemon Go. This is an extremely simplified version, and for that reason includes some rounding errors, but it covers the basics.

I'm disregarding:

• the rounding off mechanism which guarantees any attack to deal at least 1 point of damage. It's very important for primary attacks but less so for charge attacks.
• the level difference multiplier (level of attacking versus defending pokemon, not level of player)

Assume your attack move does 100 damage against a neutral target:

• STAB multiplies that damage by 1.2
• Being super effective multiplies that damage by 1.4
• Being double super effective multiplies that damage by 2 (1.4 squared)
• Being not very effective multiplies that damage by 0.7
• Being doubly not very effective multiplies that damage by 0.5 (0.7 squared)
• That damage is multiplied by attackers attack stat and then divided by the defenders defence stat

Did you get the last part? Attack divided by defence is a multiplier.

The attack stat is a pokemons base attack stat plus 0 - 15, ie the IV attack value of the pokemon. The same goes for defence.

In the case of mewtwo defence is around 200, but for picking an attacker this isn't all that important. Let's say (most likely incorrectly) that the raid boss version of mewtwo has exactly 200 defence.

Base attack stats for suggested crap:

• Murcrow -- 85
• Butterfree -- 45
• Ledian -- 35

Base attack stats for pokemon which are not very effective against mewtwo (given psychic and fighting attacks):

• Exeggutor -- 233
• Alakazam -- 271
• Machamp -- 234

So, since mewtwo is a psychic type pokemon we're comparing murcrow's supereffective attacks with machamp's not very effective attacks. To give murcrow an even greater advantage we're setting it's attack IV to 15 and machamp to 0.

• Murcrow 100 attack and machamp 234 attack.
• Murcrow 1.4 multiplier and machamp 0.7 multiplier

Machamp still does more damage by a more than 15% margin given similar attacks despite being at a 100% disadvantage due to combat move typing. Incidentally machamp's best attacks are better than murcrow's.

We won't even look at the atrocities that are butterfree and ledian.

Moronic moves suggestions

Once again Rankedboost has access to the largest stash of camel dung. They explicitly advice you to go with Stone Edge as the charge move for tyranitar.

Gamepress merely incorrectly states that there's no big difference between Crunch and Stone Edge since Bite is the only attack that counts anyway. So in fact they just lit up the dung at a distance from which they couldn't get a really bad trip.

Let's go through the attacks.

Stone Edge:

• 100 power
• Requires 100 energy
• 2.3 seconds cast time
• Deals neutral damage against mewtwo (multiplier 1.0)

Crunch:

• 70 power
• Requires 33 energy
• 3.2 seconds cast time
• Deals super effective damage against mewtwo (multiplier 1.4)

Bite:

• 6 power
• Adds 4 energy
• 0.5 seconds cast time
• Deals super effective damage against mewtwo (multiplier 1.4)

So 25 Bite attacks builds 100 energy. Now you build energy by taking damage as well, but we're just comparing Crunch and Stone Edge here.

50 Bite attacks would allow you to fire off Stone Edge twice.

According to a Reddit thread each Bite attack will inflict 7 damage against mewtwo given a decent enough tyranitar. This implies that 6 (power) time 1.4 (super effective) times attack divided by defence is 7 after all the rounding off to get an integer as the damage value.

Creating the most beneficial scenario for Stone Edge yields the data below:

Crunch will deal 75 damage given a decent tyranitar.

So, 70 (Crunch power) times 1.4 times X is close to 75. This yields an X value of close to 0.8.

Applying that 0.8 against Stone Edge we see how the 100 power would result in it dealing 80 damage.

Now let's count that damage for Stone Edge:

• 50 Bite does 350 damage
• 2 Stone Edge does 160 damage
• The time required is 25 plus 4.6 seconds, so around 30 seconds in total.
• 510 damage dealt in total

How much damage can we deal with Crunch in 30 seconds?

25 Bite will yield the energy to fire off 3 Crunch. That takes 12.5 plus 9.6 seconds.

Can we squeeze in a fourth Crunch before we've reached 30 seconds?

9 Bite gives 36 energy. That takes 4.5 plus 3.2 seconds, so in total 7.7 seconds.

In total 29.8 seconds, which we round off to 30.

Damage done with Crunch:

• 34 Bite does 238 damage
• 4 Crunch does 300 damage
• 538 damage in total

A solid 5% extra damage with Crunch and you never risk fainting with more than 33 energy. This is an extremely important difference since Bite is a bloody awful primary attack when it comes to building energy. Statistically a Stone Edge tyranitar is likely to go down with enough energy built up to fire off an extra Crunch.

It's possible to squeeze out more damage by having a better tyranitar, but that merely increases Stone Edge damage from 80 to 81 and Crunch from 75 to 80, which widens the gap to 512 versus 558.

Suddenly we have a 46 damage difference, which is closer to 10%, and the benefits from pushing that button every 33 energy still remains.

Notably I haven't taken into account that you'll never, ever produce useless energy with Crunch, which automatically happens if you fail to fire off an 100 energy charge attack before you would receive any more energy. This further increases the gap between Crunch and Stone Edge.

For a gamer a 10% performance boost is just huge at the end game level. Even 5% extra is an important increase.

Closing Words

To further clarify why poor advice is poor. The difference between a Crunch tyranitar and a Stone Edge tyranitar in this fight is larger than the difference between a Stone Edge tyranitar and a DT/Outrage dragonite versus the mewtwo raid boss.

I haven't read aywhere that it doesn't matter if you pick a tyranitar or a dragonite for mewtwo as a raid boss.

Gym raiding, berries revisited

With the amount of golden berries radically lowered we need to rethink how we use them for gym defence, if at all.

High traffic areas indoors are out of the question. Just give the gym up.

High traffic areas outdoors where people wait for short times, eg central bus stops, sub way stations and the likes are different. You just want the attacker to focus more on catching the next ride, so one berry will suffice more often than not.

Low traffic areas where you need to walk that extra distance to reach the gym are likely not worth defending for more than a single berry. Someone made the effort to reach the gym, and unless the weather is completely awful they're likely to finish the job.

Easily accessible low traffic areas should be defended. Chances are the attacker is just passing by.

Home territory is best defended physically. Ie get outdoors and feed key defenders with two or three standard berries. Once every thirty minutes that's enough to restore a pokemon from having lost one battle.

When you're passing a friendly gym on your way to something that's not PoGo related, please do feed at least key defenders with standard berries. Since you're not going to defend that gym at all you could use the target pokemon as a kitchen sink and pour ten berries inside if you have an excessive number of them.


Unless you're boss raiding a lot you could propably only afford feeding one to three golden razz berries to gyms per day, and that only if you don't use them for catching the raid boss after a completed boss raid.

Gym raiding, what the boss reward change means

As most of you have noticed boss raids now yield a different set of item rewards.

• less revives
• less golden razz
• less rare candy
• more potions (up from zero)

For the agressor this is mostly good news. It's easier to keep up the pressure attacking into gyms, and it's slightly easier getting your returned defenders back in business.

More potions and less golden razz rewards the attacker and punishes the defender.

While less rare candy seems to be a major pain in the arse, in reality the real bottle neck is stardust. Even with the lowered amount of rare candy you're likely to keep up a sufficient supply to power up your pokemon since you need to grind the associated stardust needed.

Defending gyms, however, just became a lot harder. With golden razz severely limited in supply you'll be hard pressed to keep up the pressure on an attacker. It might be possible if weather is bloody awful during the darker half of the year, simply because an attacker might yield if blissey and snorlax gets restored even once.

Most likely you'll need a stash of nanab berries to use when you walk up to the gyms in your home territory and feed key defenders three or four each. That's enough to push CP by some 500 or better, which should normally force another round of battle.

The down side is that this only works once per thirty minutes.

Boss raiding, how rewards are distributed

The people at Siplh Road has run some statistics on boss raid rewards, and they did come to some faily interesting conclusions.


Basically you get more items for getting more premium balls. So stick to gyms your own colour, group up with trainers your own colour and don't cheat on your line-up.

We're talking a range from 4 to 8 item sets, which means you can double your gains by going from six to thirteen premium balls.

Current updates, new rewards for defeating raid bosses

Apart from rare candies, golden razz berries and the two TMs we got an insane amount of revives.

Now potions have been added to the list, which effectively means you can top out the line-up you used for the raid immediately.

On the down side the attractive rewards were also nerfed in numbers apart from the revives, which really did need some serious nerfing.


All in all this means that you can spend a day boss raiding to your heart's content without worrying about having enough potions to get through the day. This is mostly a great benefit for players who spend money on the game.

Mewtwo, planning ahead

So we're about to receive mewtwo as a new raid boss rather soon. I'll leave the definistion of 'soon' ahead.

But you know all of this already, including the part about an invitational raid pass only.

So let's have a look at the line-up against mewtwo.


Psychic is weak against bug, dark and ghost. A single weakness at that.


Dark

Dark type attackers offer us the best line-up. The best of all options come first in this list.

Rather unsurprisingly this leaves us with a Bite / Crunch tyranitar as a superb attacker. Just be careful if the boss comes with Focus Blast as charge attack, since that's a fighting type attack and you really, really don't want to fail dodging fighting type charge attacks with a tyranitar.

In the dark type leage there's houndoom as well, but it's generally a lackluster pokemon to begin with, so you're unlikely to have a good one.

Sneasel? Well, on paper, but it's horribly squishy and unless you maxed one out for the sheer fun of it, don't.

Umbreon? No, just don't. It's base attack stat is atrocious. So bloody awful in fact that its dark type attacks doesn't even come close to make up for it.

Gyarados? Well, if you're totally out of alternatives then a Bite / Crunch gyara is less bad than several other options.

Mewtwo. Yes, if you get one you can use its stellar base attack stat and set up a Psycho Cut / Shadow Ball combination for the fastest energy gain available. You really don't care all that much for the psychic type primary attacks. The Shadow Ball is what's useful. Beware Shadow Ball bosses though.

Alakazam. Same as Metwto above. Great first attacker if you don't have a gengar.


Ghost

There's basically only one pokemon here.

Gengar, especially if you have a legacy one with Shadow Claw for primary attacks, is your default first attacker if you happen to have one. It's stupidly squishy and will take increased damage from mewtwo's primary attacks. Especially Confusion is a nightmare.


Bug

The main problem with bug attackers is that they're squishy with good but never stellar attack moves. That said, here's a list of what you might have worked on earlier for fun.

Pinsir with Bug Bite and X-Scissor.

Scizor with Fury Cutter and X-Scissor

Heracross with Struggle Bug and Megahorn. Megahorn is a pretty awful one-bar attack though.


General dps

Dragonite does its job as usual. A Dragon Tail / Outrage dragonite will basically do the same job as a Bite Crunch gyarados in this battle.


Observations. It's a sad thing when the STAB attack is the preferred one to encounter on a defender. But Psychic is just a really poor one bar attack. Sure, Hyper Beam is easier to dodge, but both it and Focus Blast hits harder than Psychic even with the STAB bonus included.

On average the worst setup to encounter would be a Confusion / Shadow Ball opponent despite tyranitar resisting ghost type attacks. It's never fun when your opponent starts spamming two bar attacks for 100 damage each. Think of it like a blissey with a faster Dazzling Gleam and more lag added to make dodging harder.

Current updates, shiny pikachu for collectors

According to this article in GO Hub shiny pikachu are now available world wide.

Go catch.

Current updates, legendary birds

All four legandary birds are possible raid bosses right now. So this is your chance to catch a better one than the one you have, or if you happened to miss out entirely on one of them.

Gym raiding, network error

I've been running into the ultimate gym defender a number of times now.

Network Error.

Some verified observations:

• You are able to finish one battle before it occurs
• You're unable to finish a second battle
• After a few minutes it's reset so that you can finish one battle...
• after which the error comes back again

Anecdotal observations:

• The problem tends to happen at gyms you've finished a boss raid at during the same day
• The problem is gone the next day

Be wary of the anecdotal obervations. As a player I'm a being of habit just like most players. The gyms I raid (not boss raids) are quite often the same gyms. Ie my home territory, which means the error could very well be tied to the gym rather than being keyed to a boss raid.

I don't know a fix, if any. If you have infinite time you could just run one battle, restart the game and wait a few minutes. Eventually you'll go through the gym unless someone comes by and inserts a new defender. This is a real risk as you'll see the ten minutes lockdown come and go long before you've cleaned out the gym. In any case it'll take you at least the same time as tearing down a well built level ten tower of days gone by.

High Level Pokemon Go, redefining the entry level from 30 to 32

When I started this blog I placed the entry level for playing some kind of high level Pokemon Go at level 30. That needs some changing.

Now, this isn't a blog trying to keep up with trainers as they progress through levels, so the change doesn't mirror that aspect at all.

Rather the entry level I've set should mirror some kind of average aggregate of candies and stardust gained. That total should enable the trainer to play Pokemon Go in a way that's different from how it's played at lower levels.

A few things have happened that invalidates level 30 as the entry point:

• XP bonanzas
• Boss raids

XP bonanzas usually boost xp intake, but rarely do they increase the stardust gained per hour played.

Boss raids pump up XP by the thousands. In the case of legendary bosses a full 10 000 XP per raid. This totally trashes the XP to stardust ratio. By using the free raid pass and doing nothing else a player will go from 30 to 32 in just above three months.

What happens is that my articles about line-ups become irrelevant for trainers around level 30 as they're stardust starved to a degree that wasn't the case as late as April 2017.

So, without further ado. The entry level for high level Pokemonn Go is hereby increased from 30 to 32. That's an increase from a total of 2 million XP to a total of 3 million XP.

Legendaries, what are they good for

We've had access to four of the legendaries for a while now. To begin with we can't assign them as defenders to a gym, which means we're talking dedicated attackers.

From a usefulness perspective I'd rank them the following way:

• zapdos
• moltres
• articuno
• lugia

Zapdos

It's got the same stamina as ampharos and a little better defence to further bulk it up. While zapdos' defence lags a little behind jolteon's the huge difference in stamina between zapdos and jolteon makes zapdos the clear winner as a tank.

Zapdos comes with a higher base attack stat than both ampharos and jolteon.

Zapdos has access to better movesets than ampharos, but jolteon comes in ahead with Thunder Shock and Discharge.

I'd say that jolteon remains the best attacker against gyarados, but its poor bulk has zapdos come out ahead against any target with only a single weakness against electric type attacks.

Zapdos makes ampharos obsolete as an attacker, and would usually be the goto electric type attacker for any trainer who has yet to build one.

Configure your zapdos with Charge Beam and Thunderbolt.

Moltres

Moltres has such a huge lead in stamina compared to flareon that the lower stamina doesn't matter. As a tank moltres is superior to flareon.

Moltres has a slightly higher base attack stat than flareon.

Moltres and Flareon share the optimal fire moves, Fire Spin and Overheat.

Moltres is a better flareon than flareon. Having the bulk to run right through a defending grass type pokemon makes all the difference.

Configure your moltres with Fire Spin and Overheat.

Articuno

Articuno outtanks all the usual ice-type attackers. Lapras is still a better tank however.

Articuno comes with a better base attck stat than lapras, piloswine and cloyster. For all practical purposes articuno obsoletes these attackers.

Jynx is a superior ice-type attacker compared to articuno, but it comes at the price of a huge discrepancy in bulk.

Since lapras is a grade A defender, articuno does a good job at replacing it as an attacker. Basically building an articuno will free up a superb defender to place in gyms.

Configure your articuno with Frost Breath and Ice Beam.

Lugia

Lugia basically doubles the bulk of alakazam and espeon, if not even better. Comparing lugia to those two from a tankiness perspective isn't even fun. Even exeggutor is easily outtanked.

Lugua comes in far behind both alakazam and espeon in terms of base attack stat. Exeggutor also has a solid lead here.

Lugia makes up for some of its poor attack value compared to exeggutor due to the latter only having access to Psychic as a charge attack.

Alakazam runs in circles around lugia for the short time it stays up in battle, and espeon also leaves lugia in the dust.

The main problem with alakazam and espeon is that you need two of them.

For the player with a limited line-up, and who has yet to build a psychic type attacker, lugia functions as a work around to fix that problem for half the cost.

Configure your lugia with Extrasensory and Future Sight.

Gym raiding, speed burning

Going into a gym three or four raiders is quick business as it is, but you can speed up that process anyway.

This is a trick for cleaning out a gym with six iffy defenders in a few minutes.

Let's say you're three people.

After the first mon is defeated one player drops out and starts anew. The two others continue.

After the pair going through the gym defeats the third defender one drops out and starts anew.

By the time the first player to drop out catches up with the player who continued through the gym, probably on defender number five, three defenders should have been ousted.

While the sixth defender is being attacked defender number four gets ousted and that player starts the second attack on defender number five.

The two players downing defender number six have to cope with a white screen and are unlikely to rejoin combat until defender number five has been downed a second time.

They clear it out and catch up on the second battle with defender number six. All three players burn it down, rejoin battle and remove that defender.

Each player selects a defender and drops it inside without having to synchronise battle winner priority.

A berry each and onwards to the next gym.

Zapdos tomorrow

Just a reminder. New bird incoming.

That either means raid as a maniac today, because you really, really want a good moltres, or get prepared for the electric bonanza.


The golem I hope you've beefed up for moltres will work perfectly well against zapdos as well. So will that Bite / Stone Edge tyranitar.

Be careful with your omastar if you have one. You'll get electrocuted.

Did you ever pump up that Jynx in preparation for taking out solo dragonites? Well, now's the time for it to shine.

You might have gone bonkers and slapped some CP into a piloswine, or even an articuno. Bring it forth. Just be wary of electric attacks against the articuno.

While having abyssmal base attack stat, lapras still works as an anchor. Think of it as a very shoddy version of vaporeon against moltres.


Notably you'll do a lot less damage compared to when fighting moltres, and you'll take more since fire is ineffective against rock whereas electric attacks are neutral. This is just a reminder for those who mix up the ground and rock types.


As you're likely to notice your team of super effective attackers shrunk substantially, so it's time to dig out those general dps.

Dragonite, gengar, espeon and alakazam all have a place here, with dragonite being the bulkiest in the gang. I recommend that you save the three squishy ones for when you're well over a dozen players. When you have the DPS to barely but safely handle the boss, slot in dragonite for better survivability.

Gym territory, intelligent solo feeding

When you're feeding mons alone you need to rethink your feeding strategy.

The limitations:

• Max ten berries to a pokemon per 30 minutes
• Max ten defenders fed per 30 minutes
• You receive a limited surplus of Golden Razz Berries from boss raiding

I've had great success in attacking a string of gyms with the same well known player slotting in defenders in each of them.

Hammer one gym twice, leave, hammer the next twice and leave. Check the game to verify ten fully restored defenders.

Clear out the third and fourth gym.

As a defending player you want to avoid this.

The solution:

• Feed blissey and snorlax only
• If both aren't present, add lapras or vaporeon
• Always feed two defenders

Observe that this is when you're the only one responding to the defensive need of a gym.

If you're more than one player with mons present in the gym then you can pick two each and keep them up. Let the crap inside burn in hell, and trust me, there will be crap inside unless you built the gym from scratch during a gym raid.

Did you read that?

Pick two each! Don't strangle your ability to feed more gyms by feeding four a berry every second battle.

If you stick to the two defenders per gym then you're able to defend five gyms. Until you run out of berries.

The thing with territory isn't to keep a hundred percent strangle hold over every gym. Those days are gone, well unless you're six players physically sitting on a group of gyms your refuse to yield.

Territory is about creating conditions during which rival players simply refuse to attack your gyms. You keep them during night, or during office hours, for example. There has to be an easily identifiable pattern, or else your rivals won't learn.

When the conditions are fulfilled you just keep feeding berries to gyms under attack, and only for two defenders.

Sure, if your turf is exactly one gym then by all means feed everything, or feed five each in the two gyms that make up your territory. Otherwise stick to two.

Benefits:

• You can defend more gyms
• Most casual attackers simply give up when they see blissey and snorlax return to full capacity even once
• Even though weaker defenders will get knocked out you're almost certain to keep the gym up for the ten minutes after which friendly players can start adding defenders to the gym once again
• You're not depleting your Golden Razz berries at an insane rate

But don't forget to yield to a raid. With three or more players hammering into a gym the only thing you'll get for your effort is more bag space. There's no way a solo defender can handle that kind of attack.

Sure, test them by feeding the two strongest defenders once. Sometimes people just give up, but if they're persistent then drop it.

Boss raiding, moltres, handing out extra balls to new players

Since Moltres is an absurd squishy for being a legendary raid boss it's also the easiest boss for a few hard core players to pull new players through.


If you live in a largeish city you can probably just skip this post. Players of all kinds swamp the raid and the boss burns down immediately.


Now let's assume that you're playing in an environment where getting enough players to take down Moltres is definitely not a problem, but getting the team contribution bonus is more or less a random event.

If you're two or three hard core players with the time and potions to spare, here's a tip to make new players happy players.


Group the newbies by colour and have the smallest group join the lobby. Join yourselves. Almost burn the boss down and leave the battle. Pocket your phone and make sure they succesfully burn through the last part.

If the second group is big enough to clear the boss with one of you hardcores missing, then that player could just as well finish the fight together with the first group.

Repeat with group two and three.


Now everyone present should receive the team contribution bonus, possibly with the exception of you hard cores, but then you're probably going from raid to raid and can afford to run with seven or eight balls from time to time.


Happy hunting for more active players in your area.