Groudon, raid boss

A little late I'll have a look at the groudon raid boss.

There's already a perfectly good write-up on CP-stats even though it seems likely the real version is somewhat nerfed from those stats.

I'll stick to a quick analysis.


Beating the crap out of it

There are basically two answers -- gyarados and exeggutor. They come with comparable base attack stats, but gyardos wins out on better effective bulk due to a higher base defence stat which translates into its staying in the battle a little longer, all else equal.

You're running either a Waterfall / Hydro Pump or Bullet Seed / Solar Beam combo.


As groudon is ill suited to be a gym defender (had it been allowed to) you can more or less disregard its primary attacks. Mud Shot, while benefiting from a type bonus, is an offensive move, and Dragon Tail lacks the type bonus.

Mud Shot is ineffective against gyarados and exeggutor, while Dragon Tail at least deals neutral damage.

The charge attacks, however, are a totally different beast. Paradoxally enough the type bonused Earthquake is immediately neutered by being inefficient against both preferred attackers. This leaves us with two off-type attacks.

Fire Blast, which slaughters exeggutor, and Solar Beam, which slaughters, well, everything... Of these two attacks you'll still be happier if faced with Solar Beam. The sledgehammer is at least inefficient against both attackers despite gyarados being a water/flying type pokemon, and it takes until next month to finish casting.


Don't have enough gyarados and exeggutor? You can always fill out your line-up with vaporeon. However, Solar Beam is to vaporeon what Fire Blast is to exeggutor -- insta kill.


Why would I want a groudon?

It's a pure ground type pokemon, so let's run a quick matchup versus rhydon.

Both pokemon come with Earthquake as the preferred charge attack, so we're comparing Mud Shot with Mud Slap. Mud Shot deals substantially less damage, is faster to cast and pumps up Earthquake faster.

The word 'best' is hard to define here since Earthquake is a single bar attack. If you can guarantee that you'll fire off more Earthquake due to the better energy handling from Mud Shot, then this is the better attack, but if the fight ends just prior to Earthquake going off, then the opposite stands true.


Remains to have a look at base attack. The non-nerfed version comes with 297 base attack versus rhydon's 222. It takes a lot of nerfing to bridge the 75 point gap, a lot more than what has been applied given the 2300:ish CP your level 20 raid boss comes with when it's caught.

In the end this indicates that groudon is a better rhydon than rhydon, and sine it's pure ground suffers from a much smaller range of super effective attacks against it. A minor added bonus is that nothing is doubly super effective against groudon, but to be honest, if you attack with ground or rock into grass or water you deserve to deplete your potions and revives.