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.