Pokemon Go

So, apparently Niantic accidentally tweeted and deleted that Eevee's CD move is Last Resort. Makes sense, considering that it's the base for Extreme Evoboost.

That's... odd. Like, I could understand the rage if it wanted three Great curveballs, but non-modified curveballs shouldn't be hard to land at all. Your friend needs to find an Onix and just lob willy-nilly.

From what I read, that's a stat-boosting move in the main games and Go doesn't do stat-boosting moves, so I wonder what's gonna happen with its implementation.

Evoboost is, but Last Resort isn't. We'd have to see how Z-moves are implemented first before thinking about Evoboost. Apparently someone at Niantic let slip in an interview that they want PvP out by the end of the year, and that will hopefully be accompanied by a combat overhaul because the battle system in this game isn't amazing.

Ah, I see. That both excites and concerns me. Excites, because, I agree that the combat system is pretty unremarkable. The most interesting thing it does is bring people together for raids with some pre-planning (well, sometimes, anyway—many people just believe in spamming Aggrons). Concerned, because I hope it doesn't cause a total re-randomization of moves and whatever that would nullify the TM investments I've made. Those things don't grow on trees.

Just to clarify, the Niantic rep said nothing about a combat overhaul, that's just my own hopes. They just said PvP was something they wanted out by year's end.

Ah, I see. Still, the current system doesn't really strike me as conducive to PvP. It's okay for really simple response to AI actions, but I'm really skeptical that it wouldn't be a total a snooze-fest for PvP where people are supposed to be outplaying each other. It's not like you can use alternative moves when your 'Mons only have a single fast and charged attack, not is tapping faster at each other going to do anything. An overhaul of some kind is almost necessary to not have the feature be a flop out the gate.

Well, the news flashed on my game that Last Resort is, in fact, the special move for this weekend. I'm... less than enthused. I was more hoping that said Eevee would be guaranteed to get a new special move upon evolution (though obviously, those of us looking forward to shiny Umbreon would be SOL, but I think I was expecting that regardless).

I remember doing a troll build with that move back in Gen IV - it was kinda funny for use in an NU tournament, but eh, for the most part, I'm in it this weekend for the shinies to get shiny Espeon and Umbreon (I know the former isn't flashy, but I think it looks gorgeous), as well as one to store for when, waaaaay down the line, Sylveon gets added (the other five don't appeal to me as much in shiny form).

v111.4 (on Android) is out, and the teardown is complete.

• Last Resort is now in the code.
• New types of action for research task, "SEND_GIFT" and "EVOLVE_INTO_POKEMON". That former one pretty much forces you to have friends (though friend codes aren't hard to find on social media sites), while the latter seems like something for Eevee's CD.
• A new condition for research tasks, "DAYS_IN_A_ROW". Seems to suggest tasks that depend on your daily/weekly bonuses.
• Entirely new "pre-condtions" for research tasks, "IS_MINOR" and "EXCLUSIVE_QUESTS". The former is interesting, perhaps to give under-13s a way to get some stuff that will otherwise be exclusive to the friend system? As for the latter... EX-Quests sound promising as an alternative to EX-Raids.
• A bunch of telemetry (bug-monitoring) for the Go Plus.

And one final bonus for Eevee's CD: not only are both Saturday and Sunday going to be spawning Eevee with Last Resort, but any Eevee evolved that weekend up to Monday afternoon (doesn't have to be within CD hours!) will know Last Resort after evolving.

Edited by Anura on Aug 8th 2018 at 6:46:53 PM

So we can have Last Resort on all the Eeveelutions as well.

Doesn't sound worthwhile.

According to Gamepress, it's worth considering for Espeon or Flareon if the move is a clone of Hydro Cannon. In Partly Cloud weather, Espeon would outperform the likes of Shadowball Mewtwo and Rayquaza as a generalist. Flareon would fall just below the collective three. I'm looking at possibly building an army of Last Resort Espeons for that reason.

Another thing to consider: as gym defenders, Eeveelutions tend to have enough CP to be helpful in bulking one up, however, their move sets are always painfully predictable. Last Resort is the perfect way to troll attackers.

I'll consider it on Espeon and Flareon, but otherwise I think I'll just hoard my hopeful collection of shiny Eevees and evolve them all after the event ends.

Heh, you might not have a choice with some Jolteons and Vaporeons if you gun for Last Resort Flareon (barring using your naming trick on it, I guess).

Hrm... depending on what the stats are on Last Resort (I'm seeing rumors that it'll be a 2-bar move), I can see it potentially having use on Flareon (depending on its power), Espeon (same) and Vaporeon (regardless of power; as noted, it will make it an interesting gym defender). I'm not very convinced, however, that it'll do much for Jolteon (so very much a Situational Sword in this game) or Umbreon (who's really just there to tank hits, and its moveset really isn't going to matter that much).

Hopefully they'll refresh the naming trick for this event. It would be a real dick move if evolution was still a total crapshoot.

Yeeees, just got my 100% Ponyta. And he's weather boosted, so he starts at level 33. My horse army grows.

I have a feeling they won't. This situation strikes me as something they set up to encourage heavy trading in the community.

But I don't want to trade. I want shiny Eeveelutions of my own. >:[

Well, at least getting 25 candies will be easy. With Pinap berries it'd just take three additional Eevees alongside the shiny one. So I could just brute-force some evolutions until I get the three Kanto forms.

Well, you'll have 6 hours to collect as many as you can with a boosted shiny rate of 1 in 22. I think there was a Reddit post saying you need something like 9 Eevees per Kanto Eeveelution in order have over a 90% chance of getting that particular variant. So, if you're very unlucky, you're looking at hunting 29 shinies to get all five variants.

Don't forget hoarding additional shiny Eevee for Leafeon, Glaceon, and Sylveon.

Ooph. Just soloed a Wild Charge Alolan Raichu raid. That shit's nasty. It was one-shotting Gengar and taking 40% of Mewtwo's HP if I didn't dodge it. Didn't help that the servers were being crap and taking away four seconds at the start and end of the battle for no reason. Has Niantic never heard of network latency adjustment code? Anyway, took five tries, but once I got game sense on approximately where the Wild Charges would be, I could pre-dodge. This was necessary because timing was so tight that if I just waited to react to the prompt, I'd lose too much DPS. Might've made some unnecessary knee-jerk reactions powering stuff up before I got that all figured out, but oh, well. A level 32 Mewtwo and a level 35 Dark Tyranitar (caught it at 35 as a Larvitar, so no Stardust even used here... the only thing giving me pause was it being a 53%).

Game rewarded me for all its crap with a 93%, 15-Atk Raichu. Aw, yeah!

Someone recently discovered a workaround for the lost time at the start of the battle. If you keep an empty premade "dummy team", after filling out your regular team you switch to that and try to start the battle with it. It won't allow it and you can load in another team as though you'd been defeated, skipping the startup animation. Notably the battle actually has 185 seconds, this seems to be Niantic's attempt to compensate for the starting animation. You need to wait for that timer to hit 182 seconds before loading in your real team or it'll error out. That will allow you to start as close to 180 as possible, saving the usual 5 or so lost seconds at the start of a battle.

Edited by Anura on Aug 10th 2018 at 8:10:46 PM

Nice. My one attempt at soloing Alolan Raichu failed by just a hair, but the weather was partly cloudy when I tried. Had it been sunny, I think my double-ground Groudon would have crushed it. (As for why I didn't retry, I totally did, but three other people apparently saw that I was trying for it and joined me, so I wasn't solo anymore).

For me, I just got my first EX pass since the beta test - and damn it, they scheduled me for a raid that's happening when I'm literally on the other side of the US for a wedding. I swear, nothing in this game pisses me off anywhere near the level as the whole EX pass thing. It's the most ridiculously arbitrary thing in the entire game.

With any luck the thing about EX Research turns out to be real.

x2 Ouch, that sucks. I don't think I've met anyone who likes the Ex Raid system. The raid chat I'm in constantly gripes (rightfully so) about how stupid it is that the raids keep happening in the middle of the work day.

I also figured other people might notice I was in the lobby when I was trying to solo, so I pointedly made a private lobby so that I could at least avoid spoofer drop-ins and/or people joining through the walls of the two nearby office buildings. If I'd actually seen people walk up, I'd probably have swapped to public if that current run failed, though.

x3 Thanks for the tip. I'll be sure to put that to good use.

Edited by KuroiTsubasaTenshi on Aug 10th 2018 at 2:37:30 AM

RIP the Last Resort Espeon dream. Oh, well. I might still evolve one of the ones I was prepping outside of Eevee Day so I have a decently leveled Espeon I can stick in a gym and have it be less predictable than normal. Actually, I'll probably do that. The others can stay prepped to be Umbreon down the line (might even do a single Last Resort Umbreon for shits and giggles).